Imagine my surprise reading this on the LA Times this morning (emphasis mine):
“I would not acknowledge reproduction as a human right, but instead as a form of rape,” IndictEvolution wrote on Lemmy.World in July 2023. “I am also not bothered by infanticide as long as it is done humanely…”
Here is an archive of the article.
Here is his account.
It looks like he only stayed on Lemmy for about a month, most likely a temporary Reddit exile with the earliest exodus on June 2023. The article mentions threads on Reddit but doesn’t provide any quotes from there. User IndictEvolution on Reddit deleted their account, and the article makes it sound like they are referring to a different username that they don’t specify.
You’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s the largest instance. There’s no particular stigma for users on it. Unlike there is for the more ideologically selected instances, like .ml.
Oh there’s a stigma alright.
I feel a little bit like I was duped by ml. Chose it because the devs were here, but I haven’t thought about the top level domain until I saw their profile pictures. Now, I’m no stranger to leftist views, but I’m pretty far from being ml. I might switch if things get ugly, but I can take some minor stigma for a while longer.
You could also use it as a learning opportunity, explore Marxist thinking and viewpoints.
Lemmy.world is also ideologically selected, they deliberately defederated from the larger explicitly Marxist-aligned instances. Lemm.ee is an example of an instance that tries to be more ideologically neutral, .world is openly liberal aligned.
It’s also run by Europeans so they decided to stomp down on discussions of jury nullification around the time somebody (I didn’t believe it was Luigi) ventilated that healthcare CEO’s head. Which is why I changed instances. Jury nullification is the last tool available to an oppressed citizenry to fight back against unjust laws and/or unjust applications of law.
They’re a huge instance most people joined by default. No one sane thinks a .world account means anything about the person posting under it, except maybe they just went along with the pseudo-default.
You guys think there’s a big rivalry and anyone who hasn’t rebelled against the unjust persecution of the tankiest instances must have cast their lot in with the enemy, but in reality no one really thinks about it at all.
I don’t judge people based on their instance at an individual level, that’s not my point. Like you said, most on Lemmy.world picked it because it’s the largest instance. However, the moderation and admins do have an ideological bent, and over time this filters out users that don’t “fit in” with that, leading to an “average user” with views aligning with the average mods and admins.
I don’t really care ahout inter-instance drama, it’s not that deep. But I do notice trends and I understand how soft-censorship works and how consent is manufactured. Plus, there are terminally online users on Lemmy.world that do see all Marxists as enemies and wish to take down Lemmy.ml, so that does exist, and is tolerated by Lemmy.world mods and admins.
Then there’s me, who joined .world because it was the largest, is a Marxist, but has no idea how to even switch instances or access .ml where I would like to be 😂
Personally, I try to stick to instances that will only defederate from others if there are major, serious issues, like illegal content and what not, and that are also not largely defederated by other instances. That way, I get to have a more complete experience of Lemmy / the threadiverse without missing out on major chunks of it. I think it’s counterproductive that the majority of instances defederate major, legitimate instances, especially now that the Lemmy software allows each individual user to block entire instances if they wish to. This only serves to weaken the threadiverse as an alternative to other major discussion sites. It’s even possible for instances to issue default instance blocks on new accounts if they are worried about the new user experience, removeable by the users themselves if they so wish (like lemmy.zip seems to be doing).
The main instances that I’ve found so far that seem to follow this “defederation only as a last resort” philosophy are the following:
If you would like to keep contact with the broader range of Lemmy instances, these are the ones I would look into. You can check which instances any Lemmy site defederates from by visiting <site URL>/instances and clicking the “Blocked Instances” tab.
I chose my instance because it wasn’t defederated by .world and hadn’t defederated from hexbear or .ml https://midwest.social/instances
I like my leftism but I also like my slop.
You can just make an account! Go to Lemmy.ml, or whichever other instance you’d like such as Hexbear.net or Lemmygrad.ml, and apply for an account. You can’t really swap over, but you can create a new account and log in that way.
I’m happy that you’re taking the account’s claim seriously, but there’s no way that there’s someone who would be able to determine what instance is largest as the criteria, AND then choose it, AND be unable to “switch instances or access .ml.”
That’s either a chatbot posing as a person, or a troll.
I do think it would be better if people spread out a bit more though. I don’t believe it’s healthy for our communities to have any instance approaching “default” startus.