Hey everyone, I’m new to Lemmy and just starting to figure this site out. 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 (on the official site it says “Censorship resistant - By hosting your own server, you can be in full control of your content.”).

The weird thing I saw with Lemmy was when I wanted to sign-up on the “lemmy.ml” server instance that according to the official Lemmy Servers listing page is a “A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers”.

So I thought I try that one when it’s from Lemmy’s own developers. 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.

This seemed very sketchy to me. Does anyone know something about this?

  • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    12
    edit-2
    5 days ago

    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.

      • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        1
        edit-2
        5 days ago

        Mali is a Saharan country with low population, spotty, super expensive internet and unreliable power; I’d be surprised if the machines are literally there. And anyway, Dessalines has never mentioned being from a Malian background, but he does identify as ML.

  • @geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    126 days ago

    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.

  • @Sprokes@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    57 days ago

    Censorship still exists in lemmy. I got banned from an instance just because I said some things that weren’t aligning with far left ideas. I was one of the active members of that instance (we were very few) on non political communities.

    I made a political post and one of the administrators wasn’t OK with it and started insulting me and then banned me from the whole instance.

  • @_ed@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    397 days ago

    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.

    • Salamander
      link
      fedilink
      146 days ago

      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 😛

  • @teagrrl@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    135 days ago

    Filters out conservatives pretty well and stops bots because it requires the user to read.

    • @OceanSoap@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      15 days ago

      Interesting. Must be newish because that wasn’t a requirement when I signed up a few years back.

  • edric
    link
    fedilink
    237 days ago

    Join us at lemm.ee. It’s as neutral as can be, the admin is cool, and they leave blocking to the users instead of just defederating outright.

  • @SorteKanin@feddit.dk
    link
    fedilink
    237 days ago

    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.

  • @MrFunnyMoustache@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    567 days ago

    This wasn’t around when I joined. I suppose this serves two purposes:

    • Stop conservatives from joining the instance.

    • An additional filter to make it a bit harder for bots to make accounts.

    I think that’s killing two birds with one stone.

    • Random Dent
      link
      fedilink
      English
      237 days ago

      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!

    • r00ty
      link
      fedilink
      87 days ago

      How about freaking No!

      Lemmy might be written by communists, but nothing stops you using it on an instance that is not.

      Also, there’s other threadiverse apps out there that work fine with the federated network if you really don’t want to use one created by “communists”

      I don’t think making this place a total echo chamber, by telling people to “go back to reddit” is in any way a good thing.

  • നാടൻ
    link
    fedilink
    English
    7
    edit-2
    7 days ago

    Thank you for posting, OP.

    I was thinking about making an account here. Saw this and made one here, to see how the instance would feel like.

  • @juliebean@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    1287 days ago

    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.