This isn’t my main account but after poking around Lemmy for about half a year, this seems to be what people are saying (and my general impression)

  • Lemmygard, Hexbear - Ultra Tankies
  • Lemmy.ml - Commies and Tankies, the gateway to the above. Users can and will use every opportunity to drown others in Marxist rhetoric
  • Beehaw - Highly sensitive lefties who are blocking both lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works on Instance level because of open registration policy (as if registering to any instance takes effort).
  • slrpnk.net - Hippies who like cyberpunk
  • lemmy.dbzer0.com - Anarchists who hate tankies and any rules except their own, which are different and therefore better
  • lemmy.blahaj.zone - LGBTQ+ folk who hate tankies and lefties (i meant to write rightoids)
  • various regional instances - left leaning but according to above, not enough and therefor fascists and nazis
  • lemmy.world - open instance, therefor if you ask anyone above regional instances, basically fascists and nazis
  • sh.itjust.works - anything goes, therefor if you ask anyone above lemmy.world, basically fascists and nazis
  • programming.dev - nerds and therefor suspicious to everyone
  • piefed - no idea but judging by how people talk about it, Lemmy is clearly becoming too mainstream so some people feel they need to move into further obscurity.

anything else: either nazis or tankies depending on who you ask.

I really like Lemmy on paper but good god this instance drama is off-putting. Also it’s hard to find out which instances are blocking which instances - which I find silly altogether because people are specifically hyping fediverse because “iTs AlL coNnEcTeD” and “you are in charge of your feed”. I’m contemplating running one or two communities (and I’m totally fine with them being small and slow) but I don’t know where I dare to make them because apparently I’d have to be paying far closer attention to the nitty gritty of every bit of instance drama to make sure I’m not on “the wrong side”. Or if I make the communities on some instance with banhappy admins who decide that I’m a tankie/nazi because I allowed someone to post content from someone who said something vaguely wrong on Twitter 10 years ago.

Is there like a guide document somewhere that lists the features, vibes and general content policy, and banned instances and all that of at least the major instances? Because this is like walking on eggshells.

  • ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠@slrpnk.netEnglish
    401·
    6 months ago

    slrpnk.net - Hippies who like cyberpunk

    Completely wrong. Anarchists who hate cyberpunk and want the opposite. Ecologically-minded communitarians. Idealists and hard-nosed pragmatists both.

      • anamethatisnt@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        21·
        6 months ago

        They have a couple of good pages where they define solarpunk, I’ll share a few quotes below too.
        https://wiki.slrpnk.net/articles:whatissolarpunk
        https://wiki.slrpnk.net/articles:manifesto

        Solarpunk is a rebellion against the structural pessimism in our late visions of how the future will be.
        Not to say it replaces pessimism with Pollyanna-ish optimism, but with a cautious hopefulness and a daring to tease out the positive potentials in bad situations.
        Hope that perhaps the grounds of an apocalypse (revelation) might also contain the seeds of something better; something more ecological, liberatory, egalitarian, and vibrant than what came before, if we work hard at cultivating those seeds.

        Solarpunk is a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion, and activism that seeks to answer and embody the question “what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?” […]

        1. We are solarpunks because optimism has been taken away from us and we are trying to take it back.
        2. We are solarpunks because the only other options are denial or despair.
        3. At its core, Solarpunk is a vision of a future that embodies the best of what humanity can achieve: a post-scarcity, post-hierarchy, post-capitalistic world where humanity sees itself as part of nature and clean energy replaces fossil fuels.
        4. The “punk” in Solarpunk is about rebellion, counterculture, post-capitalism, decolonialism and enthusiasm. It is about going in a different direction than the mainstream, which is increasingly going in a scary direction.
  • Skavau@piefed.socialEnglish
    23·
    6 months ago

    piefed - no idea but judging by how people talk about it, Lemmy is clearly becoming too mainstream so some people feel they need to move into further obscurity.

    No. Piefed is simply another piece of software with different tools that reads lemmy instances. It’s not an instance in itself. piefed.social, which I am posting from - is the largest piefed (and original) instance.

    I really like Lemmy on paper but good god this instance drama is off-putting.

    You barely notice if you don’t follow certain communities.

    which I find silly altogether because people are specifically hyping fediverse because “iTs AlL coNnEcTeD” and “you are in charge of your feed”. I’m contemplating running one or two communities (and I’m totally fine with them being small and slow) but I don’t know where I dare to make them because apparently I’d have to be paying far closer attention to the nitty gritty of every bit of instance drama to make sure I’m not on “the wrong side”.

    What are the communities you’re wanting to make?

  • The Bard in Green@lemmy.starlightkel.xyzEnglish
    20·
    6 months ago

    I run my own instance that has just two users. I Federate with who I want (including most instances you named). I subscribe to low drama instances like startrek.website and mander.xyz. I subscribe to communities from MOST of the instances you mentioned, but not a single one has drama (for example, no one on the lemmy.ml cybersecurity or selfhosting communities argues about politics… they just post and talk about those things).

    I experience almost no drama. Two years ago, it was different, but I left those communities (but not even those instances) and just avoid engaging with those users (and it was honestly only a few very vocal users).

    In my daily life, I’m involved with a number of protest and mutual aid organizations and I can tell you, the whole left is full of very vocal “my leftism is better than your leftism” people. But MOST people aren’t actually like that… just the loud ones. If you challenge them in their spaces, not only will you end up on the receiving end, they’ll turn you into one of them (I have been down that road a couple times). Not that they’ll convert your politics, necessarily, but they’ll convert your behavior. They create and feed off drama triangles and “I escalate, you double down, you escalate, I double down” feedback loops. This isn’t unique to Lemmy. You can experience the same thing in your local hacker space co-op (ask me how I know).

    Historically, leftist political and social discourse has always been like this, for all of history. It’s not something special about Lemmy, it’s in the nature of collective groups of humans interested in free expression, positive social change and social justice. We’re angry, we’re trapped in an abusive relationship with the Right and we all think we have the answers. The Left’s greatest strengths and values (diversity, creativity, expression) are its greatest weaknesses. Same is true of the Right (conformity, hierarchy, rigidity).

    • shnizmuffin@lemmy.inbutts.lolEnglish
      71·
      6 months ago

      I run my own instance that has [a few] users

      Same.

      I subscribe to low drama instances like startrek.website

      Maybe not the best example! There was a ton of beef following the Reddit APIcalypse. There was a mod schism. I’m pretty sure if you’re too critical of a certain series, you’ll get banned by a certain user with an extremely delicate ego.

  • nullpotential@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    193·
    6 months ago

    If you’re going to reduce everything to caricatures then it’s only fair that you also describe lemmy.world as shitlibs who simply prefer the wild blue raspberry flavor of capitalism.

  • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    16·
    6 months ago

    lemmy.dbzer0.com - Anarchists who hate tankies and any rules except their own, which are different and therefore better

    I mean. The only real rules we have mostly surround don’t be a dick and the bare minimum to manage a public forum. If you can’t really pass that test then you weren’t welcome in the first place.

    Lemmy is what you make of it. You have to put effort into tuning your subscribed communities, blocklists, etc. There is no algorithm to filter the chaff for you. I see very little inter-instance drama these days because I’ve filtered it out.

  • Pipster@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    13·
    6 months ago

    Blahaj.zone doesn’t hate ‘lefties’? It doesn’t tolerate tankies but is very much on the lib-left side of things for the most part.

    .ml has a bit of nuance not mentioned. Before the reddit exodus it was pretty much the only active instance and during the exodus it was still one of, if not the largest, before .world appeared. So a lot of communities and people registered to .ml, many have migrated away but plenty are still there that are ‘general’ users with no ideological alignment. It is also the instance made and run by the main lemmy devs.

    And piefed really shouldn’t be considered a new walled area, it interacts with the established lemmy instances its just different software from different devs. Same to be said of kbin/mbin which seems to be far less prevalent than it was.

  • rumschlumpel@feddit.orgEnglish
    12·
    6 months ago

    lemmy.blahaj.zone - LGBTQ+ folk who hate tankies and lefties

    Blahaj hates lefties? What do you mean?

  • Taasz/Woof@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    7·
    6 months ago

    I’ve never thought about instance drama or worried about any of that stuff, I just hang out and interact with the communities I like.

    Maybe you’re overthinking things too much.

  • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    72·
    6 months ago

    anything goes

    As usual, “anything goes” means racism, homophobia, misogyny, zionism, etc…

    That’s why those instances are overtly and undeniably fascist.

  • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
    4·
    6 months ago

    Its kinda the point to me. I would like to see specific instances. Like there is one that was sorta an old school internet club that existed before federation but they made an instance for the members. Then like I totally think the world science fiction society should have one. It would make sense for them to not allow general comunities but instead put up a few for their things. Around science fiction literature. Then they also provide accounts to members. Maker spaces would be another. I would prefer a lot more smaller and niche instances than larger general ones.

      • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        6 months ago

        I mean I can see maker spaces shutting down but something like the science fiction society does the hugo awards and runs cons and their clientel are big nerds. It amazes me they would not run an instance. I mean instances like that would not have open sign up as an account would be part of membership but given their missions they are slam dunk for running certain communities.