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Comment on Why do .ml users get a bad rep?

The admins over there have some profoundly questionable views, which tends to push away reasonable people and attract bootlickers.

The problem is not the users as much as the site itself and its admins. I wish reasonable people (not bootlickers) would stop using lemmy.ml and go somewhere better. It’s biggest function right now is to scare away good people who would have been happy elsewhere.

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muxika@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Having an ideological focus for an entire instance feels like a major mistake. I can understand one admin having that take, but not the whole team. Thanks for the heads up.

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- cabbage@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I think instances with ideological underpinnings is fine, and maybe inevitable. The crucial thing is that they need to be honest about it, so that those not interested can go elsewhere.
  
  The problem with lemmy.ml is that it pretends to be a catch-all instance when it’s in fact very much not, and that it doesn’t tell users up front what it’s all about. Both Hexbear and Lemmygrad are better in that respect—at least they’re honest.
  
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  - echolalia@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Part of the sign up process I went through was to copy a line from something Marx wrote (can’t remember now I’m a bad communist) to be approved for an account.
    
    Maybe it wasn’t like that in the past but it was made clear in the sign up processs that the admins are ML communists and run their instance with those beliefs informing their moderation decisions.
    
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    Cowbee@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Technically it’s Engels, in The Principles of Communism, last I checked.
    
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    bigkahuna1986@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I joined during the Reddit exodus and I didn’t have to do that. Was a little shocked to learn that later.
    
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givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Yeah, it’s not that people don’t like the lemmy.ml users, or even really their mods…

It’s (at least one of) the admins.

If they see something they don’t like on their server, they delete it and give a very very short ban. Because they don’t want those people gone. They want them enraged and chomping at the bit to come back.

It’s ran like a troll instance, and it’s not alone.

The only time they permanently ban someone, is when they see someone in a neutral place they can’t control talking about it. Advocate for people blocking them, and they don’t want anyone signed up to their instance seeing your comments

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nithou@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Learned about this today, was mainly on lemmy.ml because lemmy.world was blocking too much instances -_- Now trying piefed.social

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- marx@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I’ve enjoyed piefed a lot so far. I think it’s a good choice.
  
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  - AmazingWizard@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The thing that is funny about Piefed vs. Lemmy is the level of authoritative control the admin has over what you see and whether votes count or not. Specifically, they can open each instance connected with them and add a vote weight to the instance. So if they didn’t like ML, instead of blocking the instance, you can set the weight to 0, and then those users would have no idea that their votes do not contribute to a rank at all. You can take an individual user and set their account to ban comments, ban posts, or both, which effectively shadow bans a user. If they’re remote, the comments, or posts never arrive at the piefed instance. None of this is visible to the end user, by the way, no alerts that this is happening to your account. You can be kicked from a community by moderators, an action that you will not even know is happening to you.
    
    It leaves you to wonder how much of what you’re seeing is an accurate tally of votes and score. It seems driven purely to keep out opposing perspectives and stifle thought. None of these “tanky” instances have this level of user and content manipulation at their disposal. The Admin of a piefed instance can shape the feed silently, and without users even knowing it is happening, through the use of vote weights. Which is a pretty nasty feature if I’m being honest. One of the things people assumed was happening on Reddit was that the feed wasn’t an honest representation of user activity, that the feed itself was ideologically bias (one way or the other), and yet piefed explicitly gives you those tools.
    
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    rimu@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I have just added code which makes the instance vote weight visible in the UI - https://codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi/commit/04b54e25f44f54420c247152323c90c4a3360a02
    
    You can go to https://piefed.social/instances and check the vote weight of any instance. It’ll be very boring tho because they’re all set to “Votes are weighted at the normal level.” Yes, even lemmy.ml.
    
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    Skavau@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    The thing that is funny about Piefed vs. Lemmy is the level of authoritarian control the admin has over what you see and whether votes count or not. Specifically, they can open each instance connected with them and add a vote weight to the instance. So if they didn’t like ML, instead of blocking the instance, you can set the weight to 0, and then those users would have no idea that their votes do not contribute to a rank at all.
    
    Are any Piefed instances doing any of this right now?
    
    You can take an individual user and set their account to ban comments, ban posts, or both, which effectively shadow bans a user. If they’re remote, the comments, or posts never arrive at the piefed instance. None of this is visible to the end user, by the way, no alerts that this is happening to your account.
    
    I’m not aware of this.
    
    You can be kicked from a community by moderators, an action that you will not even know is happening to you.
    
    When you say “moderators” do you mean admins here or community moderators?
    
    The Admin of a piefed instance can shape the feed silently, and without users even knowing it is happening, through the use of vote weights. Which is a pretty nasty feature if I’m being honest. One of the things people assumed was happening on Reddit was that the feed wasn’t an honest representation of user activity, that the feed itself was ideologically bias (one way or the other), and yet piefed explicitly gives you those tools.
    
    I can see a valid use-case for smaller instances that might want to elevate their own communities within their own local feeds. I think it would be pretty poor if any larger instance used this tool, but I am sure that all of these toggles can display publicly - so users on an instance would know if their experience is being gamed or curated by the admins of a local instance.
    
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leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Biggest issue is that said admins are the lemmy devs. .ml is their test instance.

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Rhoeri@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The admins are absolute cowards of the worst kind.

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