I always assumed it was like Lemmygrad and the ML stood for Marxist-Leninist but I don't leave my island and the visitors I see always have the worst takes
.ml is the country code for Mali. I assume it's fairly cheap to register a .ml domain. It's the instance hosted by the lemmy devs as a sort of reference implementation. While the devs are apparently some flavour of leftist the instance is general purpose and seems to have attracted lots of redditors during the API hissy fit as it's seen as the "default" lemmy instance.
That being said, the admins are more than just "some flavor of leftist," they're communists that have a lot in common with the Lemmygrad admins. Part of the reason we're still federated with lemmy.ml is that, despite the users being mostly lib, the admins have slowly influenced them to get better, and have some of the best moderation for a generalist instance.
Thanks for clarifying I should obviously be giving them more credit that I am. There is a place for an generalist instance with moderation that supports anti-capitalist discourse without going so far as to just ban all liberals.
if we banned all liberals, then what content would there be for the dunk tank?
back in the day .ml was not just cheap but free.
this is why both lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml use it, the marxism-leninism association is just a coincidemce.
Those free domains are kinda scammy. It's free for first year but then you have to pay.
They were free on freenom and you could keep renewing them for free every year. I think they all got revoked recently.
the visitors I see always have the worst takes
Idk, the programming instance gives them a run for their money.
It's just a domain name, historically cheap
However the admins of Lemmy.ml are the main devs of Lemmy as a whole and are also Marxist-Leninists. In fact @dessalines@lemmy.ml was one of the founders of lemmygrad.ml as well. They also have a Marxism study plan and some original essays on communism and related topics here: https://github.com/dessalines/essays/tree/master?tab=readme-ov-file
The other admin of lemmy.ml @nutomic@lemmy.ml is also a Marxist-Leninist, and has Castro as their pfp.
They let the libs run loose on .ml for the sake of the success of the software in general, but they have been known to delete particularly egregious anti-china or pro-ukraine disinformation much to the ire of .ml users.
the visitors I see always have the worst takes
how dare you say something so cruel and also mostly true tbh
