this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2023
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Lemmy
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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.
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Unfortunately we may just be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. The developers (and moderators of this instance) are unapologetic authoritarians, and on their own instance they ban people for criticizing authoritarian governments. Take a look at this post from their own reddit account in regards to Tiananmen Square.
I want the fediverse to succeed. I love the idea of a less centrally-controlled approach to social media, because we've all seen the problems that can create. But I'm worried that the influence of authoritarian-leaning developers could be a serious problem.
Why would that be a serious problem? The code is open and it can be hosted by anyone. The moderators of a single instance are nearly meaningless to a federated system. That's the whole point.
To put it another way, what problems do you think the devs being tankies might cause?
On the main instance they've banned a few accounts for comments about human rights abuses in authoritarian-left governments. But it's true, that's instance specific. I know that on Mastodon the original instance, mastodon.social, has kind of set the tone for the other instances, so there could be an effect of that sort. Other than that? I'll just be honest and tell you that I'm not sure. It's hard to predict these kinds of things. But I agree with feditips that it could be a cause for concern.
I think that's the cool thing about it though is if we don't like the host of an instance, we move on to a better one. That will especially apply if they implement importing/exporting accounts like you can in Mastodon. Then you're REALLY not locked into any one server. I understand what you're saying, it's no small deal, but we can let them sit in their own echo chamber, and we go where we feel more comfortable.
Can just make an account in another instance (like you´ve done in Beehaw) or kbin I suppose. So far I haven´t seen anything that makes me uncorfortable with lemmy.ml, but given all these smaller platforms are on a trial period for me I have no qualms moving if needed be
Yeah. That's one of the things I like most about fediverse. You can always move around if you feel like you need to, and you'll still be able to interact with the communities you were interacting with earlier (in most cases). We'll see what happens. I think the instance I joined seems genuinely well-meaning (although like most users, I'm still mostly just dipping my feet in here). I just wanted to put out there that the lead developers could have some problematic views.
I disagree with the feditips account. I think he's pushing people away from lemmy rather than the specific instance. I've had no issues on lemmy.ml and the mods here have been great. I'm pretty sure he's just referring to lemmygrad. And like the other user who replied to you said, you could always make a new instance or join another. The political opinions of the devs means nothing if the platform is decentralized. Unlike Reddit, they don't have power over the entire platform, just whatever instance they host, just like if I made an instance, which I can, I have complete power over it.
You can look at the modlog and see that lemmy.ml has also banned people for criticism of authoritarian governments. The reddit post I linked to in regards to Tiananmen Square was posted by one of the moderators of lemmy.ml.
Well, everything else I said stands. You're on Beehaw, so none of that affects you. I could migrate my account there if it became an issue. Lemmy as an overall platform should still be recommended imo, because there are so many instances to join instead.