Ask Lemmy
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I haven't followed the drama closely, but from what I understand, the main devs of Lemmy and many of the older instance admins (including lemmy.ml) are tankies - basically pro-authoritarian, pro-violence, communists getting their name from support of the use of tanks against protesters. From what I can tell, lemmy.ml is pretty hands-off with their moderation, so there shouldn't be too much of a problem with this, but you can always move if you feel you need to. While individual instances do have a significant degree of freedom, there is still potential issues with the lead developers being supporters of authoritarian ideologies, if only because that mindset will impact their understanding of how moderation/administration should work in their software. That said, again, I haven't followed all this closely, so this might be outdated or incorrect information.
Really, this is more of a polling and discussion community rather than one for providing factual or diffinitive answers to questions. If you want better answers, you'd be best off posting somewhere like [email protected]
Lemmy.ml admins are not hands off with their moderation. They regularly delete any opinion they don’t like claiming it is hate speech. The modlog is chock full of it.
I find this argument unproductive, though.
It's open source. If you don't like the people making it, make your own. Otherwise, what's the alternative? Stick with the shitty corporate internet? I don't love Tankies, but I think anarcho-capitalists like Musk are definitely worse.
Let's grow Lemmy, and hopefully the politics of a few early developers won't matter in the long run.
I mean, I'm still here. I agree. Even with my concerns, I still think its in a better place than most of the competition. That doesn't mean it isn't worth acknowledging the current problems, and the risks it may carry going forward. It's better to be aware and vigilant so action can be taken early if needed.
That's fair. That's a nuanced take. Thanks.
You're right when it comes to the source code, and of course the protocol, but then it will be quite hard to fork both and then get a new community running on top of that.
I really wonder where this thing about calling us tankies started, and why people still spread this nonsense. I certainly don't support the use of tanks against protestor, and never have. However I think that the working class and average people should get more power, and rich people shouldn't rule over us. Not sure how that is considered authoritarian.
In fact this is the reason why I work on Lemmy: to give average people more power, and not let a couple billionaires like zuckerberg or musk control over our online lives.
Woah ! That's what tankies means huh.
-so how much power do they have over everything ?
They only have power over the instances they control. I haven't seen their ideology creep into development of the infrastructure at least.
But if they started can we stop them . Like i am thinking they can't take their toys home because it's foss , Am i wrong ?
If it crept in I would expect someone to fork the project. That’s the beauty of open source.
The beauty of lemmy is that it is not centralized. You do not need to log into any instance they have that type of control of. You can create your own instance of lemmy as well.
Yeah. Exactly. They can take it down but the software is out there and we have the legal right to use and improve it in perpetuity
It dates back to the Soviets sending in the tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution and later Prague Revolution, though I think most people using it today are intending to invoke Tienanmen Square imagery, which is still totally on-the-nose.
By definition, fediverse mods only have power over their own instances, so their power grows with their own userbase and shrinks any time another user/instance refuses to do business with them. Admins have vanishingly little power except where admins are ALSO mods of major instances.
And if you still want all the same content with even less lemmy touch, kbin (or kbin-based instances) are an option -- the one I use for that very reason. Interoperability HUGELY hardens a platform against toxic personalities. Plus ernest seems to be very fucking low-key and chill.
Not much. Are there a lot of communists on Lemmy? Yes. Is that because non communists were pushed out by the creators? No. I’m a syndicalist who blames the USSR for stabbing us in the back in Spain and giving the country to Franco. I also stand by Nestor Makhno’s stance against both red and white armies. Does that mean the creator of Lemmy dislikes me? Maybe. Am I afraid to express those positions on here? No.
We have a strong left bent in part because open source software is popular with queer and left wing nerds. Also because there’s other alternatives that the far right prefers
Instance admin only have power over their own instance (IE lemmy.ml mods cannot do anything on lemmy.world). Their power is fairly limitted as you can always move to a new instance if you're unhappy with them.
The Lemmy developers have more power, as they develop the tools everyone uses, so they act as a sort of "director", being able to reinforce behaviours they want by improving tools and UI in areas they care about and vice-versa. That said, ultimately, its an open source project so if they piss-off too many people, someone else will split off their own version of Lemmy and effectively replace them - Kbin being a current competitor, for example.