#LemmyWorld is in Cloudflare’s access-restricted walled garden. It’s an asshole instance that not only excludes some people from access but it hoards people who are in the included group, creating a perversely centralized power imbalance that rewards elitists. To non-assholes, Lemmy World communities are parasitic because they rob the fedi of the decentralized balance it needs. To participate in Lemmy World communities is to either be uninformed/out of touch OR to be an informed asshole.

That said, lemmy.ml is not a great place either. At least it’s not excluding people on the basis of IP address, but it’s still disproportionately large and has a history of political baggage by admins who are very trigger-happy with the censor button. You could have chosen a better instance, like Sopuli, but then your sidebar acknowledges the apparent past existence of a Sopuli AITA community.

NTA for giving refuge from a destructive instance. If it were reversed, and you were to create a community on Lemmy World that already exists in the free world, it would be a YTA case. Poaching users from a bad instance is a good semaritan move.

How to fix this

Promote the most digital rights respecting venue in the sidebar, which is [email protected]. Encourage cross-posts to and from discuss.tchncs.de. Make no mention of Lemmy World and other centralized nodes.

I would not normally post in lemmy.ml but thought this thread was worthy of an exception.