Asklemmy

This seemed very sketchy to me.

👻 A spectre is haunting @Social_Discussion@lemm.ee ☭

Some of Ayn Rand’s earliest works are out of copyright now. Would that have made you more comfortable?

I wonder if it will be somewhat better here.

If you host your own instance, you have complete control over what gets posted. If not, you have to follow your instance's rules.

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.

That's just basic bot detection, like a captcha. Karl Marx's works are out of copyright, and Lemmy's lead developer is a communist, hence the choice.

it's part of the sign-up process to almost pledge to some political or religious ideology.

In general, instances don't expect you to agree with their mods on politics or religion, but the content hosted on that instance would be somewhat biased towards the mods' tastes. So you go from lemmygrad (far-left) to lemmy.ml (centre-left) to lemm.ee (centrist) to shitjustworks (centre-right) to lemmy.world (right-wing). Personally I'd avoid the first and last, but it's up to each person to decide what's right for them.

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

That depends on the instance you are in.

The issue you've faced varies instance to instance. If you want complete freedom and censorship resistance, you have to run your own server.

It's quite resistant to any single entity's censorship, but if you share things most server admins consider unacceptable, other servers will block your server.

lemmy.ml... copy a sentence from the link provided which links to some article called “The Principles of Communism”

At least one of the Lemmy developers is a hardcore communist, and some people see lemmy.ml as a little sketchy for that reason. I see you found another server, which is exactly how federation is meant to work. While the overall culture tends to be left-leaning, most server admins are not hardcore communists and don't censor political positions that aren't advocating violence or discrimination.

The .ml admins are, to put it mildly, far left. That's why it's great to have other instances like lemmy.world, feddit.org etc. If you don't agree with how the admins run an instance you can make an account somewhere else without missing out on content.

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.

It seems like most have this covered, but it is my limited understanding that which instance you pick can defederate from others of their own choosing. This means you can't see their content AFAIK.

TL:DR; ml is for Marxist-Leninist, but each server has their own philosophy and rules, so just comment and post on other servers if you want nothing to do with this. On censorship, modlogs are public so there's no hiding stupid admin actions unlike Reddit.

Hello and welcome to Lemmy! Enjoy your stay, even if it can be a little chaotic the discussion and vibes are generally in a good place for real people to talk, and I think the Fediverse is where the future of our internet should be, open and people-first instead of corporations.

To give you context, the lead developers of Lemmy and maintainers of the lemmy.ml, are Marxist-Leninists, and that's why it's .ml and that's related to the signup process. Esoteric signup processes (most other servers are just describe why you want to join) are there to help prove you're not a bot or troll or are aligned with that server's values. Lemmy.ml is a general topic instance but their moderation has a pro-Russian, pro-China slant, and have been known to ban comments and users speaking against that on controversial (e.g. Ukraine, Gaza, US politics) threads. That's the reality, there is a lot of valid criticism of that from within and outside Lemmy, but that's also their perogative. (That sounds not great, but stay with me here.)

However, being part of the Fediverse, this software extends beyond the developers' own political whims. So, you aren't subject to their philosophy if you don't post on .ml and aren't registered with them. Other servers have different policies, some more laissez-faire like db0 or ee, some very protective like beehaw.

I hope you can understand that even if admins sometimes have power trips, they don't have the power of Spez to kick you off the whole platform or enforce awful rules. If we compare Reddit to a kingdom where you can be expelled at any moderator or admins whim, Lemmy is more like a fiefdom where you can only be expelled from the duchy. If you're an extremely unlikable troll, every server will reject you.

Because these relationships between servers are organic, it's not all sunshine and rainbows and there are a lot of topics people can and will disagree on. Please just try to be reasonable with your fellow user and moderator, try not to get upset if your post is removed (double check the rules of the community AND server you post to) if you get 20 downvotes on something unpopular (though it's avoided on lemm.ee since downvotes are disabled). Modlogs are open so if you think a ban/removal is unfair/unjust, appeal to your mods/admins first, if you think it's still unreasonable or part of a power trip rampage you can have a discussion about it on !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com, !fediverselore@lemmy.ca, !modabuse@lemmy.sdf.org, and mention your old user handle for people to judge whether it was justified or not. Unpopular stuff often doesn't get censored unless it breaks rules, or is just plain mean, trolling, flaming or unproductive.