You guys are awesome

I love how that puts the power in the hands of the user where it belongs

So as an individual user, with V0.17 it looks like I can choose which communities and users I personally want to block. Is that correct?

Quick question.

Can you nest communities? e.g. Could you have a group call “Crypto Currencies” and nest communities for the different currencies under it? Or could you have a group called Europe and nest the different countries underneath it?

@nutomic is certainly a good ambassador for Lemmy. That sort of informative welcome would make most new instances feel more committed to joining the Lemmy bandwagon.

Did you know wolfballs and lemmy.ml federated for a long time?

Do we know why they stopped federating? It might be a useful exercise to find out why and how Lemmy can be improved to allow them to federate again. Especially as you said they are both active in the software development - it seems to be the perfect opportunity to workout how to remove a roadblock to Lemmy’s growth.

It also demonstrates another shortfall is this entire instance blocking system. If Lemmy.ml has blocked wolfballs, then the owner of the wolfballs instance cannot even participate in this discussion to help work out a better way forward.

Out of interest, do you know who blocked who first? Was it a tit for tat response? You blocked me, so I am blocking you?

instances are usually blocked to stop their users coming over and posting unwanted things

It is easy enough to block individual users if they are misbehaving on your instance rather then blocking an entire instance. I think it does the potential of Lemmy a disservice to cast it in terms of one tribe versus another tribe. Don’t fall for the old “divide and conquer” trick.

leading many apolitical instances to not follow it

There is a difference between a user choosing not to follow a community (which is the default for all Lemmy users - you need to make a conscious decision to follow/join a community) and an instance deciding to block another instance - in which case they are making a decision for all their users. They are taking the decision to follow or not follow out of their users hands.

Seems to me if you want to maximize the growth of Lemmy, you really want to give the freedom to users to choose. But at the same time, the instance owner needs the right to stop material that is clearly inappropriate polluting their instance. That is why I think blocking at a community level would be a good middle ground. It would give users more freedom, help non-political instances gain critical mass, while allowing instance owners to nurture their instance.

Hope that make sense.

Wow, you have made the upgrade process so smooth, so easy.

Thank you.

This is a great post - very thoughtful. I had not seen those growth state from Fediverse Observer - very impressive.

I just wanted to add a few thoughts into the mix:

Helping Non-Political communities grow critical mass There are lots of communities that have nothing to do with politics, that struggle to gain critical mass. That problem is magnified because entire instances are being blocked based on politics. I think it would help if the blocking mechanism was more granular so instances could block the specific communities they found objectionable rather then the entire instance. That would allow non-political communities (e.g. Coffee, Fitness and Health, Saunas, etc to spread across more instances and make it easier to gain critical mass. As they gain critical mass they would help attract new users to the Lemmy Network

Silos and Echo Chambers We hear a lot of discussion in the media today about people being locked in their Silos and Echo Chambers - only associating with those they agree with. I think by making the blocking mechanism more granular so specific communities were blocked rather then entire instances, we might help our users avoid that trap. For instance, we may not agree on politics, but we both may enjoy a vegan diet and enjoy sharing/discussing vegan recipes.

Do not let politics divide and conquer us I guess I am saying - as well as the Lemmy Network is already doing - I think politics is holding us back from even more success.

Cross posted from Exploding Heads

I like how the slur filter is described here:

“Note that it doesn’t include any simple swear words, but only slurs which are used to insult and attack other people.”

but I guess the devil is in the details. Where do I see the actual words that are being blocked? When I clicked on the link I just saw a page of code which I cannot understand.

Lemmy is a fabulous creation - keep up the good work. I am excited to see what the future holds for Lemmy.