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?
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.
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.
It was automated, I got the email directly, validated it, and that was it.
Now I can browse, but cannot post. Maybe a trial period to avoid spammers.
Oh no... that's horrifying - is there no validation for that site?! Hopefully it's a post-process that examines someone's activities.
Yet another plug for PieFed: on piefed.social at least they refused to allow me to send a Message to someone when my account was still in its first week. As always that's not a sufficient measure to block a determined attempt at trolling, but it is something to help make it more difficult for someone to instantly spin up an alt and wreak havoc until they can be shut down.
So if that rate-limiting is truly what lemmy.cafe is doing, then that is awesome!:-) Though it is quite sus that it merely gives you such an error without explanation:-(. Or it could simply be due to the use of the beta version? The last post from someone with an account from lemmy.cafe is 17 days ago, when I am fairly certain that the version was not yet BE: 0.19.6-beta.13, so perhaps that latest bump-up process from 9 to 13 broke something?
Well, we are learning and that's fun:-).
Admin told me on Matrix it is indeed due to the beta
He does seem very responsive - so on the ball in that sense. Plus somewhat knowledgeable about software maintenance on a linux machine.
Though perhaps you don't want to refer people to a server that is always going to be experimental? Or at least put a warning about it, like there are positives (friendly and welcoming, one of the only ones that defederates from lemmy.ml), but also negatives too (experimental running a software beta)?
That's also the thing. I want the least worse instance. Not being able to post at the moment is a far bigger issue than being federated with lemmy.ml
Hopefully in the coming days this gets fixed.
Yes:-). Though if it is an isolated occurrence then it may not reflect the experience with the instance overall? Then again, if the software is being auto-updated, new problems seem like they would crop up constantly. I definitely doubt that "normies" are going to want to join an experimental server - they want safe and stable.
Which at this point, seems basically to be: Mbin (except I don't like that UI), PieFed (the UI is better though not perfect), or being constrained to use one of only a handful of Apps that provide that functionality. All of those involve gaining a greater degree of independence from the Lemmy sourcecode, since it will not provide this functionality by itself.