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  • NSA_Server_04@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1101·
    1 year ago

    Holy smokes, growing 25 times larger in 2 weeks. Keep up the good work! I just need a good mobile app for iOS, beta is full according to test flight lol.

      • FaceDeer@kbin.social
        17·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, this has been one of those black swan events. Nobody could have predicted Reddit would shoot themselves so vigorously in the feet like this.

        Well, nobody could have predicted when or how Reddit would shoot themselves so vigorously in the feet. I think a lot of folks have been expecting them to do it eventually.

        • scrux@lemmy.world
          8·
          1 year ago

          It was so sudden though. 1 month notice that the app I use was going to be gone. I don’t use Reddit outside of third party apps so here I am….

        • kestrel7@kbin.social
          7·
          1 year ago

          IMO Reddit had been sinking into enshittification since New Reddit came around, with the suggested posts and the ads.

          However. No one expected the process to lurch forward so quickly. I think the Reddit admins were trying to enshittify things slowly, but after looking at what happened with Twitter in the last year or so, they realized they could “tear the bandaid off” so to speak, and maintain (perhaps I should say attain?) profitability.

          It’s a bunch of horseshit. I was never comfortable with so much of the internet being concentrated into corporate-owned spaces and I’m glad to see that other people feel the same way.

          • FaceDeer@kbin.social
            5·
            1 year ago

            I also wouldn’t be surprised if their venture capital angels had finally told them “enough, we’re not going to keep throwing good money after bad indefinitely. We’re cutting you off, get profitable.”

            Speaking purely as an armchair CEO, I think they could have done it by trimming the fat and making a few minor adjustments (a reasonable API price, for example). They have an income stream, they just needed to learn to live within that income stream’s means. But modern capitalism’s credo is “grow, grow, grow! Always grow!” And so that’s not the direction they went, and ironically I think it’s ultimately going to kill them.

      • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
        39·
        1 year ago

        I’d say it’s an achievement that it survived the chaos and hasn’t yet buckled under the traffic or the chaos of managing the influx of users that probably don’t even bother reading rules.

        I mean, this place was absolutely not prepared for this, and it definitely has a ways to go yet, but it’s come out a week later in a much healthier place than I expected.

      • Azzu@feddit.deEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        To be precise, they were talking about monthly active users in the post, not total user accounts, which you are talking about. Might be that their stats only count people who actually voted/commented/posted something.

  • kinther@lemmy.worldEnglish
    971·
    1 year ago

    I’m pledging $5/month each to mastodon.world and the lemmy devs. I recently quit drinking, so this is a drop in the bucket compared to what I used to spend monthly on alcohol.

  • thedarkfly@feddit.nlEnglish
    772·
    1 year ago

    It seems to have become a habit that most good things about the internet is linked to the EU. I’m really grateful. That being said, I hope that Lemmy can become a collaborative project uniting a lot of devs rather than rely on two people.

    About the scandal; as long as their opinions do not influence the platform I don’t see them as relevant to Lemmy. If they are illegal, let justice do its work.

    • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.clubEnglish
      13·
      1 year ago

      I’m hoping that I need to worry about the morals of my admin more than the morals of the developers.

      That said, I would expect the Lemmy project is going to need to scale based on the increase in users. Two developers isn’t going to cut it.

        • tias@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          407·
          1 year ago

          They specifically address this in the article and say it isn’t true.

          On another topic, there are rumors circulating that we are fascists or supported genocide. These claims are completely false, and like most viral twitter threads, are coming from a single Mastodon user on a personal vendetta who didn’t provide any sources. Such slander doesn’t deserve any response and is best left ignored.

          • Enantiophobe@kbin.social
            276·
            1 year ago

            Here is Dessalines denying that any genocide is taking place: https://lemmy.ml/comment/471382

            They can say “we don’t support genocide” all day long, but denying that any genocide is taking place and actively trying to persuade others that no genocide is happening isn’t any better.

            I argue that it unintentionally supports a genocide since they’re using a platform to (inadvertently) hide the genocide from the public by convincing others that nothing of the sort is happening.

            • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
              4·
              1 year ago

              I for one do definitely believe that there is a genocide happening and I’m appalled that we can’t do more about it. But people trust in different sources of information. Not believing that a genocide is happening is not the same as actually endorsing genocide.

            • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.worldEnglish
              115·
              1 year ago

              I saw someone else did a bit of research deeper down in the thread. It seems it’s questionable but they at least “only” control like two federated instances, lemmy.world not being one of them. Of course, still not good to have someone like that in the dev team :/

              • Ramen@lemmy.worldEnglish
                112·
                1 year ago

                i mean, there’s only two people. they ARE the dev team for now.

                • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  72·
                  1 year ago

                  yeah. not good at all, I’m not comfortable with it. I don’t understand people who have access to information on the internet and deny anything obvious, no matter whether it’s flat earthers, genocide deniers or ufo believers. how can a brain be this disfunctional?

          • spirit@lemmy.worldEnglish
            938·
            1 year ago

            Update 3: @dessalines@lemmy.ml did stated they (singular) disagree that a genocide is taking place.

            Update 2: My conclusion

            Update: So I dug around a little deeper, and found that

            On another topic, there are rumors circulating that we are fascists or supported genocide. These claims are completely false, and like most viral twitter threads, are coming from a single Mastodon user on a personal vendetta who didn’t provide any sources. Such slander doesn’t deserve any response and is best left ignored.

            Update: More info about @dessalines@lemmy.ml

            • MrFlamey@lemmy.worldEnglish
              353·
              1 year ago

              It’s definitely good to have people like you investigating the backgrounds of key developers, as there might be ulterior motives behind them developing open platforms that compete with established Western companies outside of loving the free web and open source. Thank you!

              However, I wonder how many opinions we disagree with would be unearthed by doing this kind of research on every core developer of Chrome, Windows, MacOS, Google or whatever. I think you would find a lot if you get people to air their honest opinions. In today’s climate, if these people were open about certain opinions they might hold (not saying they do, but statistically it’s likely some do) they would just be fired, so it’s easy for large corporations to shake damage to their reputation from having certain staff members. For OSS it is a bit harder, since although developers can be pushed out, and software can be forked, it’s all open and it’s harder to understate the contribution to the source code etc. that such a person could have contributed.

              It does kind of suck when you hear that developers working on software you like have wildly different worldviews to your own, but sometimes you have to put things in perspective. Having said that, if this guy is the only developer I might feel less than happy about using Lemmy instead of Reddit.

              • Otakeb@lemmy.worldEnglish
                141·
                1 year ago

                Personally, I’d rather my open source, decentralized software be developed by a nearly fanatical communist than a slimy entrepreneur/capitalist. Either could try to pull the rug out from under you, but at least one is internally consistent until then…

                • xzite@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  117·
                  1 year ago

                  but at least one is internally consistent until then…

                  Having to do the mental gymnastics required to make China not commit genocide does not suggest internal consistency…

                • WolfBearSheep67@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  77·
                  1 year ago

                  I’d rather have open source, decentralized software be developed by none of those groups/slimy individual. Doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive.

            • iturnedintoanewt@lemmy.worldEnglish
              213·
              1 year ago

              Wow…thanks. I had no idea this was ongoing. As someone living in Asia and seeing these issues from up close, these ring close to home. I’ll be paying attention for any of these…moderations.

                • Nadya@kbin.social
                  61·
                  1 year ago

                  Since you didn’t notice that in that post /u/parentis_shotgun claims to have made Jerboa and links to it - which links to github.com/dessalines/jerboa - you’re not very observant so I’ll provide you with some alternative posts as evidence.

                  Step 1) Visit /u/parentis_shotgun’s profile

                  Step 2) Old PgDn to load some posts. Find the one that says nothing but “Yes” on it. This post specifically.

                  Step 3) Click Context to see which question it is answering

                  Step 4) Read the question: “Wait a second, are you the same dessalines that narrated my The State and Revolution by Lenin and Fascism: What it is and how to fight it by Trotsky?”

                  Step 5) See /u/parentis_shotgun’s response: “Yes.”

                  “Misinformation”.

                  What exactly do you get out of defending Tankies?

                  E:

                  Alternative route #1: Find parentis_shotgun’s post about creating thumb-key - a privacy-conscious Android keyboard made for your thumbs. Notice it links to a Github profile for dessalines.

                  Alternative route #2: Find this post where they keep their “communist 101s” on dessalines.github.io/essays/

                • Nadya@kbin.social
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  You even get a second reply. Because…

                  Even if there wasn’t enough evidence that dessalines is parentis_shotgun - it doesn’t matter! dessalines does not deny being a Tankie and makes no efforts to hide their political thoughts. You can go to lemmy.ml and read through dessalines posts. Find the one where they say “I’m not exactly hiding my politics” and link to their essays on Github. Or you can just go to the essays from their Github profile after confirming that the dessalines that is a Lemmy dev is the same dessalines that is admin on Lemmy.ml and find the link to their essays that way.

                  There you can see they attempt to answer many questions. Some generic to Communism - but many more defending Tankie talking points such as:

                  Did the Soviet Union manufacture a famine in Ukraine? What about the Holodomor?

                  Where they link to articles that deny the genocide.

                  And also defend Stalin by linking to revisionist propaganda:

                  What about Stalin? Didn’t he kill millions?

                  And deny that the Cheka secret police murdered millions of people as ordered by The State:

                  Did the Soviet Union repress and kill millions of people?

                  They deny the Tiananmen Square massacre - calling it a propaganda hoax:

                  What about the Tiananmen square massacre?

                  Their defense of China’s 1-child policy? “60,000,000 girls weren’t killed from infanticide. Only 35,000,000 were.” and they provide no other explanation for the severe gender imbalance that China has:

                  Did China really kill / commit infanticide on millions of girls during the 1-child policy?

                  There isn’t any need to prove that dessalines is parentis_shotgun in order to claim that dessalines is a Tankie. dessalines is very openly a Tankie. One only needs to read the political thoughts that they openly share.

                • Nadya@kbin.social
                  42·
                  1 year ago

                  Since you didn’t notice that in that post /u/parentis_shotgun claims to have made Jerboa and links to it - which links to github.com/dessalines/jerboa - you’re not very observant so I’ll provide you with some alternative posts as evidence.

                  Step 1) Visit /u/parentis_shotgun’s profile

                  Step 2) Old PgDn to load some posts. Find the one that says nothing but “Yes” on it. This post specifically.

                  Step 3) Click Context to see which question it is answering

                  Step 4) Read the question: “Wait a second, are you the same dessalines that narrated my The State and Revolution by Lenin and Fascism: What it is and how to fight it by Trotsky?”

                  Step 5) See /u/parentis_shotgun’s response: “Yes.”

                  “Misinformation”.

                  Ask yourself: What exactly do you get out of defending Tankies?

                  Alternative route #1: Find parentis_shotgun’s post about creating thumb-key - a privacy-conscious Android keyboard made for your thumbs. Notice it links to a Github profile for dessalines.

                  Alternative route #2: Find this post where they keep their “communist 101s” on dessalines.github.io/essays/

            • epicspongee [they/them or he/him]English
              122·
              1 year ago

              This is so weird to me lol, maybe I’m just odd but it’s so weird seeing McCarthyism still rearing it’s ugly head after what… 5 decades? I am by no means an ML (can’t stand them as an anarchist) but this is wildly blowing out of proportion what @dessalines@lemmy.ml has said and done.

              I mean like why link a ‘Socialist FAQ’ that’s literally just a ton of links to education on socialism and the different schools of thought it has? Not all communists are tankies (not even most) lol. Just generally shows a lack of familiarity with actual leftists / anticapitalists.

              • bob@lemmy.havocperil.ukEnglish
                62·
                1 year ago

                I think it’s more like 7 decades and I thought the same. Reds-under-the-bed is still a thing!

                • epicspongee [they/them or he/him]English
                  54·
                  1 year ago

                  Please stop spamming this in the thread, it’s annoying af.

                  Sometimes people just like spreading drama. Other times they just have weird or different beliefs. Accusing someone of having ulterior motives isn’t useful or helpful unless you can demonstrate that this person isn’t just having an internet debate that they feel strongly about.

                • Nadya@kbin.social
                  31·
                  1 year ago

                  Seeing as you’re spamming this reply - I’ll go ahead and spam my response to it.

                  Since you didn’t notice that in that post /u/parentis_shotgun claims to have made Jerboa and links to it - which links to github.com/dessalines/jerboa - you’re not very observant so I’ll provide you with some alternative posts as evidence.

                  Step 1) Visit /u/parentis_shotgun’s profile

                  Step 2) Old PgDn to load some posts. Find the one that says nothing but “Yes” on it. This post specifically.

                  Step 3) Click Context to see which question it is answering

                  Step 4) Read the question: “Wait a second, are you the same dessalines that narrated my The State and Revolution by Lenin and Fascism: What it is and how to fight it by Trotsky?”

                  Step 5) See /u/parentis_shotgun’s response: “Yes.”

                  “Misinformation”.

                  Ask yourself: What exactly do you get out of defending Tankies?

                  Alternative route #1: Find parentis_shotgun’s post about creating thumb-key - a privacy-conscious Android keyboard made for your thumbs. Notice it links to a Github profile for dessalines.

                  Alternative route #2: Find this post where they keep their “communist 101s” on dessalines.github.io/essays/

              • DudePluto@lemmy.worldEnglish
                13·
                1 year ago

                I mean regardless of the devs’ opinions they are forwarding the democratization of information by working on this project

                • A_A@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  31·
                  1 year ago

                  I agree with you yet I was not completely clear : I meant to say that lemmygrad.ml are fighting USA’s stance

                • DreamerOfImprobableDreams@kbin.social
                  0·
                  1 year ago

                  Yeah, honestly, these NED guys seem really cool based on the wikipedia article. It’s nice to find out my tax dollars are actually supporting something positive every now and again :)

                • Nadya@kbin.social
                  31·
                  1 year ago

                  Seeing as you’re spamming this reply - I’ll go ahead and spam my response to it.

                  Since you didn’t notice that in that post /u/parentis_shotgun claims to have made Jerboa and links to it - which links to github.com/dessalines/jerboa - you’re not very observant so I’ll provide you with some alternative posts as evidence.

                  Step 1) Visit /u/parentis_shotgun’s profile

                  Step 2) Old PgDn to load some posts. Find the one that says nothing but “Yes” on it. This post specifically.

                  Step 3) Click Context to see which question it is answering

                  Step 4) Read the question: “Wait a second, are you the same dessalines that narrated my The State and Revolution by Lenin and Fascism: What it is and how to fight it by Trotsky?”

                  Step 5) See /u/parentis_shotgun’s response: “Yes.”

                  “Misinformation”.

                  Ask yourself: What exactly do you get out of defending Tankies?

                  Alternative route #1: Find parentis_shotgun’s post about creating thumb-key - a privacy-conscious Android keyboard made for your thumbs. Notice it links to a Github profile for dessalines.

                  Alternative route #2: Find this post where they keep their “communist 101s” on dessalines.github.io/essays/

            • kestrel7@kbin.social
              63·
              1 year ago

              I believe those people saying lemmy is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy were being sarcastic. Thanks for rounding this up though, I appreciate people who do the due diligence.

                • Nadya@kbin.social
                  41·
                  1 year ago

                  Seeing as you’re spamming this reply - I’ll go ahead and spam my response to it.

                  Since you didn’t notice that in that post /u/parentis_shotgun claims to have made Jerboa and links to it - which links to github.com/dessalines/jerboa - you’re not very observant so I’ll provide you with some alternative posts as evidence.

                  Step 1) Visit /u/parentis_shotgun’s profile

                  Step 2) Old PgDn to load some posts. Find the one that says nothing but “Yes” on it. This post specifically.

                  Step 3) Click Context to see which question it is answering

                  Step 4) Read the question: “Wait a second, are you the same dessalines that narrated my The State and Revolution by Lenin and Fascism: What it is and how to fight it by Trotsky?”

                  Step 5) See /u/parentis_shotgun’s response: “Yes.”

                  “Misinformation”.

                  Ask yourself: What exactly do you get out of defending Tankies?

                  Alternative route #1: Find parentis_shotgun’s post about creating thumb-key - a privacy-conscious Android keyboard made for your thumbs. Notice it links to a Github profile for dessalines.

                  Alternative route #2: Find this post where they keep their “communist 101s” on dessalines.github.io/essays/

              • A_A@lemmy.worldEnglish
                15·
                1 year ago

                You mean to say : except for that excellent comment you replied to ?

                • Snowpix@yiffit.netEnglish
                  64·
                  1 year ago

                  I’m referring to the comments section on the post he linked to, where half the comments are tankies trying to defend the actions of the admins who were banning users and calling them racist for criticizing the CCP/Kremlin.

                • Snowpix@yiffit.netEnglish
                  2·
                  1 year ago

                  I never said anything about that person, your copy/paste comment is not relevant to what I said. I don’t hate the devs, I said the comments section of the post that was linked to is a dumpster fire of tankies and genocide apologists.

                • Nadya@kbin.social
                  21·
                  1 year ago

                  Seeing as you’re spamming this reply - I’ll go ahead and spam my response to it.

                  Since you didn’t notice that in that post /u/parentis_shotgun claims to have made Jerboa and links to it - which links to github.com/dessalines/jerboa - you’re not very observant so I’ll provide you with some alternative posts as evidence.

                  Step 1) Visit /u/parentis_shotgun’s profile

                  Step 2) Old PgDn to load some posts. Find the one that says nothing but “Yes” on it. This post specifically.

                  Step 3) Click Context to see which question it is answering

                  Step 4) Read the question: “Wait a second, are you the same dessalines that narrated my The State and Revolution by Lenin and Fascism: What it is and how to fight it by Trotsky?”

                  Step 5) See /u/parentis_shotgun’s response: “Yes.”

                  “Misinformation”.

                  Ask yourself: What exactly do you get out of defending Tankies?

                  Alternative route #1: Find parentis_shotgun’s post about creating thumb-key - a privacy-conscious Android keyboard made for your thumbs. Notice it links to a Github profile for dessalines.

                  Alternative route #2: Find this post where they keep their “communist 101s” on dessalines.github.io/essays/

            • rainfern@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1450·
              1 year ago

              You leave reddit because the ceo introduces shitty pricing but you don’t mind the main devs being literal fascists?

              • Rick@lemmy.worldEnglish
                44·
                1 year ago

                The project is open source and anyone can create instances, that’s why its irrelevant.

                • rainfern@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  413·
                  1 year ago

                  The way it works in practice is that the largest instances are where most people go. What is stopping those devs from imposing their views on the community, e.g. by censoring?

              • orcrist@lemm.eeEnglish
                22·
                1 year ago

                Reddit is in hot water because of its actions as they affect various user groups, not because the CEO has a political view that’s undesirable.

                Of course political protests could be done, but that’s not what happened here, and you know this.

              • Defaced@lemmy.worldEnglish
                181·
                1 year ago

                The beauty of federated networks is you can avoid the platforms with these kinds of people altogether. I typically avoid lemmy.ml altogether unless I don’t have a choice and even then it’s pretty easily to find alternatives.

              • thedarkfly@feddit.nlEnglish
                17·
                1 year ago

                Reddit’s admins are taking decisions based on their worldviews and objectives that affect the content of Reddit, i.e. what we can talk about, what we can do, what tools we can use, what information we can access…

                As of my current knowledge, the worldviews of Lemmy’s devs (that I certainly don’t share) don’t affect content on instances that they do not administrate or moderate. Even if they were building and shaping instances around hatespeech (which I don’t know they do), I’d simply block them and let the police and justice act on the potential crimes or offence they may do.

              • epicspongee [they/them or he/him]English
                62·
                1 year ago

                Girl calm down, please just take a step back. Maybe read up on communism or communists / the far left before blaring off takes like this. I’m not an ML and not a fan of them as an anarchist, but this is suchhhhh an overreaction to what they actually said.

                Additionally if you don’t like the dev team, then fork it. Or volunteer to be on the core team. Submit some PRs. Start your own alternative. One of the cool things about having anticapitalists develop software is that it is open and you can do that. It actively does the opposite of what capitalism wants us to do. I think just that fact alone should make you pause and maybe reassess the language you’re using (Hitler and other fascists rose to power actively aided and funded by capitalists because it helped retain their power).

  • theory@feddit.ukEnglish
    7313·
    1 year ago

    Hopefully this defuses the “lemmy is a tankie network” rumour once and for all

      • theory@feddit.ukEnglish
        261·
        1 year ago

        I think that second part is the part that the vocal dissidents dont quite realise, or won’t

        • deweydecibel@lemmy.worldEnglish
          131·
          1 year ago

          I can’t blame them for that. One of the biggest issues getting Lemmy to grow is going to be how difficult it is for the average person to grasp how it works.

    • User Deleted@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      513·
      1 year ago

      I couldn’t care less if they are actually tankies, just keep developing the code and don’t try to inject malware (well it’s open source they can’t lol), believe whatever you wanna believe, I don’t care.

      • mycus@kbin.social
        1530·
        1 year ago

        but they can write malware and commit it to their repos.

        the question is how long will it take for someone to recognize it. ie.: how well obfuscated is it?

        not saying they gonna do it, just that doesn’t trust any code just bc they are open source

        • FaceDeer@kbin.social
          141·
          1 year ago

          They’re not geniuses, they won’t be able to hide malware code for long. And the moment it’s recognized they are finished as far as ever being coders on any related project in the future, so I don’t see how they could accomplish much by doing that.

          • mycus@kbin.social
            51·
            1 year ago

            I’m just saying someone new in software development reading the comment I replied may misinterpret part of what they are saying as “all open source software is trustable” and reinforce that notion.

            I’m not saying that lemmy devs have a higher chance of doing it bc they are tankies or whatever, no. They have no history of doing that and the project is so big and important that they really wouldn’t risk it; it is indeed a bit silly to defend my point in this specific thread, now that I think about it.

            also, like @minimar said, it’s not how it works. most kind of obfuscation in open source code actually makes it easier to identify it as harmful. they are also found in libraries 99% of the time, not at the open source software repo itself. also, rust has no history of any harmful library.

            anyway, sorry if I gave the wrong idea haha. just looking out for people who might have that notion, like I had.

    • Nadya@kbin.social
      5929·
      1 year ago

      Well of course they aren’t genocide deniers. You can’t deny something that never happened. Also note that they did not deny being Tankies - they denied being Fascists. Tankies don’t recognize themselves as Fascists and will vehemently deny that they are. Here’s another phrase for Tankie for the uninformed: Red Fascist

      Here is one of the Lemmy devs denying that the Uyghur genocide in China is happening:

      https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/xq49ct/deleted_by_user/iq954mu/

      The Uyghur genocide is as real as white genocide. - Source

      Here they are again denying it:

      https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/xq49ct/deleted_by_user/iq951cv/

      The holocaust was a genocide that actually happened, with all the evidence that goes along with it. There is no Uyghur genocide.

      Do you believe in anything as soon as the word “genocide” gets attached to it? What about “white genocide”? Are you a white genocide denier? - Source

      And just so nobody can deny that parentis_shotgun is a Lemmy dev: - “I’m one of the devs of Lemmy”

      Direct links to the posts will not work but still exist on the user’s profile page: https://old.reddit.com/user/parentis_shotgun/ - hold PgDn until comments stop loading then Control+F. In fact feel free to peruse their history in general - it’s quite interesting.

      One of my favorite posts is their defense of the government of North Korea in /r/AskTankies: https://old.reddit.com/r/asktankies/comments/tb1836/okay_but_dprk_seriously/i04d1wu/

      Now ask yourself why would someone who is not a Red Fascist Tankie piece of shit be answering questions on behalf of Tankies in /r/AskTankies while defending a totalitarian regime? Is it… perhaps because they’re in support of such a regime because they are in fact a Tankie piece of shit?

      They also lied about the “single user on Mastadon not providing sources”. They did provide sources. The source were things said straight out of the dev’s mouth.

      Let’s play a game of spot the difference between fascists (nazis) and fascists (tankies).

      Nazis: Fascists who are directly responsible for the deaths of an estimated 12,000,000 people. Deny a genocide ever took place despite evidence to the contrary (Holocaust). Antisemites who forced minority ethnic groups to work in forced concentration and labor camps and starved them to death. These concentration camps began in 1933 and ended in 1945 lasting for a period of 12~ years. Had a secret police known as the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) whose job it was largely to suppress political opposition by any means necessary including execution of dissenters and spy on behalf of the Nazi party. Torture and execution were common - including that of women and children.

      Tankies: Fascists who are directly responsible for the deaths an estimated 26,000,000 people. Deny multiple different genocides ever took place despite evidence to the contrary (Holodomor being the most well known). Antisemites who forced minority ethnic groups to work in forced concentration and labor camps and starved them to death. This Gulag network of death prisons began in 1919 and only ended after Stalin’s death in 1953 lasting for a period of 34~ years. Had a secret police known as the Чека (Cheka) whose job it was to suppress political opposition by any means necessary including execution of dissenters and spy on behalf of the State. Torture and execution were common - including that of women and children.

      • Ashyr@kbin.social
        810·
        1 year ago

        Great post and I really appreciate bringing the sources to the discussion.

        I know some people don’t have an issue with the developer’s views, so long as it doesn’t affect their software, but I’m not comfortable using Lemmy. I wouldn’t be comfortable using a Nazi developer’s software either.

        • Omega@sh.itjust.works
          111·
          1 year ago

          You would be surprised how many genuinely amazing pieces of software you use / rely on on a daily basis the developers of which you don’t politically align with.

          I agree that separating the artist from their art is not (always) easy, or even possible. However, in the case of Lemmy you can actually separate yourself from the influence of the creators (for example by defedarating from any instance they have control over), in the worst case scenario, where even the software itself would include these kind of biases, parts of the community could literally fork the codebase and remove all the problematic parts.

          • Ashyr@kbin.social
            2·
            1 year ago

            That’s a fair point and something I’ll need to keep in mind. There are plenty of game developers I’ve walked away from over the years because of their views and behaviors. While I’m sure there are plenty who’ve never said the quiet part out loud, I’ve divorced myself from those who do.

            I’m no programmer and I understand that open source is a significant shield against weighted algorithms and behind-the-scenes shenanigans, but I also know where Lemmy’s roots lie, not just the developers, but the initial communities they created.

            To me, kbin already feels like a fork I’m happy with. I’m not trying you be dogmatic, but for now, this is where I’m comfortable.

    • SpeedyCat2014@lemmy.worldEnglish
      336·
      1 year ago

      I’m old and out of the loop but that astroturfing was so blatantly obvious it pinged my BS meter immediately.

      • deweydecibel@lemmy.worldEnglish
        472·
        1 year ago

        What astroturfing? The tanky astroturfing or astroturfing about the place being tanky?

        Because before the influx, Lemmy.ml was absolutely tanky. It’s just been completely drowned out by the flood, so it barely matters anymore.

        Like, this entire platform has arguably gone through one of the most dramatic changes in a week in the history of the internet. What was here before is almost irrelevant now. What the devs believe is also irrelevant because it’s open source and decentralized. Literally the whole point of this is to not be beholden to them.

        • delnac@lemmy.oneEnglish
          132·
          1 year ago

          Can confirm lemmy.ml had a pretty unsavory look to it before the migration. It’s the reason I elected not to sign up there out of precaution because with what I was seeing, I worried about it getting defederated stat.

          • 🇺🇦 seirim @lemmy.proEnglish
            11·
            1 year ago

            Absolutely, when I first arrived… seems long ago but wasn’t! The “tankie” talk was thick and I was hearing all kinds of wacky perspectives I’d never heard before and presented pretty heatedly. I do think they’ve been drowned out now with the influx.

    • Ashyr@kbin.social
      3610·
      1 year ago

      A tankie is not a fascist. He denied being a genocidal fascist.

      I’ve seen a lot of pro-China propaganda coming from Lemmy and I suspect tankie is still on the table.

      • Nadya@kbin.social
        3116·
        1 year ago

        Another phrase for Tankie ideology is Red Fascism.

        I’d specifically like to highlight that someone who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp - so has firsthand experience with a fascist regime - described the Soviets as the following, emphasis mine:

        Kurt Schumacher, who was imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, but survived WWII to become the first post-war SPD opposition leader in West Germany, described pro-Soviet communists as “red-painted fascists” or “red-lacquered Nazis”

        So in what ways exactly is a tankie not a fascist?

        a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

        that exalts nation

        “We did not hesitate to shoot thousands of people, and we shall not hesitate, and we shall save the country.” - Vladimir Lenin

        often race

        https://www.britannica.com/event/Holodomor

        that stands for a centralized autocratic government

        The State

        headed by a dictatorial leader

        Lenin;Stalin

        severe economic and social regimentation

        Five year plan

        forcible suppression of opposition

        Cheka secret police.

        If Tankies are not fascists - then neither were Nazi’s.

        • Ashyr@kbin.social
          167·
          1 year ago

          Man, I really appreciate this post and I think tankies are absolutely authoritarian turd burglars. Calling them red fascists is fine and maybe that’s how history will know them.

          I know there’s a lot of diverse thought on what makes a fascist and many definitions try to distinguish it from run of the mill genocidal authoritarianism.

          That’s why I chose to distinguish tankies and fascists. I broadly think they have different goals, beliefs and methodologies, though the damage they’ve wrought is remarkably similar. At the end of the day, if we look at results, it’s probably just as fair to lump them in together.

          • dannoffs@lemmy.sdf.org
            152·
            1 year ago

            I don’t like lumping them together because in my experience current tankies tend to be people who want good things, but are wrong about large chunks of history and current events. Fascists just want power and to enforce oppression so go with whatever story or lie they think will get them there as truth is immaterial to them.

            • blightbow@kbin.social
              78·
              1 year ago

              tankies tend to be people who want good things,

              That also describes civilians living in Germany during Hitler’s reign. They were swept along with the populist zeal until they found their children passively picking up racial slurs and their neighbors competing to report on each other. This is why it’s important to focus not just on the end result of Nazi fascism (the Holocaust), but the path that led there and the parallels that can be found in modern day societies. (both western and eastern)

          • Nadya@kbin.social
            187·
            1 year ago

            Tankies isn’t a cute catch-all term for Communists who do have various goals, beliefs, and methodologies of how to transition to, create, and maintain a Communist state. They’re Stalinists and/or Maoists who deny well-documented genocides and claim that everything against their ideology is a Western conspiracy theory and the only correct sources of information come from Russia and/or China. In a similar way that Neo-Nazi’s claim everything is a Jewish conspiracy theory and the only correct sources of information come from their biased as all hell Alt-Right/Neo-Nazi sources like Stormfront.

            This is the exact type of ignorance that I’m talking about when I say people defend Tankies because they were taught the Holocaust in school but never taught about the Holodomor.

            E: “The US government is evil so the people the US says are the bad guys must actually be the good guys and are undoubtedly correct about everything. There is no such thing as CCP or Soviet propaganda - that’s propaganda from the CIA. Read this article from the CCP explaining it all.”

        • LizardKing15@lemmy.world
          610·
          1 year ago

          Communism is on the left, Fascism or on the right. Purely from an academic perspective talking about Red Fascists is like debating virginity of a prostitute lol

          • blightbow@kbin.social
            10·
            1 year ago

            If we’re going to get academic about it, the political compass is an imprecise tool and it’s a fool’s errand to take an absolutist approach to assigning political ideologies on the spectrum. :P Just because an ideology is generally in the authoritarian-socialist quadrant doesn’t mean it can’t crib notes from a philosophy in a different quadrant. The authoritarian axis is more anchoring here than socialist/conservative.

          • Nadya@kbin.social
            84·
            1 year ago

            I mean if you want to get academic about it - I suggest you talk to some people in academia. Nearly all of those who say “Fascism is different.” self-describe themselves as Marxists or are Stalinist apologists - such as Michael Parenti or Sheila Fitzpatrick. Gee, I wonder why Marxists would want to distance Communism (and more specifically - Stalinism) from being compared with other fascists regimes like the Nazis. Maybe they don’t like how it makes them look bad?

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nazism_and_Stalinism

            No really - read the above link and anyone who is cited as saying Stalinism isn’t fascism check their wiki profile. Without a doubt they’re a self-described Marxist. They’re quite literally the only people who deny that Stalinism was a form of fascism and play apologists for all the atrocities that took place.

            A disturbing amount of Communists see attacks on Stalinism as an attack on Communism and so make all sorts of mental gymnastics to defend Stalinism.

            Edit:

            I much prefer the “That wasn’t real Communism!” brand of Communists over the “That was real Communism and here’s why the mass murder they did was justified or never happened (despite being well-documented by the Stalinists/Maoists themselves)!” brand of Communists.

    • Edgerunner Alexis@dataterm.digitalEnglish
      249·
      1 year ago

      Just because they said they weren’t? They just dismissed the claim without linking to any real counter evidence by claiming it’s just a random Mastodon user or whatever

      • Edgerunner Alexis@dataterm.digitalEnglish
        2615·
        1 year ago

        Here are some mod logs from lemmy.ml (which is an instance run by the Lemmy devs) from a few years ago: https://raddle.me/f/TankiesGonnaTank/89852/the-lemmy-ml-admin-is-banning-anyone-that-mentions-stalin-or

        Here’s one of the Lemmy devs (you can tell it’s them from their profile activity) denying genocide: https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/xq49ct/deleted_by_user/iq954mu/

        Insisting that fascists are good, actually not fascists at all, as long as their nationalism makes them oppose the US (because the enemy of my enemy is a totally good guy!): https://old.reddit.com/r/DebateCommunism/comments/vgg2x3/thoughts_on_slavoj_zizek/id2cxb8/

        There’s more here: https://raddle.me/f/lobby/159606/-/comment/294792

          • blightbow@kbin.social
            143·
            1 year ago

            But are you suggesting this somehow impacts Lemmy?

            Mostly irrelevant in this context, because the topic at hand is the developer denying that they condone these practices and insisting that it is a manufactured narrative. You are replying to a rebuttal of this.

            Your opinion is a completely fair one to have, but we don’t need to shift the conversation back to it every time someone provides a rebuttal to “the dev never actually said that” with receipts.

          • Edgerunner Alexis@dataterm.digitalEnglish
            72·
            1 year ago

            Yeah I know, I don’t think them being tankies is really a problem for Lemmy as a whole. I was just annoyed that all they had to say is “no we aren’t tankies” and people just took them at their word lol

            • blightbow@kbin.social
              84·
              1 year ago

              all they had to say is “no we aren’t tankies” and people just took them at their word lol

              IMO it’s a little more cynical than that, they rephrased the narrative into one that they could cleanly reject and be quoted on. As others have pointed out, it is almost a certainty that 1) they do not consider themselves or their ideology to be fascist, and 2) they aren’t supporting genocide if they do not acknowledge that the peoples in question are actually subject to genocide.

              Edit: …Which you’ve already affirmed in one of your previous comments, my bad.

          • Widget@kbin.social
            68·
            1 year ago

            I guess it kinda matters in that people like me certainly won’t be giving any code contributions, which for an open source project can be critical to its long-term health.

            But devs also tolerate and use tons of code and the licenses that Richard Stallman wrote, even if he’s a huge creepball that a bunch of other free software orgs had to back away from.

            So we’ll see. I also wouldn’t rule out a fork of it just so that it’s officially ran by a less controversial group.

              • boredtortoise@lemmy.worldEnglish
                12·
                1 year ago

                The users, communities and posts of those instances are enabled and pushed to innocent users as well and not just contained on their own “island”.

                In their own blogs they actually offer the solution to be defederation of harmful instances but nothing is currently happening with the situation.

    • HTTP_404_NotFound@lemmyonline.comOPEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Perhaps, it is possible some communities do follow… uh, whatever that is. (I am oblivious to what a tankie is).

      But, like reddit, there will ALWAYS be echo-chambers, or less desirable places/communities.

      Remember, the_donald? Despite- that sub basically dominating the top feeds all over reddit, reddit never got ousted over it.

      I feel, lemmy will be the same way. There will be… areas you likely want to avoid. As any platform.

      I am here for the platform itself, and the communities on it.

  • Zebov@lemmy.worldEnglish
    59·
    1 year ago

    I’ve never subscribed to any of these things, due to multiple reasons like being broke, because I knew I’d never remember to cancel it if I quit using the service, hating subscriptions, realizing most of these collapse almost as fast as they skyrocket, among many other reasons. I know I’m a pessimist.

    But it’s time to put my money where my mouth is, even if I just want a Reddit alternative. I’m old and grumpy enough to be sick of companies using people the way they do, and since I can’t code, I can pay.

    If you’ve read this far, I implore you to really sit down and think about what this project means to you, what it could mean to you, and what it’s worth to you. Everyone does the whole coffee analogy - give up coffee for a day and you can support X. But as a Reddit refugee, I think that if I was willing to give Reddit a couple bucks a month to an app for their API access, why on earth wouldn’t I do the same here (even before all of Reddit’s recent BS)?

    You can either pay or be the product being sold.

  • Teflo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    41·
    1 year ago

    This was a very well written statement and gives me a lot of hope for the future of the platform. I’ll be more than happy to invest my time and effort into it.

  • solstice@lemmy.worldEnglish
    36·
    1 year ago

    I just want to say I’m fairly vocal about bugs/issues/confusing things. But I totally understand lemmy wasn’t prepared for tens of thousands of new users overnight, it was just so sudden and unexpected. So even if me and other users sound grumpy just know that at least this one is aware it’s going to be a bumpy ride for a while as the internet adjusts to this massive upheaval.

    • HTTP_404_NotFound@lemmyonline.comOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Hey, even with all of the bugs and issues-

      I have had much more enjoyable conversations on Lemmy, then I have on reddit in a LONG time.

      For that- I can endure the bugs. Worth it IMO!

    • Frankelton@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      1 year ago

      Same. If this is going to be my new online home, I’d like to contribute somehow. Especially since I cant code, this works

  • MiddleWeigh@lemmy.worldEnglish
    347·
    1 year ago

    How many people were turned away by the whole tankie thing I wonder…hmmm

    Imagine hearing some vague bs and making a distinct and principaled opinion about an entire universe of information.

    Even if they are some flavor of doo doo, we take it, and make it what we want. I just don’t see the point in outright noping. At least in this instance.

    • Widget@kbin.social
      101·
      1 year ago

      If people really care there’s also kbin, which is the same content just with a different (imo better) UI.

      • MiddleWeigh@lemmy.world
        6·
        1 year ago

        I just happened to get on lemmy at first. It was largely coincidence. Perhaps I’ll try kbin, but this working how I need. I’m not real picky. I just like to write comments tbh.

      • kestrel7@kbin.social
        3·
        1 year ago

        Yeah I’m a pretty left-wing guy myself but I just like the kbin interface more. I think it’s really cool how this stuff all works together. That’s the real dream of communism!

          • Freeman@lemmy.pub
            1·
            1 year ago

            Did you ever get it up. I tried both the docker and vps methods on both Debian and Ubuntu. Never could get it to connect.

            Part of it is some of my unfamiliarity with some of the tools and their purpose (namely redis and rabbitmq). But all I got was 500 errors and when looking at service logs, everything was clean.

  • ghariksforge@lemmy.worldEnglish
    26·
    1 year ago

    I’m going to donate to these guys. It’s the least we can do considering how busy they have been since the reddit uprising.

  • tomkatt@lemmy.worldEnglish
    261·
    1 year ago

    I’m not down to subscribe ongoing (because I definitely will forget and think some fraud popped up), but I made a one time donation, and will likely make additional donations in the coming months and weeks. I’d love for this platform to thrive and have no qualms throwing up a few bucks for that here and there.

  • coffeeclimb@lemmy.worldEnglish
    241·
    1 year ago

    Dang these guys are so committed and it’s definitely understandable what they’ve just gone through. It’s definitely up to the community to help out wherever possible as that’s kinda what the fediverse is all about

  • SpezCanLigmaBalls@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2610·
    1 year ago

    The rumors actually got to me. I’ve still been using it but wondering when that would be mentioned by the creators. Glad to see it’s false

    • User Deleted@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      271·
      1 year ago

      It doesnt even matter if its true, if a non fascist/tankie made the same code, none of you would be complaining. Why should anything be different just because the devs happen to be a fascist/tankie/ whatever they believe in. They cant control what each instance does once they publish the code. The code is public now and its free for anyone to use. They can’t censor what we say in instances that they don’t control. I mean try it now, you can flip them off right here, right now and they can’t do anything about it, they don’t run lemmy.world. Only the owners of lemmy.world can do something about it.

      • Senokir@lemmy.worldEnglish
        31·
        1 year ago

        Apart from everything else that has been mentioned I would add that a very real factor is that every instance to my knowledge has a donation button which cannot be removed without forking the project that goes directly to the devs. Plenty of people in this post are saying things like “Wow, glad they cleared that up! I’ll definitely be giving them money” and very likely don’t have the full context. Assuming Lemmy does continue to grow exponentially it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that these devs will probably receive a large amount of money in donations from people who may not all be okay with supporting them if they were more informed. So spreading the truth about the devs and not taking their pitiful denial as absolute truth is important even if you believe in the project as a whole.

        • User Deleted@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Oh I didn’t know they asked for donations, I thought they just did it as a hobby. Yea the donation thing is definitely concerning, given the fact that one of the devs have an image of Mao Zedong as a banner on their profile. I guess we as a community could decide to make a fork of it and ask one of us non-tankie non-fascist programmers to continue developing.

      • Nadya@kbin.social
        2529·
        1 year ago

        This completely ignores the influence that flagship instances have.

        People don’t become Neo-Nazis without spending time among other Neo-Nazis listening to Neo-Nazi talking points. People don’t become Tankies without spending time among other Tankies listening to Tankie talking points.

        People are more likely than not to join the flagship instance than any of the smaller instances and significantly more likely than starting their own instance. Some of them will realize the kind of people they have found themselves surrounded by and leave. Many more won’t - especially due to general ignorance about Tankies (see this entire thread and the absolutely bizarre common defense of Tankies not being equatable to Nazis when they absolutely are and have resulted in more deaths and suffering than the Nazis ever have or will.) The people who stick around might start thinking the Tankies make some good points. This is how you end up with more Tankies. More Tankies is always a bad thing just like having more Neo-Nazis is always a bad thing.

        Most people have a good sense to not surround themselves with Neo-Nazis. That good sense appears to be missing when dealing with Tankies.

        • Widget@kbin.social
          25·
          1 year ago

          Aren’t the flagship instances right now essentially lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works? Maybe Beehaw once the re-federation gets figured out? And then kbin.social on the kbin side.

          This only matters if you use lemmy.ml, which I would expect to be largely defederated at some point soonish.

          • arkcom@kbin.social
            1·
            1 year ago

            At this point they are definitely getting there, but that only been the case for a few days.

          • Nadya@kbin.social
            48·
            1 year ago

            That does seem to have changed since I last cared to look. As dannoffs pointed out - it seems lemmy.ml was unlisted from the join-lemmy.org instances page where previously it was listed as #1 for the Popular section. They also removed the ## users / month metric so the list is no longer guaranteed to be sorted by popularity.

            Just last week - lemmy.world was reporting as 87 users/month and lemmy.ml as 1.6k users/month:

            https://web.archive.org/web/20230608170721/https://join-lemmy.org/instances

            This has of course changed - and unlisting the instance so that it isn’t the most popular instance likely has a lot to do with that. That seemed to happen sometime in the last week - I cbf checking every wayback timestamp to see exactly when.

            I’ve been using Kbin myself so haven’t been following Lemmy very closely. Only whatever happens to reach my page over on kbin.

        • CheshireSnake@iusearchlinux.fyi
          15·
          1 year ago

          lemmy.ml (or even the infamous lemmygrad) was never intended to be the flagship instance afaik. I first signed up on lemmy.ml but one of the first things I saw was a sticky from the devs to choose other instances. That’s primarily why I looked for others (I wasn’t aware of these “rumors” back then). It just happened to be the biggest at that time.

          Personally, as long as their political beliefs aren’t being pushed on lemmy then I don’t see anything wrong. Many of us came from reddit, and they’re not exactly without controversies - that never meant we supported or even believed in some of those.

          The people who stick around might start thinking the Tankies make some good points.

          Then it’s up to them to educate themselves. We’ve all been exposed to things we disagree with.

    • arquebus_x@kbin.social
      268·
      1 year ago

      I’d never seen any of the rumors, went to lemmy.ml for the first time (thinking I might join) and one of the top threads was a complaint that a post with anti-CCP analysis had been taken down by the admins and within 5 minutes of further research I was able to verify that, yes, the admins/devs are tankies. It’s definitely not false.

      So I backed out and switched to kbin.

        • boredtortoise@lemmy.world
          31·
          1 year ago

          Cleanest way to solve the issue according to the dev blog post principles is that those instances (not db0) defederate with others.

          • thoro@lemmy.ml
            2·
            1 year ago

            lemmy.ml is general purpose whereas Lemmygrad is ideological. The first influx of users from Reddit went to Lemmy.ml before Beehaw was spun up and the devs stopped promoting Lemmy.ml.

            Most of these instances already defederate from Lemmygrad.

            I don’t see any reason why they should defederate from Lemmy.ml, the literal largest instance at this time.

            I honestly view calling for this as wrecker behavior.

            • boredtortoise@lemmy.world
              3·
              1 year ago

              .ml is large yes and has some general purpose communities.

              Although, quite clearly and easily confirmable by anyone, it hosts the problematic issues and the related user base described in this thread.

              The whole ethos as described in the blog history of lemmy suggests to let those kinds of instances be on their own. Not wreck the wreckers.

      • Binkoth@lemmy.world
        33·
        1 year ago

        I was completely unaware as well. I’m off to kbin. In my opinion, there is zero chance this doesn’t cause issues down the line and it makes me feel uncomfortable using Lemmy.