.ml is my preferred instance too because you get the latest updates first, you get access to all the same mainstream PieFed and Lemmy communities, and you get to choose whether to interact with communist communities like Lemmygrad or Hexbear.
I wouldn't recommend it to most people though cause most people can't handle communists. Most would prefer conservatives, even.
And the downside is that certain people will block you or judge you for your instance, even if you were here years before the other instances came to be.
Except that the people who started suggesting to avoid pushing .ml were the Lemmy devs, the instance admins, and that is what this user is referencing. Exactly for the reasons described.
This was back during the surge from Reddit in 2023.
"Most of Lemmy" was made up of communists before then.
Hell, that's a large part of why PieFed was developed
I like when people don't act coy about this being direct motivation so thanks.
This has also been a thing on Reddit since subreddits were introduced so I don't really think it's a major obstacle to user retention compared to the amount (or lack) of quality original content and discourse
In fact, Russia is an expansionist state with rampant nationalism and homophobia and led by an obvious fascist. I support the political autonomy of Ukrainians.
Catch me in the modlogs.
Now, I believe all of that, but I can also believe that there are geopolitical forces making the situation more nuanced and complex
The devs are Marxist-Leninists. They administrate the .ml instance with that in mind, and they will often ban or strictly moderate low effort anti-China content like depicting Xi as Winnie the Pooh (they see this as racist because yellow bear) and spam posts about Tienanmen Square. I've seen people claim they are pro-Russia, but most of what I've seen would fall under anti-NATO opinions than pro-Russia. I have never gotten the impression that Putin is popular in .ml, hexbear, or lemmygrad.
But they really just stick to their instance and don't push their politics on the software's development.
People on Lemmy don't really need to be told about most of these. What's your point? You and I both know this image was made for people outside Lemmy. In fact, it was updated to remove Lemmy
The user has been on this platform since 2020, long before .world existed and .dbzer0 was a twinkle in dbzer0's eye. Yes, the user chooses to stay on the instance that gets updated first and stays federated with all of .world, PieFed, and also the lifeboat chapo community that did and has continued to produce the funniest leftist content on the platform.
I've been in this comm for years. It's the number one organizing spot for anti-lemmy developers to push their alternatives. There was a Java one before PieFed took off. And when you look under the surface, the reasons these are developed are pretty much always because anti-communism.
You see it's actually people like y'all that scream "witch" at users, accuse them of interacting with bad faith, and spread FUD in this platform.
Calling it the Department of War was like the one good thing they've ever done. It's the actual truth instead of the Orwellian nonsense