Yes.

Lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net definitely.

Lemmy.ml has some less-bonkers communities, but !worldnews@lemmy.ml generates some of the most complaints, and I'm willing to paint with a broad brush on this one. There's only one community that I can think of that I regret not using and doesn't presently have a non-lemmy.ml alternative, and that's !mechanicalkeyboards@lemmy.ml, and !ergomechkeyboards@lemmy.world has overlap. Also, aside from issues with instance policy, I think that lemmy.ml in particular is not a great instance for major communities, because it's the "dev" instance and Lemmy has had some serious periods of problems where stuff slipped through testing and led to major problems in new releases. Lemmy.world did not hit this, because the admins there are more-conservative about updating, held off until they were sure that new releases were solid. My own home instance at lemmy.today crashed into repeated serious problems with new releases, and the admin decided that in the future, he would also be more conservative about updates.

I also think that it's broader than disagreeing with someone. I'm not a furry or trans, for example, but I've no problem with pawb.social or lemmy.blahaj.zone and have never seen any complaints about moderation on those special-interest instances. However, there's an entire community, !MeanwhileOnGrad@sh.itjust.works, that highlights a lot of moderation and infighting stuff that often I'd call pretty unreasonable off in .ml land. Beehaw.org is pretty left-wing, but they're pretty mellow and don't have the same issues (though they themselves have defederated with a number of major lemmy instances, including, most notably, lemmy.world).

That being said, a number of major lemmy instances have defederated with lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net, and I chose my home instance of lemmy.today specifically because it did not defederate with instances. I want to personally make the call on instance content and on users on an instance. I've only ever blocked one user, and they were just relentlessly spamming images in communities, and I've never blocked an instance. I normally just view communities by subscribed, look at a "whitelist" of communities, not "all" plus a blacklist, though.

EDIT: Oh, and !kagi@lemmy.ml doesn't presently have an alternative, and I'd definitely participate in a non-.ml alternative.

Blocked instance... They can figure their stuff out without me because I don't want anything to do with them.

I have fomo so I don't block anything. I'll downvote and move on if I see something that I feel needs a downvote

Well, I'm here and I don't know what you all are talking about. And this is sincere, truly don't understand what's the issue, could you point me to some of these controversial situations/discussions/measures?

I have a feeling that, if you ask for any specific instance, you'll get people complaining and blocking that instance for their own reasons. So, I'd let my users decide whether they block or not a user or a whole instance. For example, I don't like some of the communities in lemmy.world and I complain about it because it just feels the same as being in reddit, but having access to a different point of view is very valuable to me, so I don't block them.

I also have to add that I use lemmy with the voting system completely disabled. I hate the voting system because it shapes people's opinions to fit in some specific communities. This is why I think blocking instances should only be used as a last resort against things like blatant spam, boycotting, CP, hate speech and the likes.

no, I'm subbed to many communities on .ml

Blocked the instance along with hexbear. So I think it would be good to drain the good communities from them if you can.

I've declined the opportunity to Mod a community on lemmy.ml, which is really not like me.

I have the instance blocked. Nice thing about Lemmy, you can vote with your attention. When toxic bubbles pop up, you can ignore them en masse. Any collateral blocking doesn’t bother me. [insert Nazi party meme]

Nope. I participate everywhere in the lemmy fediverse I can and never really had any issues with mods yet, which is surprising as I don't hesitate to get into political arguments generally. Ive blocked users, but never an instance. I take everything on a community by community and user by user basis.

Certainly. I have the entire instance blocked as their moderation, admins, and plenty of the users I've interacted with are unpleasant. It's no Hexbear or Grad, but it's enough that my experience is better without their communities.

Depends on the community and what has been posted. If it's something simple like AskLemmy and people aren't being super weird or preachy about communism or whatever, I don't find harm. I personally don't think I've had any bad experiences with them outside of the time I said I didn't trust a certain news outlet, which I cannot remember the name of.

I try to share links to other instance’s communities if there’s similar ones that aren’t drastically smaller. This is because it’s very easy to be banned on many ml communities as has been documented and posted many times

Nah, IDGAF about it one way or another. You run into more jerks there than average, but that's about it, so as long as block lists function, it's all good

No. I self-censor a bit there, and prefer other instances so I don't have to, though.

I refrain from participating in and even from looking at any community that generates anxiety and/or anger, or that encourage or don't oppose what I consider destructive or hostile behaviors. I consider time too precious to waste mine with the kind of persons who enjoy those things.

It is not related to any specific place, though. It's mostly a question of the persons participating and of the moderators.

100% I do not want anything to do with .ml

Not exclusively, but I do think twice before posting to a community hosted there, and actively seek out alternatives if possible. The only two I haven't found alternatives for are c/crows and c/freecad.