No, there are no instances whose communities I refuse to participate on. I have never blocked a community, user, or instance here.

100% yes.
.ml generates most of the propaganda about my country I was complaining about in other post.
Just the fact that their admins also own grad speaks volumes.
It gets tiring having to be on the tolerant side while they can freely astrosurf backed and protected by their admins and devs... Just like the bots on reddit.

If only blocking the instance at user level also blocked the users it would be great.

Well, I'm here and I don't know what you all are talking about. And this is sincere, truly don't understand what's the issue, could you point me to some of these controversial situations/discussions/measures?

I have a feeling that, if you ask for any specific instance, you'll get people complaining and blocking that instance for their own reasons. So, I'd let my users decide whether they block or not a user or a whole instance. For example, I don't like some of the communities in lemmy.world and I complain about it because it just feels the same as being in reddit, but having access to a different point of view is very valuable to me, so I don't block them.

I also have to add that I use lemmy with the voting system completely disabled. I hate the voting system because it shapes people's opinions to fit in some specific communities. This is why I think blocking instances should only be used as a last resort against things like blatant spam, boycotting, CP, hate speech and the likes.

Yes. I've had personal experience, many times, of over the top censorship and bans based on opposing views expressed in a mature and rational way. Once or twice is fine, but I've seen it more there than my entire combined experience online, it's crazy and happens to often to ignore.

I've also seen a crazy amount of trolling there and it seems the trolls are protected through crazy censorship of anyone calling them out. It's just not worth the aggravation.

I've blocked the instance quite a while ago. In the beginning I was just blocking communities, but the users spill everywhere unless you go nuclear.

No. I self-censor a bit there, and prefer other instances so I don't have to, though.

Instance blocked it. The mods are corrupt and actively shape conversation to align with their world view, without transparency.

It's fine to disagree, and want respectful discourse, but it isn't ok to use very vague sidebar rules to scour dissent

Curious to hear other thoughts about this, as I'm trying to keep !simracing@lemmy.ml active, but might suggest to move it elsewhere if a lot of people prefer not to interact with lemmy.ml communities

I would vote for moving it elsewhere. Maybe lemmy.zip would be a good instance that's focused around tech and gaming. Or discuss.tchncs.de because !trucksim@discuss.tchncs.de and !diysimulators@discuss.tchncs.de are already hosted there.

hell i went one step further and abandoned lemmy entirely for mbin

Blocked instance... They can figure their stuff out without me because I don't want anything to do with them.

Depends. I've reccomened this before too, but I keep both world and ml "World News" communities because even though they're defederated, having both seems to encompass a better range of sources and topics.

I have fomo so I don't block anything. I'll downvote and move on if I see something that I feel needs a downvote

I wish that political ideology wasn't such a thing to worry about on Lemmy. It's sadly easy to find extremist content, even on the homepage, when you're not logged in.

Blocked the instance along with hexbear. So I think it would be good to drain the good communities from them if you can.

While I have not blocked the instance (yet), I purposely try not to post anything on any community hosted there and rather look for alternatives. Sometimes it's easier to comment and or post on an ml instance due to it being larger in user size such as the !privacy@lemmy.ml vs !privacy@lemmy.world.

Yes!

That instance just has a stink on it.

I'm sure there's some normal users or communities bit there's a lot who are just plain unpleasant to interact with.

No. I have blocked a few specific lemmy.ml communities but I don't generally avoid interacting with lemmy.ml.

There are other instances I have blocked completely (a certain grad).

Not exclusively, but I do think twice before posting to a community hosted there, and actively seek out alternatives if possible. The only two I haven't found alternatives for are c/crows and c/freecad.

I try to refrain from sharing links to ml communities if there’s similar ones that aren’t drastically smaller. This is because it’s very easy to be banned there unless you’re a tankie

no, I'm subbed to many communities on .ml

i tend to not even notice, usually picking a community by volume of subs and posting. its hard to keep up with the terrible modding in places as ive subbed to over 800 active communities in various instances. i dont block instances. at minimum, i want to see whats going on.

i dont recall specific issues with .ml but .world seems specifically egregious with its power trip modding, based on how ive been 'reprimanded'.. its amazing how they want to kill activity/enthusiasm in some subs that are desperate for content.

it feels like once an instance gets a solid level of user account churn, they feel they can do whatever to end users as there will just be more. its reddit all over again in places.

the power modding is somewhat shocking to me as the threadiverse really isnt all that large. i guess it doesnt take much for those people.

some of the only users ive silenced are mods

I have the instance blocked. Nice thing about Lemmy, you can vote with your attention. When toxic bubbles pop up, you can ignore them en masse. Any collateral blocking doesn’t bother me. [insert Nazi party meme]

Completely banned, I have zero interaction with them.

Yes.

Lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net definitely.

Lemmy.ml has some less-bonkers communities, but !worldnews@lemmy.ml generates some of the most complaints, and I'm willing to paint with a broad brush on this one. There's only one community that I can think of that I regret not using and doesn't presently have a non-lemmy.ml alternative, and that's !mechanicalkeyboards@lemmy.ml, and !ergomechkeyboards@lemmy.world has overlap. Also, aside from issues with instance policy, I think that lemmy.ml in particular is not a great instance for major communities, because it's the "dev" instance and Lemmy has had some serious periods of problems where stuff slipped through testing and led to major problems in new releases. Lemmy.world did not hit this, because the admins there are more-conservative about updating, held off until they were sure that new releases were solid. My own home instance at lemmy.today crashed into repeated serious problems with new releases, and the admin decided that in the future, he would also be more conservative about updates.

I also think that it's broader than disagreeing with someone. I'm not a furry or trans, for example, but I've no problem with pawb.social or lemmy.blahaj.zone and have never seen any complaints about moderation on those special-interest instances. However, there's an entire community, !MeanwhileOnGrad@sh.itjust.works, that highlights a lot of moderation and infighting stuff that often I'd call pretty unreasonable off in .ml land. Beehaw.org is pretty left-wing, but they're pretty mellow and don't have the same issues (though they themselves have defederated with a number of major lemmy instances, including, most notably, lemmy.world).

That being said, a number of major lemmy instances have defederated with lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net, and I chose my home instance of lemmy.today specifically because it did not defederate with instances. I want to personally make the call on instance content and on users on an instance. I've only ever blocked one user, and they were just relentlessly spamming images in communities, and I've never blocked an instance. I normally just view communities by subscribed, look at a "whitelist" of communities, not "all" plus a blacklist, though.

EDIT: Oh, and !kagi@lemmy.ml doesn't presently have an alternative, and I'd definitely participate in a non-.ml alternative.

I refrain from participating in and even from looking at any community that generates anxiety and/or anger, or that encourage or don't oppose what I consider destructive or hostile behaviors. I consider time too precious to waste mine with the kind of persons who enjoy those things.

It is not related to any specific place, though. It's mostly a question of the persons participating and of the moderators.