Filters out conservatives pretty well and stops bots because it requires the user to read.
Asklemmy
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
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The .ml admins (and devs of Lemmy the software) are from that crowd, basically. If you don't like it, try another instance.
Edit: .ml is for Marxist-Leninist, even. There's no connection to Mali.
Welcome. Admins and mods of every instance, not just ml are very trigger happy to enforce their opinion. Going as far as fully disabling users accounts. Not by using an automatic word filter though.
Each instance has different political opinions you need to agree with. This one likes communism. Upside is no email verification required, so it is very private.
Lemmy is much more wild west than moden Reddit. Similar to old Reddit. Enjoy the ride.
As the internet should be.
That depends on the instance you are in.
Main Lemmy devs are communist and aren't shy to enforce their views, which gets reflected in their instance, lemmy.ml, which is considered to be fairly tankie.
However, as Lemmy is federated, you can join any other instance and view whatever interests you without having to recite political literature to sign up.
In fact, the most popular instance is actually lemmy.world, which is not politically affiliated; although it defederated from certain instances, which might make you feel limited. I found lemmy.today as a way to be connected with anything and everything, from Hexbear to Beehaw, to, well, Lemmy.world
Main Lemmy devs are communist and aren't shy to enforce their views
Their evil enforcement, our righteous peace keeping.
In fact, the most popular instance is actually lemmy.world, which is not politically affiliated;
Being "apolitical" just means they're neoliberal. Which tbh sounds perfect for OP.
Nah, I take similar issue with liberals who scream about their views everywhere, asked or not, and do their best to turn Lemmy into a place where politics (and, especially, American politics, as if it's a country with 99% of Earth's population) is everywhere.
For the record, I am communist, I just don't want to be bombarded with politics at every corner and I refuse to analyze crochet through the prism of the class theory, thanks. It is possible to abstain from politics on .world, but it is often hard to escape on .ml (thankfully, Linux communities are generally neutral), or Hexbear (although it tries) or, Marx forbid, Lemmygrad, latter being a straight up shithole where politics is everything and you could be banned for saying Stalin could be wrong in some of his decisions.
There's a list on GitHub of instances by most federation. It's where I found mine.
Good option! Could you please share the link to the list if you still have one?
Ikr? I'm honestly tempted to go back to reddit, but the privacy concerns ick me out
If you have an email address, you're already used to the federated service pattern. When you sign up for a gmail, you're making an account with Google to be able to send emails to anyone else with an email address. And there's nothing stopping Google from making you fill out a "sketchy" application to get an account.
On Lemmy, each instance has its own set of rules, and if you don't like them, you just make an account on a different instance.
As far as censorship, each "community" (analog to subreddit) lives on a certain instance and the rules of that instance apply.
Edit: also on the topic of communism, however you feel about communism in the physical world is irrelevant when it comes to the digital world. Free and Open Source Software makes the world go 'round, and is often communist in nature, even if done unintentionally. The pattern of people developing software for their own purposes, and then sharing it freely with others is the purest form of "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need." That said, running an instance isn't free, so make sure to kick your instance a few bucks if you appreciate their work.
This wasn't around when I joined. I suppose this serves two purposes:
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Stop conservatives from joining the instance.
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An additional filter to make it a bit harder for bots to make accounts.
I think that's killing two birds with one stone.
Yeah when I joined IIRC I just had to write a sentence about why I wanted to join. The communism thing made me laugh though!
it's not sketchy, it's basically a captcha to keep down automated bot sign ups, and they link to that document in particular, i assume, because the devs are marxists and figure folks who are vehemently anti-communist would refuse and thus keep down their moderation load.
The most correct answer here honestly.
.ml is treated as a bit of a bogeyman around here - most of my interactions with their instance and users has been good. I realise this could be different for others. But, yes, they are Marxist-Leninist so, obviously, their opinions and content will be closely aligned with their political philosophy. In my personal opinion and experience .world seems to have vacuumed-up a tremendous amount of people from the other site you mentioned (Robbit?). Their netiquette seems to have not changed. Also, myself and some others have noticed that on .world it’s not unusual to see comments that express views from outside what the majority believe get deleted. Fortunately the “mod logs” are public record so you can see why comments were deleted, whom by and what the original post/comment was. (I guess with the exception of illegal content that has to be scrubbed) I hope you enjoy your time here. Welcome.
(I guess with the exception of illegal content that has to be scrubbed)
Correct. There is a “purge” feature, but I’ve not yet had to resort such measures after several months of admining.
Thank you (and your fellow admins) for all you do and the time you sacrifice. It is appreciated, by me at least. I don’t even want to consider what vile obscenity you run the risk of exposing yourselves to and I’m happy you’ve not yet had to purge anything; but there’s some sick individuals out there and I’m glad you’re a bulwark against that.
The fediverse is not really about avoiding censorship as it is about providing choice. That means the choice to listen to who you want to listen to (i.e. what servers to (de)federate from/to), the choice to post whatever you want (but you might get banned from your own instance or any other instance, that's their prerogative), the choice of administrators and moderators (i.e. which instance you sign up to and what communities you participate in).
All of that stuff doesn't really have to do with censorship directly, but it has implications for censorship. The fediverse is not built primarily to avoid censorship though, and in some cases it is made to make "censorship" (moderation) easier, rather than harder.
Welcome to the Fediverse! Somebody has probably told you this, but I just realized that I forgot to hit "Post" before I went to dinner. Here it is anyways.
When I wanted to sign-up it required an application that you needed to fill out with one of the requirements being having to copy a sentence from the link provided which links to some article called “The Principles of Communism” which I thought was very odd for a site to do. I’ve never seen a site like this promoting some ideology that directly where it’s part of the sign-up process to almost pledge to some political or religious ideology.
The applications and copying of a particular line is a simple form of spam prevention. The fact that the line is from “The Principles of Communism" is probably because the owners of that particular instance (who are also the main developers) are communist. I believe they also run Lemmygrad, which is full on Marxist, and one of the more commonly blocked instances. Lemmy.ml is intended to be a more mainstream instance but like much of the Fedi leans hard left.
I mainly moved here because of the censorship on Reddit where they didn’t publish posts that included the slightest word not allowed by their filter and they removed/blocked lots of content. I wonder if it will be somewhat better here
Lemmy is censorship resistant, but not censorship free. There is a difference. Censorship (or moderation, depending on your view point) happens at 3 levels, user, community, and instance. You can't do much if other users find you obnoxious and decide to block you, but if you find the moderation of a community to be over bearing and if your current instance allows, you can create your own community from your current instance and mod it how you see fit within the guidelines of your instance. If you find your instance's moderation to be overbearing, you can create your own instance and moderate it however you see fit. However, you will still be subject to the moderation policies of the communities (and their home instances) that you subscribe to.
In the Fedi you have absolute freedom of speech, but nobody is required to give you a soapbox or megaphone and nobody is required to listen to you.
The fact that each instance can have its own rules and culture is f a b. I love that’s one of the criteria. Mander.xyz should have a ‘identify all the creatures from the Triassic’ image captcha.
I don't know how to set up a specific image captcha, but I like that idea! I have added that to the registration form 😛
Seems like a simple task to help verify that you are not a bot. It might also help deter applicants who are anti-communist. I guess you solved the problem for yourself by choosing a different instance.