Hi, I've noticed an increased number of trolls/asshats in recent days, who will argue in bad faith or even spread misinformation to an extent that cannot possibly happen by accident. I don't know if that's a rule violation, but they make this community worse. So, can we ban those? Or do we already ban those, and I should just report them? I'd rather not have this webpage turn into Reddit, 4Chan, whatever. In any case, I would like to express my support of moderators making decisions by intuition, rather than always limiting themselves to the rules. Nazis love to discuss rules. And a rule-adhering Nazi is still a Nazi, not part of this community. Sure, sometimes someone will get banned unfairly and there won't be a rule to point them towards. But I'm willing to throw those people under the bus (even if it were to hit me), to protect this community from Nazis+trolls. Finally, thanks mods for the work you do already do. <3

"Leftist" is not a helpful label here; its meaning changes internationally and personally. It was always vaguely defined and just became more vague and misused for the past two centuries. This is an issue because: 1) It leads to unresolvable persistent conflicts over what is leftist and what isn't, and therefore who is welcome here and who isn't. 2) The admins' definition appears to be different from some very common definitions. In the post ['What is lemmy.ml?'](https://lemmy.ml/post/70280), they imply that a 'liberal instance' is 'something that [lemmy.ml] is not'. This will at best lead to repeated rejection of people who consider themselves 'leftist' but whom many users do not (an annoying and useless exercise for everyone involved), or at worse subversion by people who think they've found home and need to defend it against 'extremists'. Maybe consider *'anti-capitalist'* or *'socialist'* as less ambiguous terms, assuming that is what you meant. This will avoid users who identify as leftists mistakenly signing up and defending the place against those it is explicitly made for. *As a demonstration of the wide range of political positions reasonably considered by people to be 'leftist', here is [the Wikipedia article for 'Leftism'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leftism). Common definitions include ''pro-egalitarianism'', ''liberalism'' and various 'progressive' social rights movements.*

This kind of explains the teeter-totter you see in comment sections, especially on posts that are a few days old but still on the front page thanks to Lemmy's algorithm. It looks like, surprisingly, Lemmy.ml has not turned into an echo chamber like all the other alternatives did. Maybe we got Federation to thank for that? 🇨🇳 🇺🇸

I was looking at the Communities list, and noticing a few had no icon, I set out to design a few proposals, including a way to have different icons for Lemmy, Meta and Announcements. At that point I realized, lemmy.ml has no distinct logo. The admins have rightfully emphasized that lemmy.ml is not Lemmy, and shouldn't be considered 'The Official' instance. I think it's important to add some clear distinction to this instance. 1) The title Look at any page, top right. It says Lemmy, not lemmy.ml. Look at the page header. It says Lemmy, not lemmy.ml. It's understandable how some people might think this website is *the* Lemmy. Other instances change this, this one didn't. This is probably a simple change that can and should be done immediately. 2) The logo This change takes slightly more design and effort. Ideally we could mix the two defining aspects of this instance: 'leftist' and 'FOSS'. Leftist is easy, just make the lemmy a little bit pink/red. FOSS is harder to incorporate without ruining the logo, maybe a terminal underscore to the right of the lemmy, or give it some glasses to symbolize technology enthusiast culture.

Why does lemmy.ml block lemmy.perthchat.org and slrpnk.net Both seem like fine instances to me.

A little bit of context: 7 years ago Reddit introduced an April Fools event people could play by interacting with each other from within Reddit itself. The first event was called [The Button](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Button_(Reddit)), but the most successful one was 2017's [/r/place](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_(Reddit)). During the 3 days the even lasted, users could change the color of any pixel in a 1.000x1.000 canvas (with a 5 seconds cooldown). Communities from all over reddit (and beyond) organized to collaborate and draw something meaningful on the canvas, be it their community mascot, some meta joke, or anything else really. I personally participated in the game, and it was one of the funniest community-based events I've been able to experience online. Apparently, after 5 years, [they decided to bring /r/place back](https://redd.it/tqbf9w). I'm posting this because I was thinking that, as the Lemmy community, we could organize to draw a lemmur on the canvas :) I wonder if other communities in the Fediverse are going to organize and put some effort into it btw, if anyone knows anything about it it would be cool to gather a list of communities who are going to participate to represent the Fediverse in the game

I can't see posts from my instance, how does federation work with lemmy?

This is currently the sidebar on lemmy.ml  and the page title says the same. I hope this is a mistake.

I am getting interested in ham radio and I noticed that the Lemmy community was deleted. Could it be recreated with me as the initial mod?

Today I noticed dozen of antisemitic posts and a lot of microdosing posts that look like spam (not completely sure but looks like it) on the "homepage". I think this is concerning, since this can easily bring unwanted attention to Lemmy and could be used against it (and it is really disturbing to see). I report every post, but I don't know how much effective my actions are. Do you think this problem can be solved?

Communities that promote misleading information and conspiracy theories should be not allowed. PS I propose to add this rule to lemmy.ml rules

Glad I tried. It would be nice if images federated as image attachments and not just a lemmy link, tho

I've been seeing some concerning trends whereby anti-vaxx posts are defended as "free speech" and a growing number of users with "Trump Won" sentiments. Is there going to be a stance taken on this? Or are we going to lose this community, like so many others, to propaganda and hatred?

Based on concerns from both the admin team and most users here, the lemmy.ml admin team decided to add wolfballs.com to our blocklist. There is just too much reactionary content that breaks almost all the rules we have here. It's natural for open instances like this one to develop blocklists organically, and so far we've only felt it necessary to block 2 instances. If there's any concerns about other instances that we should keep an eye on, let us know.

so this CHEF-KOCH guy banned and deleted my comments from his community. I messaged to ask why and he blocked me from messaging him. He recently made a post in /c/linux and i am unable to comment on the post of any of the comments to the post. Is this intended by the devs? It seems like it only functions to hinder discussion. Say this dude just started posting all over the place in different topics and such, they could effectively block anyone they don't agree with which would just kill any actual discussion on any of these posts. It seems incredibly backwards when he is not the admin of those communities. Who is he to say who gets to comment there?

Recently there seems to be some of misunderstanding what the lemmy.ml instance is about, especially from newer users. Lemmy.ml has always been a niche site, and it will most likely stay this way. We don't have any intentions to turn it into a mainstream instance, or set a goal of getting as many users as possible. Our goal is simple: make an instance that people like to use. I would say that we have been successful in this, but obviously it is impossible to satisfy everyone. The reason for this is that @dessalines and I are paid to develop Lemmy, while donations from lemmy.ml users only make up a negligible part of our income. Besides, having more users would force us to spend more time moderating, and less time for development. Lemmy works quite differently from big tech sites like Reddit in this regard: while they get more money with each extra user through advertising, for us it is the opposite. So we would much rather have a smaller, non-toxic, and friendly userbase, than a large one. Part of the problem might be that lemmy.ml is described as "flagship instance", which can certainly be interpreted to mean "mainstream" or "general purpose". I struggle to come up with a better, more accurate description. If you can think of one, please comment here. If you dont like the way lemmy.ml works, thats okay. Federation exists exactly to solve that problem, let different groups have their own instances, with their own rules and political views. You can see the list of existing instances, and instructions for setting up a new one on [join-lemmy.org](https://join-lemmy.org/). In particular, I would like to see someone (or a group of people) create a mainstream, or liberal instance. That should help to avoid further drama, and avoid attempts to turn lemmy.ml into something that it is not. @dessalines and I would certainly be willing to help with any technical problems that such an instance runs into, and include it on [join-lemmy.org](https://join-lemmy.org/) (just like any other instance that meets the code of conduct).