this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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Why do you say this? I'm not disagreeing (I honestly have 0 idea), but this is a pretty serious accusation that would probably cause me to rethink using Lemmy in the first place, if it's well-founded.
I have no reason to believe either of the lead devs are employed by the Chinese.
They're very outspoken communist sympathizers and run their own instance with their own rules. I don't find that suspicious at all. Should I assume conservative instances are run by the US deep state ayy LMAO
If they came out of nowhere with a pre-packaged, all finished closed-source product I'd be worried.
I mean... I agree with this, and I am worried, for this exact reason, even though Lemmy is open source. (1) The Chinese government has an extensive and successful history of inserting spyware into software that's in widespread use in the West (2) I can say based on some very preliminary tinkering with my own Lemmy instance that some of the security philosophy behind Lemmy is, at the very least, pretty questionable.
Tiktok was, and still is, extremely effective Chinese spyware. The CCP's tech operation is obviously capable. It's easily plausible to me that they could recognize the potential and power of federated networks as a new place for people to communicate and organize (outside China, and with some cleverness and courage, maybe inside it as well). If I were them I'd want to get out ahead of that. In fact I'd go so far as to say that it'd be surprising if they were unaware of ActivityPub and I'd bet that are keeping a close eye on developments and strategizing how to deal with it.
I mean... it seems unlikely to me that the Lemmy devs would be secretly employed by the Chinese government and also openly spouting pro-Communist propaganda. That seems just sort of bizarre and not a clever way to do it. But, the bottom line to me is if (1) the Chinese government is invested in spying on and controlling federated networks to the best extent they can (2) the main Lemmy devs are aggressively and openly pro-CCP, then that adds up to (3) time to rethink the idea of using Lemmy in the first place.
Are the Lemmy devs specifically pro-CCP? Not just Marxists, but specifically in favor of the details and actions of the modern Chinese government? I don't think Marx would like the CCP very much.
If they drive away everybody not sympathizing with a communist ideology, wouldn't that make it harder to surveil them? What's the intelligence value of watching a bunch of "loyal communist subjects", when all the commie hating capitalist scum go elsewhere? If anything, who would benefit from observing such a group if not the west? By that logic, is it reasonable to assume Lemmy is sponsored by a US intelligence agency we know have been intimately involved in mainstaying most of our current western social media platforms?
What would be the benefit of getting involved with an open platform where nothing is behind locked doors? Wouldn't it be much less of a risk to simply scrape lemmy instances? It's not like anybody is sending secret messages - Everything is open.
But it's an open system in the way that you're allowed to not use it as well. I didn't use Lemmy for a while out of ethical concerns rather than being afraid of the CCP.
You'll have to check out their instances, I haven't been in contact with them for nearly long enough.
Ayyoo... I found the secret cheat code for getting downvotes on Lemmy apparently 😃
A couple of days before the reddit blackout there were some posts pointing out examples of the main lemmy instance mods/devs banning people and censoring news/comments that tried to criticise the CCP, it was easy to confirm because there's the modlog, I don't know if it's still there or if they are still doing it, but there's a precedent.
Also they host and federate with lemmygrad.
Still there's no real worry about it, the rest of the instances (specially those created by the reddit blackout) are not controlled or manipulated by those devs (most if not all of them already block lemmygrad). Also I think anyone could make their own fork of the server software, not sure about how open is the software.
People have been bitching about the bullshit moderation on lemmy.ml and lemmygrad continuously for as long as lemmy federation has been active. Nothing new and suspicious about the call-outs.
Some of the new people have even picked up the torch and started calling out bad moderation on lemmy.ml, though I think the best long term solution is to block and move on.
Software is fully open and forkable.
Can you link me to the details? This is concerning to me, and I want to dig into it.
Sure thing, here you go
Hm, yeah, this is weird. Personally I would not make the leap from "some mod, probably one from lemmy.ml, deleted anti-Chinese postings with a sketchy explanation" to "Lemmy devs are employed by the CCP." But that said, deleting a political viewpoint on the central server, not because you don't allow political viewpoints, but because you don't allow this specific political viewpoint ("orientalism"), is definitely sketchy.
I would say the same if they were deleting Republican viewpoints, or anti-Republican viewpoints, from a discussion about US politics. One of the whole key points of this software in the first place, I think, is that people can say things without other people deciding if they're allowed to.
They own and federate with lemmygrad, also were the owners/mods of r/comunism and the complains seem to come from way before (from those that came before the reddit blackout), it's not sketchy or coincidential, it's deliberated.
I don't agree with your last statement, in the end the instance belongs to someone else and they placed rules that we agreed to follow the moment we joined.
Just like with everything else, being free to say whatever you want doesn't mean being free of consequences.
I'm not up to speed on the history, and I just tried to read a little bit about lemmygrad and mostly just got confused. Do they support Marxism-Leninism, and also the CCP and modern Russia? That seems very contradictory to me if it's true, but I'm still trying to make sense of it, so maybe there's something I'm missing.
Yes, absolutely. They can do whatever they want on their server, including censoring opposing political viewpoints. I can say I think that's a bad thing to do, because to me, using control of a platform to censor your opponents' political viewpoints is in fact very bad. I mean if they actually do support Russia and the CCP, then I guess it's not surprising if they're okay with censoring opposing views, but to me, it's wrong. They can do it -- people can do a lot of things -- but it doesn't mean that every thing a person can choose to do is right.
This isn't that though. The phrase is "prior restraint." If I go out and accuse someone of something, and it's not true and they sue me for libel and prove me wrong and I'm punished for it, that's consequences. If someone's not allowing the accusation to exist in the first place, that's not free speech with consequences, that's someone controlling and approving beforehand what I'm allowed and not allowed to say. I mean, they're not the government, so it's legal, and anyone can just take their message to some other platform which definitely mitigates the real harm involved. But it's still concerning... it's like, if you did that with that amount of power, what are you going to do if you wind up later on with more power?
Basically they are trying to keep the propaganda machine going, it won't make sense.
Just to be an ass: there is no absolute right or wrong, to them we are in the wrong and should submit to their ideas, to us they are wrong for trying to censor and limit discussion.
Oh right, then it was a phrasing problem as we agree on that.
I mean... just look around and there are many examples and multipying.
At least for this context, it's not so big because the users can ditch that instance and register at a different one, if they actually get extreme they'll just get defederated or if they defederate too many instances they will isolate themselves and the server software can be forked, so there's at least some safes in place.
Have you considered asking them, at lemmygrad, and get first hand answers instead of "please someone explain how those other people ou there think"? There's room for multiple layers of misunderstanding there.
Luckly lemmy.world federates with them, maybe someone with more knowledge and confidence in history than me will pop up. But feel free to ask questions there. We are friendly.
Considering the mods and admins have openly said (look up their modlog) they will ban users for any reason they see fit, and their psychotic requirements for users to be militantly polite, I wouldn't be surprised if they are.
Software is fine, but lemmygrad and most the folks at lemmy.ml are whats known as Wumao. Chinese Government paid missinformation online shit posters.
Some people are confused by that so I offer a simple test to see whether or not the user who is arguing with you from lemmygrad is innocent or is intentionally trying to hide genocide.