I feel like I get far fewer responses to my posts when posted from my .ml account than when posted from my .world account. Is this a thing? Should I switch servers?
People are stupid
There are a handful of users that are extremely dedicated to trying to get people to block or defederate from Lemmy.ml on account of all of the Marxists, Communists, etc. It wouldn’t be surprising if more people have blocked it, but those generally aren’t going to be people that I’d want to interact with much to begin with.
I don’t think it’s heavily defederated, but I did notice enough “missing” content from my .ml that I decided to move to another instance a few months ago. Which is weird, because I never had an issue with other .ml users (since I’m not into politics) and wouldn’t have guessed what’s going on if it wasn’t for other posts like this.
Same lol
it feels the opposite for me, but definitely switch and see if the difference sticks
It is pretty much the most blocked instance I know of. Not defederated, just blocked by users.
.ml has a pretty iffy reputation as an instance, somewhat deserved, of being unnecessarily dickish as a whole. So, yeah, if you aren’t aligned so heavily with the politics of the instance that you need to be based there for that, it might not be a bad idea to think about switching to a different instance if you’re running into trouble with visibility and engagement.
Mind you, your posts on other instances should still be visible, if I understand how instance blocks work. Afaik, when a user blocks an instance, what happens is that no communities from that instance will show for you, but users from the instance still do as individuals. Like, if you blocked shitjustworks, you would still see this comment, and posts I make on .world or wherever, but not any posted to this instance.
So, if you’re posting on communities on other instances, it likely isn’t that .ml being blocked is causing the lack of responses. It isn’t impossible that people with a serious problem with ml might avoid users from there, no matter what the post is, but I haven’t seen many people saying they do that.
Every time I hear about .ml users being “dickish” it’s always just someone claiming that. Haven’t seen anything like that, at least not more than other servers. Same for the supposed censorship. Feels likr something people just repeat like a meme.
That’s why I said a reputation for, and a somewhat deserved one.
The key is that when .ml users are dickish away from their instance, it tends to be very obvious and easy to see. It’s the whole tankie militant thing. It stands out in part because it varies less between individual users, as compared to the dickish sorts on shitjustworks where it’s less consistent in type.
The censorship side of things is inconsistent. Depends on the specific community, imo. Some of them are just ridiculous about it, others it doesn’t even happen. But, because it’s a tankie instance, the censorship has a pattern to it that’s easy to notice and track.
But both do exist. Whether or not it’s worse than any other instances, I can’t confidently reach a conclusion because it would take digging through the mod log going back years to show censorship patterns, and even then you’d have to have a way to determine what was censorship and what was just moderation along community rules (regardless of the fairness or equality of those rules). Similarly, how do you quantify dickishness? How are you going to compare between instances? I have zero way to do that.
But I would maintain that the consistency of tankie diskishness and censorship there is very clear to anyone that interacts with the instance frequently, so it isn’t just a meme.
Yeah, unless someone does the research I agree - it’s all anecdotal (personally I’ve experienced ridiculous amounts of censorship on lemmy.ca, for example, beyond what I’d ever expect). I have a feeling a lot of the “tankie dickishness” is just people not liking it when .ml users express their opinions or call out lies or unintentional misinfo.
