I keep seeing people ask for this. There are basically only two ways, neither of which are terribly easy unless you are willing to switch to a Lemmy alternative and then it can be a breeze with just a couple of button clicks.

First, note that on base Lemmy, it basically cannot be done, short of either spinning up your own instance or trying to do some advanced programming with spamblock filtering rules (that is likely to mess up the pages in some way). There is a related feature though - in User -> Settings -> Blocks -> scroll waaay down -> Block instance - except that unlike blocking a community or a user, this does not actually “block an instance”, and instead merely (& misleadingly?) hides the communities on those instances. You will still see comments from those users, they can still downvote you, and ping your notifications, etc.

About the only thing the above approach offers beyond blocking those communities individually is that if ever new communities were to be made from those instances, they would be automatically hidden from your account. So not all that helpful imho.

(1) Use an App

I have heard that the Sync and Connect apps (+ maybe others?) offer this, as well as a plethora of other features. Note that Voyager does not work for this - it is the same type of blocking as mentioned above.

Check them out? If anyone wants to supplement this section, please submit a post to this community to help people who want to know! (and/or at least add it in the comments here)

(2) Lemmy Alternatives

What I do use is PieFed.social, which in addition to this feature also offers several other advancements not currently available in Lemmy such as Categories of Communities that makes finding additional content a breeze (though overall it is not as feature-rich or easy to use as base Lemmy; and yet its choice to use Python rather than Rust should help it to catch up extremely quickly, plus the admins are extraordinarily responsive to deal with any issues).

To block all users from a PieFed instance, the easiest way is to start from a user on that instance, click their account, then click More -> Block everyone from [instance_name]. Or you could go to a page with the instance name in the url, like https://piefed.social/instance/lemmy.ml and just click “Block everyone from [instance_name]” there.

PieFed also offers additional opportunities in-between blocking trolls vs. not doing so: accounts that meet certain criteria levels will have icons placed next to the account name, so that you can still see their content (rather than have it automatically removed) but not have to spend as much time parsing it as you would something that is more likely to have been offered in good faith.

Mbin likewise offers Categories, and cross-connection with Mastodon. Overall I find that whole style confusing - e.g. “communities” become “magazines”, downvotes become “reduces”, upvotes are both “favorites” and also upvotes exist too that are entirely separate from that, plus you can see who offers favorites, but only from other Mbin/Kbin users and you cannot see the same for reduces. Though if you want Mastodon integration with Lemmy in one account, this is definitely the way to go (b/c it’s the only one that does both:-). From @nictophilia@fedia.io:

It’s not anywhere in the settings at all, lol. Like a hidden option. You have to go to the url https://fedia.io/d/[instance_domain_name], like https://fedia.io/d/lemmy.ml. Then it will give you the ability to block, and that block will be reflected in your settings page.

Edit: according to @DarkThoughts@fedia.io, this does not actually work:-(.

Either of these alternatives should make you quite happy with the result!:-)

(3) Honorable mention: relying upon an instance admin

As a normal user, not an admin yourself, you cannot implement a custom block of users from any specified instance. However, you can either ask your current admins to implement such a block for you (would need the support of the entire community on that instance ofc), or move your account to one that has already done so?

The only instances I’ve ever heard of that block the big-3 (lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, and lemmy.ml) are:

  • lemmy.cafe - has very welcoming messages, including a link guiding new users to this community!:-)
  • Tesseract on dubvee.org - extremely impressive, if not for everyone, but definitely worth a look
  • quokk.au

The caveat to all of these is that each is a single-admin instance. Those of us who recall the story of e.g. Kbin.social (or dmv.social or so many others) know how worrisome that can be in that it could vanish overnight with little to no warning. Then again, unlike Kbin.social, they seem quite healthy for now - definitely worth at least taking a look?

  • Blaze (he/him)English
    91·
    22 days ago

    Solid post. The biggest issue I see is that if a new joiner has to go through all of this before being able to “block the extreme views”, they are going to leave the platform altogether. Not sure how to address that

    • OpenStars@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      3·
      22 days ago

      Responding separately to provide an update on this matter in isolation of others, here is an example of PieFed adding a label regarding an instance: https://piefed.social/post/307766 adds at the end:

      This post is hosted on beehaw.org which has higher standards of behaviour than most places. Be nice.

      So this isn’t some hypothetical future thing: such labeling is already being done.

      PieFed.social has defederated entirely from Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml though, so no need for a label in those cases.

      • Blaze (he/him)English
        4·
        22 days ago

        Yes, I remember seeing it a while ago.

        Once Piefed gets mobile apps established instances might consider switching to it

        • OpenStars@piefed.socialOPEnglish
          2·
          22 days ago

          Yeah and right now the web UI lacks significant polish. e.g. in the deeper threads, it is easy to get “lost” and not find what you are looking for, especially with all the collapsing and Continue thread elsewhere stuff going on.

          But wow it does give me strong hope to see what it’s doing already.:-)

    • OpenStars@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      41·
      22 days ago

      More foundationally, anything that is opt-out rather than opt-in seems like it is “pushing an agenda”, even if unintentionally. Even if a user could block users from a particular instance on Lemmy, with just a few clicks like PieFed allows, still, why federate with such a place to begin with? e.g. Hexbear has repeatedly shown an interest in ignoring the consent of those that they choose to “dunk on”, which reveals them to be engaged in trolling - so why should a major Lemmy instance “push an agenda” to expose every single one of its new users to such trolls by default… even if there was a way to turn that off? Which importantly, there is not even?

      Unless someone uses an app, leaves the Lemmy-proper instances and goes to one of the (currently 2) alternatives, or moves to an instance that at least matches their preferences - though ofc they aren’t going to know what those are when they first come here.

      We need to do more - e.g. attach warning labels to certain communities (like ChapoTrapHouse), possibly with the input of those very same communities themselves in drafting the language (“warning to people in capitalist nations, you are about to get schooled in here - make sure you are ready for that!?!”). But the Lemmy developers don’t seem keen on making this happen (while in contrast, PieFed already has a form of it). And why would they be?

      We are using their sourcecode, developed for their interests - the bringing in of more “mainstream users” from Western countries does not seem to be something that they desire, based on e.g. their moderation practices on lemmy.ml to not merely remove content that they do not like, but ban the people who offered their thoughts. Instead, they seem happy with how things are now.

      So most future developments along those lines I suspect will come from PieFed, Mbin, and eventually Sublinks, rather than Lemmy.

      • Blaze (he/him)English
        3·
        21 days ago

        so why should a major Lemmy instance “push an agenda” to expose every single one of its new users to such trolls by default…

        Copy pasting the list from a few days ago below. I guess most of the still federated instances just have a “very last resort” defederation policy, or that users never complained, especially with the user-level blocking.

        Also, a vast majority of users aren’t going to encounter HB/LG that much, especially if they avoid news and political communities. No encounter, so no complain, and no defederation.

        About hexbear, from the top 20 (https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy/)
        Federated

        .

        Defederated:

        • OpenStars@piefed.socialOPEnglish
          4·
          22 days ago

          I think you underestimate how many mainstream users want political news, but otherwise yeah all good points. Though also a user not logged in does face quite a different experience than one who has e.g. realized and blocked ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆. That one action alone can make such an enormous difference in terms of what posts are shown to a visitor to the site, with multiple posts per hour and spread across many many many communities, and sometimes cross-posting in Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml.

          img

          This post appears in !memes@lemmy.ml, despite being explicitly political. I suppose it must be “funny” bc the West does wars, but China in no way has threatened any nation ever (Ta…), or offered aid to another nation that is actively doing genocide (Ru…), or even done such activities directly by themselves (Uy…).

          Or what about I’m sick of liberals pearl clutching over January 6th, claiming that:

          the whole thing as an absolute joke, but they’re treating it like it was an actual terrorist strike or something. “An AtTaCk On DeMoCrAcY”, fuck off, it was some people wandering inside the Capitol because the cops let them in.

          I found such things as these by browsing by All, especially since I had not subscribed to any communities yet. It’s a toss-up what you’ll see in All for sure, but that’s the point - to see what’s out there. And then mainstream people don’t like it and leave Lemmy. It would be nice if there were at least warning for this. Because it’s not just about seeing content - when someone makes the mistake of replying, oh oh! right directly inside of Chapotraphouse, wow, that’s when the fireworks begin, and the replies just keep rolling in for WEEKS and WEEKS.

          So, yeah it’s possible that someone will manage to avoid running into someone from LG or ML or HB long enough for them to get to like this place and decide to stick around, but it’s also entirely possible for them to do the opposite and walk right into one of these places immediately. Likely even?

          Here is a interesting conversation I had with an admin at sh.itjust.works 5 months ago. What makes it interesting is their suggestion to make:

          something like autoblocking the instance on user creation… which might make more sense than outright defederation. A bot could probably be made to do that and send them a DM with instructions on how to change it off they so wish.

          This is exactly what I was hoping for - making such posts opt-in, rather than have to opt-out! However, I don’t know if it was ever implemented, and even if it was, it would only affect new accounts on that one specific instance. Though it could serve as a model for others to follow, to provide an alternative to either defederation (not going to happen, not with ML) or retaining what we have now which is to treat their bad-faith posts the same as all the good-faith ones.

          • Blaze (he/him)English
            2·
            22 days ago

            Valid points. I would just hope lemmycafe would get another admin, so that they could become a more solid proposition.

            • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              2·
              22 days ago

              A lot of people seem taken aback because the local feed is full of crypto stuff. But I imagine this has little to do with the admin and someone just started a crypto community there. Lemmy.cafe being a tiny instance, it then dominates local.

              • OpenStars@piefed.socialOPEnglish
                1·
                22 days ago

                I sorted by New and see what you mean, but I also noted that while the most recent post on the entire instance is from 2 days ago, the second most recent post is 17 days ago. And yes both are crypto, but they are a weekly newsletter, which even in the titles reflects that it skipped a week. Anyway, that instance seems to routinely go days to weeks without posting anything at all. So that’s not really the purpose of the instance.

                My previous instance Discuss.Online is similar: there are no communities with more than 50 monthly active users. Instances like these are meant more as on-ramps to the wider Fediverse than as destination spots on their own. Others like yours and StarTrek.website are more of a mixture, offering both - although even so, all of the communitied on StarTrek.website combined still only represents a third of the monthly active users compared to the singular !tenforward@lemmy.world community featuring Star Trek memes. Therefore the StarTrek.website instance “has content”, but it is likewise tiny, even for content specifically related to Star Trek ✨.

                So then I’m not sure: why are people taken aback? The default sort for someone without an account is not Local but rather All, for that reason. Someone would have to specifically switch the default to Local in order to see that? At a guess, it is just mismatched expectations - presuming that in addition to using that instance to access the Fediverse, that it would offer content of its own. Which it does but… barely. I am not sure why that should be a default expectation though?

                Still, I hope you don’t feel like I’m picking on you, it’s definitely a valid point that if people feel taken aback about the instance, for whatever reason, then it is less likely to be used by them.

                • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
                  3·
                  22 days ago

                  As you might have noticed people on lemmy are opinionated and idealistic.

                  I recommend lemmy.cafe to two different people and got the exact same “ewww crypto” response.

                  • OpenStars@piefed.socialOPEnglish
                    2·
                    21 days ago

                    No matter what, thank you for sharing it then!:-)

                    Edit: for the lolz:

                    img

                    I am not sure how far we can take this line of reasoning but… ironically it is the same type of thing that we are talking about irl to “tankies on Lemmy” - like, does the presence of seeing one thing mean that you don’t want to go to a place? Kinda yeah… if that gives the place a bad impression.

                    Though I think you hit the nail on the head earlier: this case is somewhat special since lemmy.cafe is so extremely tiny that even one user - ironically someone from another instance entirely (rottenwheel@lemmy.zip) - forms what looks at first glance to be over half the posts submitted to that instance.

                    It is also odd that there are only 5 users of that community, which nonetheless still has <50 total users (even the Pokemon community below it in traffic that has only 4 active users has >100 total members). Mind you I don’t know how those numbers are calculated - does a “visit/view” count as activity, or what about a vote, or is it only a post or comment? Even this community !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca has had only 2 users last month, which I suspected may have both been me from 2 accounts, if a “view” were to count (if not, then it must have been someone else, or rather 2 other people).

                    But anyway, it’s an extraordinarily large amount of posts for such a tiny community. Which… kudos to that person then, for keeping such a niche community alive on the Fediverse? We don’t have to join it:-).

                    Btw here is an interesting recent exchange b/t that crypto poster and the instance admin: https://lemmy.cafe/post/8734571 - rottenwheel is definitely pushing for the site to leave the web and exist solely within the dark web, but the instance admin is having none of that (for one thing, that’s simply not how Lemmy works).

                    So no, I don’t believe that rottenwheel is a major force behind what is happening at lemmy.cafe - they are only posting a lot of content to a community that happens to be on it. But it is only one user, and one community, afaict.

                    But if people don’t want to join it - either b/c of the crypto posts or b/c the instance itself is so tiny - then that’s their prerogative. It’s so great to have choices is it not?:-)

                • Blaze (he/him)English
                  2·
                  22 days ago

                  The default sort for someone without an account is not Local but rather All, for that reason. Someone would have to specifically switch the default to Local in order to see that? At a guess, it is just mismatched expectations - presuming that in addition to using that instance to access the Fediverse, that it would offer content of its own. Which it does but… barely. I am not sure why that should be a default expectation though?

                  If you look at an instance, you want to know what it is about and what the local community is like. It would be better to have an empty local feed than a feed dominated by crypto content.

                • Blaze (he/him)English
                  2·
                  22 days ago

                  I just had a look at lemmy.cafe, and noted that they actually have 4 admins. I’ll open an alt and see how things go.

                  • OpenStars@piefed.socialOPEnglish
                    1·
                    21 days ago

                    They recently increased their resources too.

                    If you got an account that quickly, that would speak positively to how responsive the main instance admin is? It is hard to tell b/c of how Lemmy hides precise dates starting at the 1-month mark, but before then the admin seemed to always respond to inquiries within a day?

                    Plus even beyond a month, quite responsive overall. That issue might be related to the common backlog that all instances are currently facing, or perhaps it is instead an indication that the server is not ready for thousands of new members to suddenly flock to it - yet the graybeard sage Illecors might be open to making some changes to help make that happen? (it looks that way at least)

                    That’s super weird that you cannot access the site. I’ve been looking it here off an on for like the last hour, plus I just now checked and I can access it from 5 browsers on 2 different machines / OSes. Though none of those are with an account, so perhaps trying from with a logged-in account is what is causing the issues? As usual I guess, try closing your program/app and starting it fresh in case it still has some hold-overs from when you lacked the account.

            • OpenStars@piefed.socialOPEnglish
              1·
              22 days ago

              I mean, if they choose that for themselves then sure. Or perhaps a top 20 instance will choose to defederate from lemmy.ml (and some also from hexbear.net too). There are lots of things that could theoretically be done - e.g. sh.itjust.works is currently the #4 instance wrt monthly active users, so if those admins were to implement such a block, and also make sure that it affected the view when looking at content as a guest without an account, that would be an even more major solution. Though some people may avoid it purely for the name alone:-).

              And yet that applies to so many of them - Lemmynsfw.com, lemmy.ca (implies it being regional, which tbf… it is!:-), feddit.org, lemmy.dbzer0.com (not everyone, especially mainstream, may be comfortable with anarchy), lemmy.blahaj.zone (I for one find it very welcoming but not everyone is gender diverse or comfortable with that I suppose), programming.dev (also other issues there with their database I guess, plus not everyone is into programming), discuss.tchncs.de (wait that’s… not even Lemmy, that’s PixelFed - why is that in the Lemmy list at https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list ?), and so on and so forth. The best from a “URL name” standpoint with high MAUs may be lemmy.zip, but it is focused on gaming, which not everyone is into, and they remain federated not only with hexbear but also lemmygrad as well, so don’t seem amenable to want to defederate from lemmy.ml on top of that.

              Nothing is perfectly suited for the goal of becoming the next Lemmy.World as a general-purpose instance that could absorb Reddit refugees, but split the traffic at least moderately so that it does not all currently reside on one instance. And even if some solution could be found - like if lemmy.cafe were to decide to take on a new admin - could they even handle a large influx of thousands of users, and continuously maintain that down the road? That particular admin seems on the ball (not that I know much about such things, and as you pointed out previously, running a beta software version may actually cause issues with federating with others instances), but that has indeed been a limiter for many other instances like programming.dev and startrek.website. If they want to and they can handle it, then that’s great, but it’s up to them to make those calls.

              Which is why that conversation with the admin of sh.itjust.works was so exiting to me - they are already set up to handle that kind of traffic, they already are the #4 highest-traffic instance, and they have already defederated from hexbear, plus have expressed sympathy for doing at least something about showing Lemmy.ml content to their own users. Yeah the name may turn people away, but what other options are there? Though it’s up to them if they want to aim for such, just like it would be up to Lemmy.world to decide similarly how to handle content coming from Lemmy.ml.

              In the meantime, I wanted people to know how they could take matters into their own hands without having to spin up their own instance. None of which is terribly easy unless they are okay to switch to using a limited set of apps or PieFed or Mbin. There are also many other benefits for doing the latter as well, including to further become less dependent upon pro-authoritarian developers. At the end of the day, it is what it is.