I came here a few weeks ago after many years of reddit. Altogether I find discussions I enjoy, however, the posts and comments noticeably lean, well, tankie (I didn’t know that term before I came here). It’s not that I am looking for an echo chamber, but I also don’t want to spend my time reading propaganda. I’m really curious about a lot of things outside politics, as well as the opinions and arguments of reasonable people across the political spectrum, but I don’t want to listen to the boring canned lies of fascists and tankies. I realized that people celebrating communist dictators trigger me, and this is something I didn’t have to deal with before I started reading lemmy, I didn’t even know this type existed.
I also notice that accounts created just a few hours in advance come from other instances to brigade political posts. Because of how lemmy works, I can block individual users or communities, but not individual instances. Is there an instance that could be a “safe space” from this kind of brigading and tankie spam? Or a way to use the internet to read interesting things now that blogs died and then Reddit became whatever it became?

Edit: Thanks everyone for the helpful and wholesome comments. Of course, some trolls/wackos showed up as well to say hi.

top 56 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 84 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (33 children)

but not individual instances.

You can. If you're using a Lemmy home instance, as you are currently (lemmy.world), in the Web UI, go to your user menu in the upper-right corner, click "Settings", click the "Blocks" tab, and then you can choose instances to block in a panel there.

If what you want is "I don't want auth-left stuff", avoiding hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml, and lemmy.ml can help. You aren't going to get some kind of ironclad avoidance, but that'll avoid the great bulk of it. Your home instance is lemmy.world. lemmy.world is defederated with lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net for exactly the reason you mention (in fact, I see people who don't like lemmy.world because they consider it liberal, which they don't like) so you already won't be seeing stuff from the first two instances.

I don't think I've personally seen fascist material on the Threadiverse (though there are some people with quite broad definitions of the term), though there are or were some far-right instances out there, based on defederation lists. Most of what little I've seen on the Fediverse seems to me to be on Pleroma, though I haven't spent much time on non-Threadiverse Fediverse stuff.

moderate conservative

The home instance that I use, lemmy.today, has one user (@DonaldJMusk@lemmy.today) that posts a bunch of Trump stuff and a conservative community, !conservative@lemmy.today. I don't know if your definition of conservative and his match up, but maybe you'd find it to your taste; it's probably the closest to mainstream US, Republican material that I've seen with much activity on the Threadiverse. The instance isn't going to be just moderate conservative and moderate liberal users though. But, if that's the kind of community that you might be participating in, I'd imagine that he'd like to have more users.

EDIT: My own personal take is that the long term solution to having people with disparate positions on what content they want to see, above-and-beyond use of moderated communities and admin activity on instances, is to have "curator lists", where people can basically "share" lists of blocks/subscribes/votes or something like that, and other users can subscribe to them. Then you have a list that


for example


excludes or includes content on various grounds without requiring effort on a per-user-who-wants-curated-content basis. I think that Usenet pretty much established that killfiles don't really scale well in combating spam and stuff like that, because there was never a mechanism to share killfiles among users. Anyway, today, there isn't support for something like that on the Threadiverse. I understand that BlueSky has something along those lines.

  • source
  • hideshow 33 child comments
  • [–] 33 points 7 months ago (11 children)

    I enjoy that you gave a serious and helpful answer.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 11 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago* (10 children)

    Posts like that are the ones that keep me here. There are some really dope people here who want to help and inform other people.

    What's sad is often content like this gets labeled as 'evil' and then brigaded by users who perceive it as a threat to furthering their political agenda, because anyone who isn't on their side, or is remotely nice to anyone on the 'other' sides, is evil.

    By lemmy.ml logic, if I help my elderly Trump-voting neighbor take out his trash, I'm also a Trump supporter. Apparently I'm if I was a 'good person' who was really anit-Trump, I'd beat him or slash his tires or something.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 10 child comments
  • [–] [S] 2 points 7 months ago* (2 children)

    It would be important for people to understand that what separates good people from bad people is decency and basic human kindness, not political ideology. In reality, the good people are in the center, and the bad people are on the extremes. Yet, due to the polarization of public discourse, a left leaning person may be convinced that the good people are to the left, and the bad people are to the right from them. If they keep drifting towards the extreme, and keep thinking that everyone to the right is a bad person, eventually they will hate all the decent people in the center, while everyone still to the left from them is an actual monster. Needless to say, the same goes for people who start right leaning and keep drifting to the right. I wish more people realized that the enemies are the crazies on either side, not the moderates on the other side.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago*

    People don't believe that anymore. They believe your goodness derives from your politics first and foremost, and everything else is secondary. And if you aren't on their side you are the enemy and violence is justified against you. It's also a great way for shitty people to manipulate others and get their abusive jollies in.

    I've dealt with this in real life too. Where I live if you aren't a far leftist on some issues, people basically threaten you to your face or will socially exclude and character assassinate you. Because if you aren't 'with them' you are the enemy.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (5 children)

    anyone who isn't on their side, or is remotely nice to anyone on the 'other' sides, is evil.

    Politics isn't a game with minimal consequences. When they've spent their entire lives attacking you and your communities, trying to claim you're a sexual predator just for existing, and are directly responsible for your own displacement, then yeah, they are fucking evil.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago* (4 children)

    of course. you've been victimized, so the answer is to just go around victimizing others in the name of your own personal revenge. and by the way, anyone who had nothing to do with it, you can victimize them too, because having nothing to do with it is evil too.

    clearly that will fix the world! and that won't come back on you... clearly all that matters is the satisfaction of your own rage, everyone else be damned.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

    The time for compromise was 2016. It's been 10 years. If someone hasn't come around by now, that's no longer my problem.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. buckle up.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] -3 points 7 months ago*

    Not just lemmy.ml logic. A lot of people on Lemmy would call you a Trump supporter simply because you helped that neighbor. lol The extremism here has been getting really nasty lately.

    In mod logs I am seeing a lot more banning for "advocating violence." I guess the good news about that is that mods are banning people for advocating violence, so there's that.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    It might be worth adding that there is some backlash on BlueSky for their shared blocklists recently because they can accidentally catch reasonable people or be militarised to deliberately grab extra people. Or at least that's my take. Personally I now consider a lot of social media along the lines of "if I might not feel comfortable with you around the wife and kids, then a block is reasonable like not inviting you to the next dinner party" and that having a block that you can click through removes a lot of these issues (collapsed post /comment with no title unless you click type thing)

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah, that's why I mentioned votes


    I think that it'd make sense to be able to maybe do something like build a score aggregated from multiple lists or something.

    Another thing I've mentioned in the past is using this as a mechanism for tagging. The NSFW flag was a hack that Reddit put in because some people wanted to browse Reddit at work and some people wanted to post stuff that wouldn't be considered acceptable in most work contexts. There are many, many different categories that someone might want to "tag" things on. Some people are fine with nudity. Some people are fine with gore. Some people are fine with suggestive content. Some people object to specific items in the above. I think that it will never be the case that everyone will manually tag their own content in all the same areas, but it could be the case that someone could create "lists" that one could subscribe to that could permit that sort of tagging; same mechanism.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    Yeah, tags/labels are useful but do run into:

    • scaling issues

      • you can end up with an overwhelming amount of tags
      • if moderator adds tags then the post quantity can be overwhelming
    • abuse

      • if poster side then not adding the tag
      • if viewer side then adding it when the poster disagrees
    • disagreements

      • what constitutes a given label - so most moderation arguments

    Still, agreed they're a useful addition

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] [S] 9 points 7 months ago (13 children)

    Wow, thanks, such a helpful response! I’ll try the web interface for instance blocking. Another sus instance I saw today was blahaj.zone. To clarify, I also didn’t see fascist stuff, I just mentioned it because I felt it important to point out that I also don’t want to see that kind of content. I guess I saw one too many “so you are not a fan of Stalin, you must be fascist” comment today.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 13 child comments
  • [–] 14 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    What's sus about Blahaj Zone? I've always found them to be nice people.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Well he's looking for conservative content, and we're a queer instance, so...

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] -3 points 7 months ago

    There are gay conservatives though. And there are conservatives who support LGBTQIA+ causes.

    OP sounds like he's just tired of the extremism of everything, not just left or conservative. So maybe he's just a centralist or something.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago

    I tend to not block instances FWIW. I have blocked several communities and found that it works pretty well. For now, browsing /all in lemmy is my preferred view because we just don’t have that many people to keep content coming in the communities I have subscribed to. Plus, it’s more fun to see the variety. Lemmy is small enough still where it’s easier to “opt-out” than there is a need to “opt-in” to limit the noise.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago* (1 child)

    hey, just so you know blahaj.zone is not a tankie instance, it's an instance aimed at protecting oppressed minorities (it hosts a women-only community, protects LGBT+ users from bigotry, etc.).

    I think technically the instance doesn't take sides in terms of political ideology and is thus not a "political instance", but the top community on blahaj.zone is vehemently anti-tankie, so I would say they're the opposite of the people you're worried about

    You can read more about blahaj.zone's intentions as a space here:

    https://lemmyverse.link/lem.lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/14736607

    First and foremost, blahaj zone lemmy exists to give a space for queer folk to exist, with their needs explicitly protected as the highest priority, and with a particular focus on the needs of gender diverse folk. Most lemmy instances are not run by trans folk, and whilst many are still inclusive, they don’t always prioritise our needs. Others barely consider trans folk, and react only to the most blatant of bigotry.

    We are not a political instance, however political communities have a space here, as does any community that is actively protective of the needs of queer and gender diverse folk. Given the impact of politics on gender diverse folk, that means lots of dialogue and strong opinions exist, and as long as those opinions are honestly held, and not bigoted or exclusive, people are welcome to have and express those opinions here.

    For what it’s worth, I am a member of the Greens Party in Australia. I have no time for the middle ground politics of the Australian Labor party, let alone the right wing beliefs of the Australian Liberal party. Yet a community of queer Labor Party aligned folk would fit on blahaj lemmy, because the parties ideologies, are not explicitly anti queer. A community aligned with the Australian Liberal party likely would not have a place here, unless the goal of the community was to work at actively challenging the anti queer policies of the party.

    basically you'll only have issues with blahaj.zone if you're transphobic, homophobic, etc.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] [S] 2 points 7 months ago

    got it, thanks for the explanation. I know nothing about the content and the general crowd over there, but some accounts registered there were definitely brigading political posts over .world, and not in a tasteful way. I don't have screenshots or names because I blocked them. I'm not saying this is the instance's fault.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago* (5 children)

    Can do it through apps too.

    ML is definitely everyone's first and fav instance to block, and it sounds like it's time for you too. A lot of the dumb shit will cut down very quickly just by getting rid of that one.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    It's so funny that the first instance Lemmy users ban is the one of the Lemmy developers lol

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago*

    the lemmy devs are very clear about their political views.

    anytime you are clear about your political views, you are going to invite others to ban/hate/dismiss you on princple, because most people do not believe in a plurality of viewpoints in 2026. Increasingly folks just want to silence and other perspective than their own and create their own instances where they can fully police the views of others and have that instance be specifically for their political persuasions only.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    Funny in a way, not the first thing I'd say about it though. Makes complete sense, the whole idea of Lemmy and the fediverse aligns way more with leftist ideology. It was the first instance I blocked too, it's very nice to be able to have a nice space with varied opinions without the one big extreme that's objectively (IMO) bad.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago* (1 child)

    I barely can go a day i the fediverse without my pro-peace socialist democratic views being classified as facism or nazi-apologia.

    There are a lot of users who are 'eternally vigilant' and think anyone who isn't with them, is automatically their enemy.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] -4 points 7 months ago*

    Great answer! Good to see a balanced take.

    Lemmy has developed a habit of branding anything it dislikes as “fascist” or “nazi,” even neutral reporting from outlets like AP. I've even seen news articles from AP get called fascist propaganda simply because they reported facts in a neutral tone instead of demanding that all Republicans be removed from society.

    Nuance isn't a strong point for a lot of Lemmy ragers. Many users came from Reddit after bans or because they found Reddit insufficiently leftist. Lemmy calling Reddit “conservative” is wildly out of touch.

    So it's especially nice to see a reasonable, level-headed reply here.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 26 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    You can block individual instances, I have a long list of instances that I have blocked.

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    What I first did is to limit my home feed to 'subscribed' only. Doing so, I don't see anything from communities I'm not already subscribed to. And since I've made a rather... careful selection of those communities (from various instances), I seldom have have to deal with low quality content/noise. Making it a lot quicker to remove the occasional nuisance that passes through.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago

    I joined about two years ago, and to get the most content I have kept browsing All, however that is annoying when some new guy decide to set up a new NSFW community outside of the NSFW branded instances and I have to block them individually.

    When lemmynsfw existed most people went there to post, but some either didn't like the instance or didn't know about it and posted on generic instances.

    I don't want to turn on NSFW filtering in general, as it is used in memes and jokes, but I don't want porn on my main account, that is what my alt is used for.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    I know of no one who actually esposes conservative principles to me. pay as you go, rainy day funds, infrastructure investment, efficient social safety nets, rule of law (constitution and founding principles respected even seperation of church and state), middle of the road (balancing state power [regulations] and private power). This is a us centric view though were our conservative party has seem to have thrown out all conservative principles. I do see plenty of generally left of center moderate liberals (don't get me wrong a lot of ultra left too) although again often presented nowadays like ultra left views. Folks who don't want to see an end to all capitalism but want to limit wealth disparity and the effect of money on politics, have social safety nets like universal healthcare and equitable public education, sensible regulation, progressive taxes, efforts to limit global warming fallout, etc.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Probably because none of those are exclusively conservative values, they’re if anything, generally liberal ones.

    It’s looking very much like exclusive conservative values are those of exclusion and prejudice.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago

    today but its been this fall the party has taken over time. go look what teddy roosevelt did and this was not one of those congress just happened to do it during his presidency. He was fully behind and putting forth a lot of it. This is what they mean by democrats being right of republicans. you go back far enough and republicans actually had some stuff besides lower regulation and taxes on the wealthy. they actually were behind tax increases because of the pay as you go thing. Really nixon sorta started the fall even though he did some stuff that was do to pressure on him along with stuff he wanted to do but abandoned or reversed course due to pressure. Then you get reagan who through out a lot of thier financial stuff and that was pretty much the lower regulation and lower taxes on weatlhy were all that mattered. They still gave some lip service to things like moral stances or trump to get the religious folks on their side but even that is going out the window. its crazy when you look at the changes in the party from roosevelt to nixon to reagan to bush jr. to trump.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 20 points 7 months ago

    You're not alone in this. Just keep blocking the offending communities or instances until your feed's balance suits you.

  • source
  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago*

    Maybe have a look again, as I at least could block instances if I wanted to.

    I am happy with only having blocked some communities, though.
    Mainly the too US-centric political ones.

    Interestingly enough that also got me rid of a large part of the more ridicously exaggerated tankie stuff I encountered before.

  • source
  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago

    Real life. If you want moderate, complex opinions. Talk to real people. Not the bots and shills that populate this place.

  • source
  • [–] 31 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (12 children)

    goes on communist website
    built by communists that got kicked out of reddit
    i like this, but what about all those communists???

  • source
  • hideshow 12 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    I’m still gonna pick on you communist but that’s after we’re done with the Nazis.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    Friedrich Engels once said: “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.” What does “regression into barbarism” mean to our lofty European civilization? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward its inevitable consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration – a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism and its method of war. This is a dilemma of world history, an either/or; the scales are wavering before the decision of the class-conscious proletariat. The future of civilization and humanity depends on whether or not the proletariat resolves manfully to throw its revolutionary broadsword into the scales. In this war imperialism has won. Its bloody sword of genocide has brutally tilted the scale toward the abyss of misery. The only compensation for all the misery and all the shame would be if we learn from the war how the proletariat can seize mastery of its own destiny and escape the role of the lackey to the ruling classes.

    This was Rosa Luxemburg in 1915. The regression into barbarism was brutal. Lets not lose sight of "the only compensation for the misery and all the shame"

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    It appears our bourgeois have decided barbarism is the way. Good Quote.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago* (4 children)

    No, you got the wrong message blobfox, blobfoxlaughsweat "Bourgeois society" is a society that has the "proletarian <-> bourgeois" contradiction, not "the society of the bourgeoisie".

    The bourgeoisie don't have the option to decide. They have to go with barbarism or there won't be a bourgeoisie anymore. They cannot choose socialism ever, it's scientifically impossible. They'd have to become class traitors first. Commit class suicide. Only then, when they are no longer bourgeoisie can they choose. Here is great excerpt of "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" by Engels that talks about Robert Owen who experienced this first hand (and who eventually committed class suicide very much to his credit) https://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/o/w.htm#owen

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Thank you for the explanation. I hadn’t had my first coffee yet. I catch your drift now.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (2 children)

    oh not at all, it's an easy mistake to make when someone isn't versed in communist terminology.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments
    view more: next ›