Asklemmy

So um here's the thing.

The fediverse is a network of interconnected servers/instances that are independently hosted.

Within the fediverse, there's Lemmy

There are many different "servers" (I'm just gonna call it servers, instances is not a commonly used word) of Lemmy. Each have different owners. But they all run the Lemmy software of their servers.

The Lemmy software is an open source project, contributed by many different people who know how to code. The main developers believe in Marxism-Leninism, basically what countries like USSR and People's Republic of China claim to also follow this ideology (or at least they used to).

lemmy.ml is one of the first servers, run by the main developers.

So there, if you disagree with their ideology, you should probably use a different server.

If you have an email address, you're already used to the federated service pattern. When you sign up for a gmail, you're making an account with Google to be able to send emails to anyone else with an email address. And there's nothing stopping Google from making you fill out a "sketchy" application to get an account.

On Lemmy, each instance has its own set of rules, and if you don't like them, you just make an account on a different instance.

As far as censorship, each "community" (analog to subreddit) lives on a certain instance and the rules of that instance apply.

Edit: also on the topic of communism, however you feel about communism in the physical world is irrelevant when it comes to the digital world. Free and Open Source Software makes the world go 'round, and is often communist in nature, even if done unintentionally. The pattern of people developing software for their own purposes, and then sharing it freely with others is the purest form of "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need." That said, running an instance isn't free, so make sure to kick your instance a few bucks if you appreciate their work.

Join us at lemm.ee. It’s as neutral as can be, the admin is cool, and they leave blocking to the users instead of just defederating outright.

The original developers of Lemmy are communists who were seeking to create a social media space that would be free from corporate censorship and centralization. When they created ml, they decided to have it be geared towards communists and leftists as their specific flavor of the Lemmy community, because that is what interested them.

If you are looking for a less political and more general instance, I’d recommend:

lemmy.world
sh.itjust.works
lemmy.dbzero.com

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.

This seemed very sketchy to me.

👻 A spectre is haunting @[email protected] ☭

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