2d ago

Lemmy needs more donations

Lemmy - Donate

Hello world,

as many of you probably already know, Lemmy is an open source project and its development is funded by donations.

Unfortunately, as is often the case, donations amounts are often going down over time if people are not aware of their necessity. When older users leave the platform they may stop donating, while new users joining will typically not be aware of this and won't start donating to even things out or even go towards an overall increase in donations.

All of the services provided by our non-profit Fedihosting Foundation are dependent on the development of FOSS platforms, which we can host without paying any licensing or other fees, instead only being required to pay for the infrastructure cost. We are currently investing a small part (€50 each) of the donations we receive in development of Lemmy and Mastodon, but the majority of the donations we receive are used for covering infrastructure costs. We're currently just about breaking even with the donations we receive, but it's certainly not enough to cover a large part of Lemmy or other software development costs.

We're looking to support sustainable software development for all the services we provide and will post similar announcements on our other platforms to promote donations towards the respective development teams in the coming days.

You can find the original announcement by @nutomic@lemmy.ml below:

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29579005

An open source project the size of Lemmy needs constant work to manage the project, implement new features and fix bugs. Dessalines and I work full-time on these tasks and more. As there is no advertising or tracking, all of our work is funded through donations. Unfortunately the amount of donations has decreased to only 2000€ per month. This leaves only 1000€ per developer, which is not enough to pay my bills. With the current level of donations I will be forced to find another job, and drastically reduce my contributions to Lemmy. To avoid this outcome and keep Lemmy growing, I ask you to please make a recurring donation:
Liberapay | Ko-fi | Patreon | OpenCollective | Crypto
If you want more information before donating, consider the comparison with Reddit. It began as startup funded by rich investors. The site is managed by corporate executives who over time have become more and more disconnected from normal users. Their main goal is to make investors happy and to make a profit. This leads to user-hostile decisions like firing the employee responsible for AMAs, blocking third-party apps and more. As Reddit is a single website under a single authority, it means all users need to follow the same rules, including ridiculous ones like censoring the name "Luigi".
Lemmy represents a new type of social media which is the complete opposite of Reddit. It is split across many different websites, each with its own rules, and managed by normal people who actually care about the users. There is no company and no profit motive. Much of the work is carried out by volunteer admins, mods and posters, who contribute out of enthusiasm and not for money. For users this is great as there is no advertising nor tracking, and no chance of takeover by a billionaire. Additionally there are no builtin political or ideological restrictions. You can use the software for any purpose you like, add your own restrictions or scrutinize its inner workings. Lemmy truly belongs to everyone.
Dessalines and I work fulltime on Lemmy to keep up with all the feature requests, bug reports and development work. Even so there is barely enough time in the day, and no time for a second job. Previously I sometimes had to rely on my personal savings to keep developing Lemmy for you, but that can't go on forever. We partly rely on NLnet for funding, but they only pay for development of new features, and not for mandatory maintenance work. The only available option are user donations. To keep it viable donations need to reach a minimum of 5000€ per month, resulting in a modest salary of 2500€ per developer. If that goal is reached Dessalines and I can stop worrying about money, and fully focus on improving the software for the benefit of all users and instances. Please use the link below to see current donation stats and make your contribution! We especially rely on recurring donations to secure the long-term development and make Lemmy the best it can be.
Donate

edit, as this was frequently brought up:

Will donations to Lemmy development go towards the operation of lemmy.ml?

It depends on the donation method used and is limited to around 2% of the minimum overall donation goal. The vast majority of donations is exclusively used for developer salaries.

lemmy.ml hosting is only financed by donations via Opencollective. All other donations go exclusively to developer salaries.

source

For donations via Open Collective, yes, a tiny fraction of donations towards Lemmy development will go towards the operation of lemmy.ml. The reasons for this include that lemmy.ml is used for testing new releases and also that it's not worth maintaining a separate donation account for the instance. Additionally, it should be noted that the money going towards lemmy.ml hosting is just a tiny fraction of the funds that are being asked for. Hosting lemmy.ml costs around €100/month, which is only 2% of the stated minimum donation goal.

494 comments

So all the discourse around lemmy.ml has made it clear to me that Lemmy's primary org has fallen prey to a key problem I've experienced running multiple social media sites and seen in my professional life as well.
And it boils down to this:
The tech guys are trying to be moderators. These are two entirely separate jobs that need completely different types of people to successfully execute the role.
Tech folk are brilliant in their subject, but often terrible at understanding people, social dynamics, and the limits of acceptable discourse. Their profession requires them to spend enormous amounts of time alone, which limits their real world experience, often to a crippling degree.
Good moderators (what used to be publishers and editors in the days of print) are those who understand people like tech folk understand SQL. They understand the multiple layers of subcontext that can be derived from an innocent sounding statement, and they have an innate sense of social dynamics and what is of interest to their audience. They also know how to speak to their audience and promote good content.
Most importantly, they understand that they are the gatekeepers of the publication's reputation, and safeguard it by being as impartial and fair as possible... a lesson the moderators of lemmy.ml have clearly failed to learn.
The only way to solve this dilemma in Lemmy.org's case is this:
Separate the mod and dev teams. Devs should not mod, and mods should not dev
Abandon or spin off lemmy.ml to folks not on the dev team - the fact that the instance is run by members of the dev team taints the reputation of the entire project and infrastructure. I do believe in free speech, but in this case, the reputational damage lemmy.ml has caused to the financial state of the dev team is too great to ignore.
Lemmy.org needs to clearly state this delineation and prevent the official dev team from running instances officially attached to lemmy.org.
If this doesn't happen, I think that donations will continue to decrease until the project starves. There is great value in what the dev team has done, but unless they abandon lemmy.ml and focus entirely on development, I think this project will fail financially unless another dev team with a better rep takes their place.
- To be absolutely clear, on .ml hardly any mods do modding, almost all the removals and bans is by one of 2 admins, dessalines themselves or davel (and occasionally a 3rd admin cypherpunks)
  https://sh.itjust.works/comment/18374613
  I'll donate money to individual instances, but for as long as Nutomic/Dessalines is in charge of the .ml instance I will not be donating to them.
  
  Also, if they can't make enough money in donations to keep doing this full-time, why don't they let other people into the project on a volunteer basis? Reduce the workload on themselves so they can get part time jobs or something. All I've heard is how controlling they are, but it feels like this is too big of a thing to be on two individual developers in the first place.
  If more people than just them could be involved, I'd happily donate. I would like to donate to something that's going to grow and get better over time, not to two individual developers treading water. I get it's difficult to find people that know Rust, and I sympathize, but my point stands. This entire project is operating very precariously on two individuals and if it's going to grow, that has to change at some point.
  And as Arotrios said in another comment, the reason they're asking for money is because they lost the money they were getting. The way they operate, and allow that instance to destroy the reputation of their project, is what led to this. And it will continue to lead to this, unless they do some radical changes. I'm not putting my money back in until I see them doing something different and showing they've learned the lesson.
- Abandon or spin off lemmy.ml to folks not on the dev team
  lemmy.ml is an important testbed for new releases at scale. Many many issues have been caught by the dev team deploying there. lemm.ee too for that matter.
  I do agree that Lemmy.ml should never be recommended as the “official” Lemmy instance, but (correct me if I’m wrong) the Lemmy devs don’t do that. They just say “A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers“ which is fair to disclose (although maybe that could remove that. Idk). join-lemmy.org doesn’t handle or recommend Lemmy.ml specially.
  I think usually it’s random users saying “join Lemmy.ml it’s the official instance” and we need to nip that in the bud… but it’s not Lemmy devs’ fault.
  
  Nine times out of ten I hear people say "join Lemmy.World, it's the catch-all and de facto default instance". I honestly don't think I've seen people recommend Lemmy.ml unless they're already ideologically aligned with Marxism–Leninism; if anything, most people seem to expressly recommend people don't join Lemmy.ml for ideological and censorship reasons (edit: reasons I agree with and echo, to clarify).
  
  lemmy.ml is an important testbed for new releases at scale. Many many issues have been caught by the dev team deploying there. lemm.ee too for that matter.
  In general, it's considered bad practice to use a live site for testing dev updates, but I can see the value in having this available in this case. However, if they want to use a live site as a test bed for new features using a large audience, then they should ensure their moderation team doesn't allow the reputation of the instance to become what lemmy.ml's has. The fact of the matter is that it's become toxic branding to the overall Lemmy effort, and is actively undermining the dev team's efforts by impacting them financially.
  The only way I can see to do this is at this point is by ceding their involvement in lemmy.ml to another team and rebranding join-lemmy.org as a software package, not a political statement.
  
  It literally recommends lemmy.ml within the first 3 listings in most cases or even worse, Hexbear
  
  I do agree that Lemmy.ml should never be recommended as the “official” Lemmy instance, but (correct me if I’m wrong) the Lemmy devs don’t do that.
  Yeah you're correct, they explicitly don't want it considered the main instance.
  
  You'd think the ban button has been tested enough already...
- You seem to have a good grasp of the problem and have proposed a viable solution. Would you like a one month, one year, or permanent ban?
  
  Shit, you triggered my reddit PTSD. I'm having flashbacks...
- I agree with everything you said generally. But one thing I don't see being mentioned much. That is kind of glaring. Is the fact that when you are developing software etc. You have testing systems and you have production systems. And they are two different systems. You never test on production. And you never use your test server as a production server. It's a bad idea in general, and there's no need to. And that really says it all.
  The fact that they are using lemmy.ml as a testing and a production server. Isn't it justifiable, and it isn't acceptable. Despite the fact that I generally enjoy activity pub, the fediverse and of course use lemmy. Lemmy development will not see a single penny from myself. Nor should it see a single dime of donation from anyone until that's no longer the case. Which isn't even bringing up the Cesspool of an echo chamber this joke of a "test server" is
  
  How would you do public testing without making it significantly more expensive?
  
  We have various test servers, but these are not enough to catch all the potential problems in a new release. Lemmy is very complex software, and a minor change can cause performance problems in an sql query and cause downtime for instances. Such problems are impossible to catch on test servers, at least with our very limited resources.
- @nutomic I hope you're currently taking notes of all of the feedback you're getting from everyone, particularly this comment. There is a lot that lemmy.ml needs to do to rehabilitate their reputation, and that needs to be done before people will be willing to donate.
  If the lemmy devs continue to ignore the feedback from everyone regarding their management of lemmy.ml, their problem is only going to get worse. But if they are open minded about feedback then they have a chance to win people back
- keep in mind they're a team of just 2 people. It's easier said than done to separate the dev team and the mod team
  
  They have 5 peoples in the admin team, 2 of them is the dev. If they stop moderating, it will still have 3 on the team. It's VERY easy to separate themselves from moderating but they still chose to put their resource(time) into it.
  
  They could probably do something like a voluntary self-re-education camp for themselves and change their terroristic views. There's probably some inspiration somewhere in the world.
  Or if not that, get other devs to continue the project and do something else.
- You are forgetting another option: Develop new projects that interoperate with Lemmy via ActivityPub. Then use and support those projects instead.
- Good moderators (what used to be publishers and editors in the days of print) are those who understand people like tech folk understand SQL
  Thing is, you don't have to federate with .ml. If you think .ml is badly moderated, you don't have to be part. Tech devs are also entitled to have personal projects that they needn't do very well; and if .ml serves well as a test server for the software, all the better.
  I agree the controversy has driven people away. But maybe that controversy is part and parcel of Lemmy: you either let it be or hide it; is hiding it so much better?
  
  People are being asked to give money to the mods of .ml in their role as devs. There's even a statement at the start of the thread that says (paraphrased) "yes, some small percentage will go to .ml because it is the primary testbed".
  The issue isn't federation. It's being asked to give money to support a place that prescribes values that the donator disagrees with.
- Oh forsure where will they test new festures with testeds then lmao You paying for it?

Dessalines and I work fulltime on Lemmy
They should spend more time devving and less time mod actioning wrongthink
- Agreed. I'd like to support continued development of Lemmy, but I'm hesitant to do so knowing that part of those donations go to lemmy.ml's server upkeep.
  
  part of those donations go to lemmy.ml's server upkeep
  If that’s true, that’s misappropriating the donations being that they’re billed as supporting development. Server maintenance and upkeep is important, but do not mislead your benefactors to do so, lest you destroy their trust and stop donating to your cause.
  I would like it if both @nutomic@lemmy.ml and @dessalines@lemmy.ml could confirm or put to rest if this is true.
  Edit: a couple of users pointed out that lemmy.ml is used as a test bed for lemmy development. This is good info, and not something I, personally, was aware of.
  
  This is, unfortunately, the necessary view to take. Lemmy the software is a net positive, but nobody should be giving money to support their extremism and love of censorship, particularly when it happens on what’s arguably the “official” instance.
  Numotic and Dessalines actively cultivate very toxic content:
  Pro-Russia, blaming Ukraine as a Nazi aggressor;
  Pro-Chinese Communist Party, banning discussion of the mistreatment of the Uighur minority or the anti-democratic takeover of Hong Kong;
  Anti-Semitic, going way beyond the confines of criticism of the current Israeli government, on to hateful comments about all Israelis as a people, and sometimes Jews in general,
  Pro-Communism, at times advocating for the violent overthrow of Western governments by Marxist groups.
  Strongly in favor of left wing dictatorships, like Venezuela, decrying any discussion of human rights and democracy as capitalist propaganda.
  If you disagree with these positions, too bad! Because your posts will be deleted, or you’ll get banned, or your instance defederated, from ml.
  
  lemmy.ml hosting is only financed by donations via Opencollective. All other donations go exclusively to developer salaries.

https://sh.itjust.works/comment/18374613
I'll donate money to individual instances, but for as long as Nutomic/Dessalines is in charge of the .ml instance I will not be donating to them.
- This is, unfortunately, the necessary view to take. Lemmy the software is a net positive, but nobody should be giving money to support their extremism and love of censorship, particularly when it happens on what’s arguably the “official” instance.
  Numotic and Dessalines actively cultivate very toxic content:
  Pro-Russia, blaming Ukraine as a Nazi aggressor;
  Pro-Chinese Communist Party, banning discussion of the mistreatment of the Uighur minority or the anti-democratic takeover of Hong Kong;
  Anti-Semitic, going way beyond the confines of criticism of the current Israeli government, on to hateful comments about all Israelis as a people, and sometimes Jews in general,
  Pro-Communism, at times advocating for the violent overthrow of Western governments by Marxist groups.
  Strongly in favor of left wing dictatorships, decrying any discussion of human rights and democracy as capitalist propaganda.
  If you disagree with these positions, too bad! Because your posts will be deleted, or you’ll get banned, or your instance defederated, from ml.
- Not judging and correct me if I got it wrong. You like Lemmy and want to support it but you personally don't like the developers of Lemmy?
  
  I don't like what they're doing, they are actively using their positions and instances position of influence to push harmful propaganda, misinformation, censor opinions critical of it and all the while turning a blind/lenient eye to what their users do if they consider them to be ideologically aligned with them.
  If they actually surrendered .ml admin duties to a more balanced team that actually allowed non-Tankie mods to well mod, I would reconsider donating.
  While I consider their "ideology" to be harmful, if they stopped trying to "infuse" Lemmy with it and separated their work from their personal politics it would satisfy a lot of concerns

While I understand the moral objections people have to supporting the developers, I do think its fair to highlight how they do not treat us.
We are not a product here to be exploited and advertised to. They also respect your choice to block ml and not to interact with them at all for the rest. I am sure I would be absolutely abhorred by the depth of depravity of your average silicon valley CEO's hot takes, but they dont share it for this exact reason. Instead they just design their entire product and business around it, which is the enshittification we all know and hate.
People you dont agree with having a place of their own on the fediverse is a logical consequence of the idea behind it, and while uncomfortable, is a greater good in the end.
But to maintain that it means putting your money where your mouth. If not to them, to your own instance.
- I am sure I would be absolutely abhorred by the depth of depravity of your average silicon valley CEO’s hot takes
  That's a really good point.
  Also, the Lemmy devs might have authoritarian views but work off of donations while the silicon valley CEOs are some hyper-capitalists with power. The lesser evil seems clear to me.
  
  In a former life I worked in the financial sector. The only reason statesia hasn't genocided itself to bones already is because all the ceos have been incompetent stumbling over each others' plans for genocide and (fortunately for us, depending on how depressed you are) kept fucking it up for so long.
- Very well said. Everything good in life, will have some aspects that you (the global 'you') won't like.
  Lemmy is a huge improvement over corporate social media. Maybe it has some ideologies you don't like here, but it beats an algorithm that secretly manipulates you.
  If I use a FOSS product, then I try to pay for it, even if it's not perfect. For example, Firefox gets a lot of well deserved hate but without it I'm not sure there would be a realistic FOSS browser.
  
  My experience anywhere on Lemmy that .ml touches has been notably worse than anything I have experienced on reddit.
- People you dont agree with having a place of their own on the fediverse is a logical consequence of the idea behind it, and while uncomfortable, is a greater good in the end.
  We're also not required to fund those people. I don't care if they exist, but I will not be party to their bullshit
  
  You're not required to do anything, let alone directly funding ml. That's not what I am arguing for. I am arguing for you to support Lemmy despite the chance some of it might go to ml.
  It goes the other way too, the developers probably disagree with a large part of the beliefs of people using lemmy, yet they also put in their time to create and foster it, which we never had to pay for either. They did it for the reasons they mention (free spaces, not owned by corporations that suck their users dry), which is separate from their other political positions.
  
  You should delete the app then, if it's so important to you.
- Very well said. In addition, the fact that they hold the beliefs they do makes them extremely resistant to flipping and getting on the enshittification wagon.
- And how exactly are bunch of genocide supporters who claim to be leftists (russia is an authoritarian capitalist state) any better than some American oligarchs?

Am I wrong or is the same person making fun of the ridiculous censorship rules on Reddit while enforcing similar ridiculous censorship rules on their own .ml instance?
- Yeah, .ml is usually a giant circle jerk and often removes comments/posts that are critical of things like the CCP.
  
  I got banned on ml for arguing that it was obvious that trump was worse than the Democrats
  
  Lemmy the software is a net positive, but nobody should be giving money to support their extremism and love of censorship, particularly when it happens on what’s arguably the “official” instance.
  Numotic and Dessalines actively cultivate very toxic content:
  Pro-Russia, blaming Ukraine as a Nazi aggressor;
  Pro-Chinese Communist Party, banning discussion of the mistreatment of the Uighur minority or the anti-democratic takeover of Hong Kong;
  Anti-Semitic, going way beyond the confines of criticism of the current Israeli government, on to hateful comments about all Israelis as a people, and sometimes Jews in general,
  Pro-Communism, at times advocating for the violent overthrow of Western governments by Marxist groups.
  Strongly in favor of left wing dictatorships, like Venezuela, decrying any discussion of human rights and democracy as capitalist propaganda.
  If you disagree with these positions, too bad! Because your posts will be deleted, or you’ll get banned, or your instance defederated, from ml.
  
  So use a different instance? You dont seen to have a problem freeloading at least?
- Yes but that also highlights the advantage of Lemmy. Its not censorship for Lemmy.ml to enforce its rules because users can post on another instance where Lemmy.ml admins have no power. On reddit thats not an option.
  Its a good thing that we have instances that curate their own communities.
  
  I feel that's missing the forest for the trees in regards to what we're discussing, though. Enforcing rules is one thing; actively enforcing the suppression of any dissent of opinion is censorship, full stop. It isn't "curating" communities when you are aggressively enforcing all those communities stay in lockstep to your political views.
  But yes, federation helps to mitigate the completeness of that censorship. However, the original devs of Lemmy itself created the .ml instance, so it's kind of an ironic situation, which is why I bothered replying in the first place to the original comment.
- You are wrong.

No ads and no algorithm isn't free.
Folks, open your wallets and throw a few bucks Lemmy's way. I'm a monthly donor myself, and I consider it money well-spent compared to the shit show that is every other social media platform.
- I welcome ads. I welcome as many ads as the site manager feels won't bleed members. Algorithms too, but good luck keeping members if that happens.
  I do not want to give money to where it supports regimes that hate, but that is entirely my choice and I get that. You're free to classify that separately and I fully support you doing what's best for you.
  
  ethical ads are virtually non-existent. when limiting ads to ethical ads it's unlikely you're getting even remotely close to bringing in the necessary funds.
  people promoting ads are typically those who expect others to suffer while they themselves are using ad blockers. there are some people who honestly turn off ad blockers, but i wouldn't recommend anyone to do that for any site, as i don't consider the majority of ads ethical and it's also often used as a malware/phishing/scam distribution mechanism.
  this is also a vicious cycle of more people blocking ads -> ads getting worse to offset the lost ad revenue -> more people blocking ads. this is what lead to the internet today, where the majority of the internet is basically unusable if you don't use ublock origin or a comparable solution.

Done. Lemmy is too good not to get properly funded.

For those with decision paralysis, Liberapay is a great choice. They're a France-based non-profit which is itself run off of donations which it crowdfunds on its own platforn (pretty based tbh), and the site itself is FOSS.
Of some note unfortunately is that donations for development also go to the maintainer-run instance .ml – whose tankie position is to expressly deny genocides like the Holodomor and the ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs by China – but the costs of development versus the costs of just running the server are completely disproportionate in favor of development. With that in mind, being ideologically purist here enables much greater evils, and I think Lemmy has easily given me more than this value: donated $20 (edit: upped to $30 for drama reasons).
- How does one AVOID funding .ml?
  
  Addressed this in an edited-in second paragraph. Answer is "unfortunately, you can't" unless you wish to fork Lemmy. But as someone who's sickened to my core by tankie ideas, I still think funding this piece of FOSS is by far the lesser evil, I think I make a compelling argument for it, and I do think the Lemmy team do good work on the software side.
  If I can hold my nose and vote for the lesser evil, I need to follow that same principle when it's not just my vote I'm casting but where I'm putting my time and money.
  Edit: I completely forgot that you could, in theory, try helping out on their GitHub if you have a background in CS. It won't pay for the developers' cost of living, but it could reduce the maintenance burden if you know what you're doing.
  
  I'm mixed. On one hand, absolutely fuck .ml and tankies. On the other, these guys have done great work. The way it's set up, Lemmy is not at all beholden to their ideology. We can take it over at any time, and any further work they do benefits all of us, and that can't be taken away.
  As a fellow developer, I truly believe Rust is the way to go for high pressure, high scaling software. I don't think LW alone could run off of your average python. EVE Online is a great example of that. They pushed python forward to meet their high demand needs, and still had to incorporate a lot of C++. Reddit has had teams of engineers over decades, and in the long run I expect Lemmy to be more efficient. In my professional opinion, this kind of scaling can't be reasonably done with any garbage collected language.
  My other concern is with sanctions. Are these guys in Russia? Is it legal to donate to them? If you're paying by check or credit card, those institutions will take care of following the law for you.
  Overall, I'd encourage people to donate. Open software benefits everyone and any work they do for us is public and can never be taken back.
  
  As much as I dislike a lot of .ml, it costs like €30/month to run. Not much of your money would be going to it.
  donating to lemmy helps every other instance much more than it helps .ml.
  
  lemmy.ml is already entirely funded, your donations go entirely to our salaries.
  
  Give your money to any other product or service
  If they want money for Lemmy then they can step down or stop being shitty mode
- Thanks for contributing! It’s sad to see so many people focus on unnecessary drama
  
  Why not just use Reddit then instead of focusing on some drama about the CEO and how they handle moderation?

Donated, I'd rather be on a foss platform that can defederate/block bad faith interlocutors than a corpo platform that forces their anti user pro monetization shit on everyone who uses their platform.

More than happy to monetarily support this amazing open source project with monthly contributions! Thank you to all the devs involved in running this platform

Being Ukrainian it's not possible for me to donate to supporters of russian genocidal imperialism.
I hope both of them meet the same fate as "Donbas Cowboy", Russell Bentley:
Bentley’s wife, Lyudmila, then claimed that Russian soldiers from a tank battalion abducted him.
According to the Investigative Committee, Vansyatsky, Agaltsev, and Iordanov tortured Bentley on April 8, and he died shortly afterward.
I am personally hoping that the core software will be forked while retaining the Lemmy name. Change it to Lemmy-TSF (tankie scum free). I would donate monthly to a development team that doesn't include genocide supporters.
- How do you feel about donating to some specific instances instead?
  
  I am between jobs. When I get an offer, I will start donating to LW and another instance where I have an alt.
  I already donate/subscribe to international open source projects, Ukrainian NGOs and Ukrainian and international media organizations.
- What's stopping you for forking it yourself?
  
  I don't code. Happy to donate to a non-tankie development team (when I get a job offer).
  I like the Lemmy concept. It seems to be the most viable alternative to corporate social media (both in terms of size and architecture).

Comments are a hilarious minefield and a painful reminder of exactly how online leftists can never get shit done. We want FOSS federated social media platforms to escape the tech giants that would happily facilitate a fascist wave if it meant they can serve more targeted ads. But when that platform actually exists in a totally functional and apolitical way, we don't want to support its development because the people willing to work full time on the project for poverty wages have bad political opinions. It's so bad that we'd rather support Steve Huffman's bot farm which is 1,000 times as politically influential as Lemmy will ever be at this rate.
- Lemmy Apolitical?
  LMAO 🤣
  
  The platform itself is apolitical. It can be forked and used for any purpose by other creators. Any instance of a different political persuasion can be spun up and maintained separately, as many defederated instances have. This is a result of the project the 2 devs are paid to produce.
- This has to be a fucking joke. You say it can “actually exist in a totally functional apolitical way” while the two principle influencers of the platform “have bad political opinions.” You didn’t even bother to break up your ignorant defense of their abhorrent inhumane stance, that they are willing to publicly share, from your claim that the platform exists in an apolitical way with a paragraph break. Fuck these two jackasses, I pulled my recurring donation because this shit brought to light their abhorrent views, that again, are just the ones they are willing to admit publicly in a software development capacity. They should have focused on the product and kept their bullshit out of it, hopefully growing the fuck up along the way. I find it hilarious how many dipshits supporting these bigots are the same ones who would parrot garbage about abstaining to vote in US elections because “both sides” bs, the thing is, this platform has no meaningful consequence if it dies. The idea is out there now, it will get picked up by contributors who aren’t bigots or it won’t. No extra lives will be lost, ruined, or families destroyed if I’m unwilling to support these two bigots.
  
  Well, that's actually the benefit of supporting FOSS. At some point along the way, someone can pick up the project totally of their own accord, fork it, and continue development. But I don't see many devs lining up for the job of being accountable to someone as well mannered as you.
  What's really funny is that your comment that directed extremely aggressive energy at me for the crime of constructing a poor argument motivated me to shell out a recurring payment for the developers out of spite. I guess we really can get something done when we work together.
- Trying to piece things together it sounds like the beef is with lemmy.ml maintainers and not Lemmy in general. This is what federation's all about: You like the product but don't like how it's being used, so you switch to using instances that are used the way you like and support those instances in kind, all while blocking and/or criticizing the instances you don't like without risking having your access revoked.
  
  The problem is, Lemmy developers are lemmy.ml maintainers. You can't have one without the other.
  
  Yes, but the issue is that the lemmy.ml maintainers are the Lemmy developers. The people who created the software, and continue maintaining it, are the same people who created the instance.
  It's the well-known question of if you can, or should, separate the art from the artist. By funding, in its current state, the development of Lemmy, you're supporting the people running an instance you disagree with. Unless you're willing to take up the work to fork and continue development yourself, you can't detach them, you either support both or none.
- poverty wages
  Citation needed.
  Across patreon, opencollective and librepay they make a combined total of recurring $3507.66 per month, plus undisclosed amounts in crypto and ko-fi donations.
  According to the post, less than $100 go towards hosting .ml, so that's an even 1700 bucks (plus x) for each of the developers.
  They are budgeting in EUR, else I believe their origin country is undisclosed, meaning it could be double the national average (Kosovo, Montenegro, Greece); average (Italy, Spain, Portugal) or below average (France, Germany). Just to highlight a few, here's a full list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage
  That's of course under the assumption that they reside in countries that officially use the EUR and not merely use it as a common currency. In Bulgaria, Albania etc. they'd be quite a bit above national average as well (the source I quoted converts all domestic currencies to EUR).
  
  Given the name Dessalines, I'm guessing one dev is French though I suppose that's too much of a reach. Regardless, I think you would be hard pressed to find many developers willing to commit to a project full time when they have to beg for donations from a relatively fickle audience like Lemmy users, just to reach a target of a middling income. Much easier to work for a financial firm building their app that approves predatory payday loans or whatever.
  
  That doesn’t seem like much to me. Maybe not technically poverty but certainly not rich.
  
  The donation amount has increased a lot after this call for donations. Previously it was only 1000 Euro per month for each of us. With my skills I could easily earn 8000 Euro per month or more working for a company in the United States.

Fuck the lemmy.ml devs. I'm not going to donate to a group of people who have clearly targeted me over and over again across multiple accounts with petty bans for gently questioning their authoritarian orthodoxy.
Donate to forks like piefed or mbin. Let .ml reap what it sows.
- over and over again across multiple accounts with petty bans
  Is this ban evasion, or am I misinterpreting?

I would never donate so long as that donation supports lemmy.ml
Based on the general community sentiment I've seen and your reports of barely breaking even here, you can either break from the tankies or watch lemmy die without enough funds.
- Are you aware that the top and bottom part of the post are from completetly different people? The top part is from Lemmy.world's admin, while the bottom part is from one of the Lemmy developers (and Lemmy.ml's admin).
  
  ...are you under the impression that they're unrelated?
  As stated in the post, donating to lemmy.world infra costs always means that a portion of your donation goes to lemmy devs. Said devs have very explicitly stated that part of those donations finance lemmy.ml
- This is, unfortunately, the necessary view to take. Lemmy the software is a net positive, but nobody should be giving money to support their extremism and love of censorship, particularly when it happens on what’s arguably the “official” instance.
  Numotic and Dessalines actively cultivate very toxic content:
  Pro-Russia, blaming Ukraine as a Nazi aggressor;
  Pro-Chinese Communist Party, banning discussion of the mistreatment of the Uighur minority or the anti-democratic takeover of Hong Kong;
  Anti-Semitic, going way beyond the confines of criticism of the current Israeli government, on to hateful comments about all Israelis as a people, and sometimes Jews in general,
  Pro-Communism, at times advocating for the violent overthrow of Western governments by Marxist groups.
  Strongly in favor of left wing dictatorships, like Venezuela, decrying any discussion of human rights and democracy as capitalist propaganda.
  If you disagree with these positions, too bad! Because your posts will be deleted, or you’ll get banned, or your instance defederated, from ml.
- lemmy.ml hosting is only financed by donations via Opencollective. All other donations go exclusively to developer salaries.

Give up your admin/mod roles on .ml, be neutral developers, then I am happy to donate.
- No such thing as neutral.
- They need an instance for test purposes or no development would be done. And they would run such instance as they see fit.
  
  https://sh.itjust.works/comment/18374613
  Test instances shouldn't be used to push a political narrative
  
  But do they need to moderate that instance?

ITT: a mighty showcase of the divide-and-conquer strategy by psyops.
Instead of realizing that our goal as an alternative community to Reddit is first and foremost to... well duh, to build a community and keep it thriving, people here are infighting, preferring to subdivide themselves into tankies and non-tankies.
If Lemmy eventually fails and no other project with a similar feature-set can show up in time, we end up killing the existing momentum.
If that happens, all of you shall remember this very moment, and bravo to the psyops people (be it from the government or corporate) because you won yet again.
Donated. Though because I am living in a third world country it's just a measly ~25 dollars.
- Not getting mixed up with tankies or fascist is a pretty important thing. I would rather not have such "social" media instead.
  
  A federated interoperable platform will always have people to get "mixed up" with.
  
  With that mindset you might as well give up on the whole internet. (not that it's a bad idea.)
- thats basically my opinion. I'm not a fan of tankies or .ml, but love lemmy, happy to have a reoccuring donation to help
- In the same week - according to Internet super minds - I've been paid by Sandfall Interactive to promote Expedition 33 AND by the government to hinder Lemmy's implacable expansion.
  It was a good week.
  
  That's the kicker -- you are not even being paid when you are contributing to their cause.
- As someone from a relatively poor country too, 25 bucks are a lot. For this entire busy day, I've earned $15.
- Lemmy got to about 60% Reddits glory at its peak, seems to be getting far worse worse these days too. Good on you, but should've kept that money mate.

I've made my donation today for the first time.
I find it helpful that we have been keeping people full time, funded by donations. I would hope this model grows, expanding into for example specific features getting their own bucket of money, as we can voice our support for things that can get lost in a backlog.
I'm not sure I've seen how to contribute the old way, by donating time and performing tasks. Not my case, but how would someone get started on that?
- if people want to contribute code, they can check out the various repositories in the LemmyNet GitHub org to see which issues are looking for someone to pick them up.
  the main repositories, by language, are:
  Rust
  lemmy - backend of the application
  activitypub-federation-rust - federation library
  lemmy-ui-leptos - work in progress rewrite of lemmy-ui in Rust
  TypeScript/Inferno
  lemmy-ui - the default lemmy web interface
  Kotlin
  jerboa - the official Android app
  additionally, there is a range of open source alternative web interfaces and apps that wouldn't mind contributions. some of them are listed here: https://github.com/dbeley/awesome-lemmy?tab=readme-ov-file#alternative-front-ends
- I’m not sure I’ve seen how to contribute the old way, by donating time and performing tasks. Not my case, but how would someone get started on that?
  Good point, it's a bit hidden away: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/contributors/01-overview.html
  (Formally) Reporting issues
  Translating
  Programming and Design
  Donating

thanks to those who donate and keep this place running, cuz I can't right now :)

I just logged into Liberapay, and then I saw their profile pictures. Remembered I can't donate to tankies (inb4: I didn't say communists) any more I could maga supporters. or IDF apologists
lemmy.ml:
Hey but they're not that bad! Nutomic responded in this thread:
I certainly dont praise or support civilians being displaced from their homes.
Isn't it wonderfully vague? ~~You know who expressed the same sadness about displaced people? guess~~ (I can't find a source/misremembered? my bad)
You can remove all ambiguity by saying who is the unequivocal aggressor responsible for the gruesome death of thousands of young men and civilians in Ukraine.
How's the denazification going, guys?
- Watch out one of the devs here will gaslight you to beg for more donations.
  
  How much do you get paid to run your smear campaign?
- Nutomic responded in this thread:
  Apparently (from what .world admins have said in this thread) Nutonic is 1 of 2 developers who are trying to make Lemmy a full time job and take a cut of all donations to facilitate that...
  Which makes all their comments insisting lemmy.ml only gets money thru one method look a hell of a lot like intentionally manipulating a user base for financial profit.
  Like, the money not going to lemmy.ml but a cut going to two of their main admins personally is a pretty big piece of information they haven't mentioned once.
  I don't think anyone saying they don't want to give to lemmy.ml would still be ok with it going to their two main admins' personal accounts instead.
  
  Like, the money not going to lemmy.ml but a cut going to two of their main admins
  You realize that it's not some smoke show that they're "two of the main admins" right? That they are the two primary developers and creators of the entire platform and .ml was the initial flagship instance (which they literally directed people away from during the Reddit surge)?
  
  Look they only made that statment because every comment threat was that they would only donate if there was a way that it went to the developers and not lemmy.ml, and they got feedback that making a distiction would get people to donate. They are quite clear that this is so they can get a wage they need to survive, and for the record that is mentioned, at the top of the post, that they need to a little more than double donations in order to pay themselves an amount to keep working on this.

I fkn love this community! Just set up yearly dono for 60
- Thanks!

I was thinking long and hard about this to form an opinion, but my answer is no.
The final decission point was: I'm from Slovakia, it's no secret that Russia would love to take us under their sphere of influence. You and your instance is not only supporting this, you're actively propagating this. In fact, I'm pretty sure if Russian soldiers would be at my doorstep, threatening my family, you and your instance would be cheering. And when I would realize, that I actively supported this, that would break me.
If you're about to publish your work for free, I gladly use it as long as it's run by good people like lemmy.world. This way you get no support from me. If I'd pay you, I don't know what part of my support would end up in .ml instance which I see as a propaganda machine against countries like mine. And even if you say that none of my money would end up there, I kind of don't want to support you as a human being. I won't pay your salary so you have energy to do what you do on .ml instance.
If Lemmy as a project dies, so be it. Foss world can always spark successful forks (see OpenElec vs LibreElec) and alternatives like PieFed already exist

- Personally I dont do any moderation, other than banning an obvious spam account once in a while. I simply dont have time for it and leave it to other people.
- this would better be asked on the original post by nutomic: https://lemmy.ml/post/29579005
  nutomic previously also shared on matrix that he is not participating in moderation except for removing spam.
  edit: commented this before refreshing, so i didn't see nutomic already replied

I donate one euro a month to lemmy.world. It's not a lot but I'm not rolling in cash and I feel like the service is worth paying something for, even if I can only contribute a nominal amount. But I feel like they should have an option to take an entire year's worth of donations at once would be more efficient than a monthly withdrawal.
As it currently stands, a monthly bank transfer of 1 € is taken from my account and I feel like a significant portion of that is going to be taken by bank fees, whereas if they took a single annual transfer of 12 €, they would keep a much larger percentage of the money.
- at least via opencollective there is an option for yearly donations. when using a payment method other than paypal this will be yearly payments.
  
  Apparently I'm not allowed to do that. Do I have to cancel my existing donation first? I don't see a way to do that through Open Collective, I'm guessing I just cancel the direct debit through my bank?
- I just did crypto transfer
  
  Is that an option? I would gladly do a crypto transfer but I didn't notice it.

Became a free member on patreon when i first joined lemmy. Completely forgot to actually up the tier. Recurring donations are now on, thanks for the reminder!
- I was a paid member which was supposed to give you access to the dev chat on discord, but despite asking a few times and paying for almost half a year, it just never happened. So I couldn't take them seriously.

If half the people circlejerking in here were serious they could pay a liberal developer to contribute instead, but somehow I doubt that's happening.

Toss a coin to your lemmy maintainer, oh valley of shitposts
Just donated a tenner, keep rocking. Also, fuck spez.
- But why fuck spez but donate to these people? Why not praise spez and fuck these tankies? How are they any better?
  
  They are better because they dont own lemmy and we can easily block their instance.
  For reddit avoid posting luigi or elon related content on it you might get your account banned because spez doesnt like it.
  
  But why fuck spez but donate to these people? Why not praise spez and fuck these tankies? How are they any better?
  spez is a greedy capitalist who ran reddit for profit. It is a business beholden to venture capital and acts accordingly, enclosing their walled-garden with the API bans, flooding with ads, censoring anti-corporate topics on behalf of the owning class (like support for the Brian Thompson assassination, censoring criticism of Elon Musk) and taking over communities they don't like. Lemmy devs are anti-capitalists running this as a non-profit platform through user donations and non-profit support, so they have an active interest to avoid enshittifying the platform. See also: BlueSky starting to kneel to Turkish censorship to avoid losing profitability, as opposed to Mastodon (founded by an anticapitalist).
  And before anyone misreads this and brings up lemmy.ml's bans to try and equivocate that as similar censorship; that is a specific instance running their own rules for their own users, just like blahaj.zone will ban people for anti-trans statements and lemmy.world will ban people for celebrating the assassination of Brian Thompson. The Lemmy software which the devs maintain enables you to post here even if you're banned from the communities they run for their own users.
- Thanks!

Now I'm supporting lemmy and voyager development. Worth every penny.
- Extremely based

Can't you lobby with the EU too to fund you since there’s a real need for European social media alternatives to challenge the dominance of US platforms? Will deffo donate!
- Im not a lobbyist and have no idea how to even get started with that. Feel free to give it a try if you have any contacts in that area.
- Why would the EU fund developers who are openly supporting russian imperialist expansion and genocide?

All this is very confusing to me. I had to look up what tankies are and if these giuys are tankies then they can go fuck themselves. I came here from reddit and now I am thinking I might have made a mistake. I don't know enough aboput this federated stuff to understand it. I have no idea how to block .ml nor do I know who these people are who run it. I do know that I had a very close Ukrainian friend as a child and although he is dead now I still see the Ukrainian people are brothers and sisters. I am not sure I want to give any of my money to an intance that actively shits out fucking ork propaganda. I need some educating here.
- You're on .world, .world already defederates (Will not accept content, votes or users) from 2/3rds of what's known as the "Tankie Triad" (.ml, Hexbear and Grad, .world is defeded from grad and hex)
  For blocking go-to lemmy.world/settings block tab and scroll to bottom to "instance blocks" and add lemmy.ml
  Note: The "block" currently does not function properly, it's more of a mute, you won't see .ml comments or posts, but they can see and interact with it
- I wouldn't say you made a mistake. Lemmy is still a great place and instances like lemmy.world you're on, are run by down to earth people like you and me.
  It's just that Lemmy's core code is (primarily) developed by people who ... well, have some opinions. However, that probably shouldn't even matter. Developers' opinions are just that - opinions. They don't put any of their opinions into the code. And that code is then taken by people of lemmy.world to run the instance.
  And up until now it wasn't a big issue, it was more like a curiosity "Hah, this great piece of software is developed by those guys. Well I strongly disagree with them and want to have nothing with their instance and their opinions". But now it starts to be an issue when they ask for money. People are naturally reluctant
  
  You seem to be forgetting that the two devs are active admins on both ML and grad. And at least one of them does spend a lot of time banning any critique of their pro-genocide views.
  
  If that should not matter, why should the CEO of Reddit matter? Why not stay there? He at least "only" wants money, no genocide or other directly inhumane stuff.
- That’s what prevents me from donating money.
  If they want some coding assistance … sure, I’ll help but I’m not giving them financial support.
  
  Ok donate then
- Lots of great people on Lemmy, you just have to avoid .ml and other tankie instances sometimes (and then, not everybody on .ml is a tankie).
  You could choose a an instance like .cafe it seems
  (notice the brigading. It goes from 240 comments to 60 when you block them)
  But it really isn't that bad on .world, and it's certainly pro Ukraine
- your best bet is to consider another instance that directly opposes lemmy.ml's moderation style (though i don't know who defederates from it): slrpnk.net, lemmy.blahaj.zone, or db0 (i forget their full domain).
  if you want to go a step further you could also switch to mbin or piefed. personally i find they're less far along than lemmy which is why i'm on a lemmy instance instead of an mbin instance, but also the death of your friend is a pretty strong motivator. you want to do right by and honor your friend's memory. x also grapple with my Ukrainain friends, both still present and forever lost, and ponder if what i do helps them or hinders them. you'll find your way
  
  lemmy.cafe defederates from the entire Tankie Triad
- I am not a tankie and reject that label.
  
  Too fucking bad, tankie.

Not while the devs run a pro-genocide echo chamber. Tankie punks fuck off.
- The genocide of Gazan civilians is indeed horrible, just like the genocide of Ukrainian civilians. Both make me feel sick. However, only one of these observations is allowed to be uttered on tankie instances. And no, I don't see the same amount of an intense echo chamber across the entire .world instance.

I was a paid patreon member which was supposed to give you access to the dev chat on discord, but despite asking a few times and paying for almost half a year, it just never happened. So I couldn't take them seriously.
Since I blocked .ml I can't leave a reply on the original message, and I'm not going to unblock them just because.
- We dont use discord at all, the chats are on Matrix and accessible for free. I see the membership descriptions on Patreon are wrong, will get those fixed shortly.

Just threw in a couple bucks! Loving Lemmy, it lacks the stench of capitalism that reddit fell victim to. Thank you to everyone who makes this place work!
- Thanks, and youre welcome!

I'm not donating a single bit of whatever currency to .ml. Pick one or the other: dev costs or your own personal soap box cost.
- Lemmy.ml monthly server costs: like 30$/mo
  Cost to develop a Reddit: like 30M/yr
  Price Lemmy devs are doing it for: 3000$/mo
  
  Tell you what, if you make lemmy.ml like a jail for those users where they can sit there all day long and let the other users themselves disconnect or not even see their posts, I will start donating. Almost like a 4chan for lemmy.
- Meh, you can block the instance and still see the value in the project. I'd rather have both than neither.
  
  That's how I use them but i am not giving a dime to those who want to kill me and constantly spew russian peopaganda. They can beg putin for funds.
  
  I did. I can't force the instance I am on to de-federate and I can't ban all users. I also don't agree with this campaign of those users to start the Reddit refugees and exiles there. You're making all of Lemmy appear like they support that specific view of politics.
  
  It doesn't stop their users from coming over to our spaces and shitting all over the place
- lemmy.ml hosting is only financed by donations via Opencollective. All other donations go exclusively to developer salaries.
  
  I still stand by what I said. Not a single fraction of any currency either directly or indirectly to that instance.

The purity testing and holier-than-thou attacks going on in these fundraising threads are truly counterproductive. We're not strong enough as an ecosystem and community yet to be able to afford this luxury. If this is coming from the left, I think you should consider the larger goal here.
- I have personal friends in Ukraine who were displaced from their home by the invaders. I cannot morally justify giving any kind of benefit to the people who would praise or support their actions.
  Lemmy is just a thing, it can cease to exist for all I care.
  
  I certainly dont praise or support civilians being displaced from their homes. Maybe there are some users who make such insensitive comments, but it doesnt mean that I agree with them.
- But, it's counter-productive to donate money to Ukraine to aid in their defense against the Russian Invasion of their country, and then support an instance that is actively spreading Russian propaganda against Ukraine. Seems like you have to make a choice there, and I choose to side with the people being wronged.
  
  But is not donating going to change anything?
- A lot of people have a problem giving their money to people who have such horrible beleifs.
- sorry to put this down on your comment
  those aunts and uncles and brothers and daughters that you're all so mad at and won't ever talk to again. that all won't matter soon.
  those people next door who fly a flag that rustles your jimmies. or the bumper stickers about who to encourage. that all won't matter soon.
  those co-workers you can't stand who drive you crazy and won't let you eat lunch alone. or the managers that bug you to shit. that all won't matter soon.
  what WILL matter is that you know each other. it'll gauge how you should barter with them.
  none of this shit is going to matter in a little while. mark my words.
  
  What are you saying, there's going to be the rapture?

Ah shit. I'm currently a starving musician. I'll scrape you off some of the next gig.
- Before you do: https://lemmy.world/post/29072279
- Before you do learn of their political stances and take a look at the federations they manage. Then think hard about what the company people keep says about them
  
  But you have no problem whatsoever in using the services these horrible people provide you? Why are you here?

Currently donating $5 a month to lemmy.world. I'll continue for the foreseeable future.
- Why not get a Reddit membership at that point?
  
  Because I want to support Lemmy

No. Not until the people who want to genocide everyone who does not speak russian are gone from the project.
- Maybe you should go back to reddit? Stormfront is probably more to your liking?
  
  Then why was I told me and all my people need to be killed by russians by a ml user this morning? If you dont agree with those people why are they only on your federations? If I didnt like bunch of tankies and putinists spreading their wishes of world genocide around I'd remove them from my platform. The fact they are not removed and people who are talking back at them are speaks volumes of .ml and other tankie federations and people who run them.
  
  The "everyone I disagree with is a Nazi" argument? Seriously? You can't do better than that?

Is it possible to donate a server instance?
i.e. Reserve one for 12 months on Digital Ocean, Hezner, etc and transfer ownership

Ew no. Rather see dev work on Lemmy stop than support tankies 🤢
- Then support mbin and piefed?
- Then what are you doing here?
  
  Threadiverse != Lemmy

I'm skint sorry

Nah.
ml can shit itself and rot. So can the rest of Lemmy if that's not a price that's worth being paid.

These money will go to two people who created and actively maintain and promote an instance pretending the brutal murder of Ukranians is not happening but also necessary, and deleting and banning contrary opinions.
No.

The comments are a full microcosm showcasing why Lemmy will stay underground and it will never overtake reddit

Is it possible donate to Lemmy development without contributing to Lemmy.ml?

Lotta no's based on people who can't stand being in a room with other people just because of different political beliefs. I don't follow .ml's philosophy, and I don't care. Take em, leave em. Whatever.
They aren't why I'm not on Reddit.
Remember why you're here. If you can't handle discourse with people who see the world differently then go back to Mastodon and save us your intolerance. Discourse is the lifeblood of a site like this, different opinions are part of being human. Grow up.
but t-they support such and such genocide!!
Then protest them louder. Don't bring the rest of us down over it, not that it isn't mostly sensationalist to begin with.
- Remember why you’re here. If you can’t handle discourse with people who see the world differently then go back to Mastodon and save us your intolerance
  You're asking people to "tolerate" support of human rights abuse by authoritarian governments like China and Russia...
  Lots of people have problems with authoritarianism, especially now.
  That's not even getting into those two individuals personal views on things like LGBTQ. Which shouldn't be surprising when given the stances on LGBTQ by the authoritarian governments they idolize.
  And before anyone says "they don't talk about that stuff, look at their profile!"....
  Even if it wasn't obvious they have alts already, here's one of them admitting it:
  https://lemmy.ml/post/29579005/18404597
  Acting like directly giving money to them somehow doesn't support them is ludacris.
  If their political stances truly don't matter to you. Are you ok buying a Tesla still because it's an EV?

ITT: anticommunism.
- Antifascism
  Unfortunately .ml is Stalinist these days, not Maxist/Leninist
  
  leftists are not fascists. "stalinism" is not even a thing.
  this is literally red scare propaganda. don't you guys have your own fascism to deal with?

I can't take seriously people who use the term "tankie". If you mean Stalinist, say Stalinist. Most of the time these people are creating a dishonest almagam of Stalinism and all Marxism. Genuine Marxism, that is Trotskyism, stood against Stalinist political distortions and resulting degradation of the Soviet Union. Many people, including Trotsky himself, paid the ultimate price for their faithful defence of the ideals of the Russian Revolution and Soviet democracy. By any measure, Stalin was a mass murderer.
Stalin forsook the program of world revolution in favor of the nationalist program of socialism in one country. His policies were disastrous and lead to famine that claimed the lives of millions of Soviet citizens in the period of the early 1930s, throughout the entire Soviet Union. There is no evidence that this was an intentional policy of genocide. The so-called "Holodomor" is a fabrication of Ukranian nationalists meant to justify their participation in the Nazi's genocidal war of destruction against the whole Slavic people.
- The so-called “Holodomor” is a fabrication of Ukranian nationalists meant to justify their participation in the Nazi’s genocidal war of destruction against the whole Slavic people.
  Get fucked, you tankie piece of shit!
- Genuine Marxism, that is Trotskyism
  It's pretty arrogant to declare one form of Leninism to be "genuine Marxism". Leninism and Trotskyism are both variations on Marx's theory, and that's a good thing. There's no point in trying to claim the one true line of purity, that's the stuff I'd expect from Hoxhaists crying "revisionism!"

God, no. If Lemmy today is gonna be all spam of the shitheads begging for money then I guess it's closer to death than I thought
- I'll take a grassroots donation campaign over ads any day.
  edit: relevant context: https://lemmy.ml/comment/18395421
  
  There are other services that can provide what Lemmy does without supporting their admins where your money would be better off going. Or just use adblockers like an adult, lol
  That's actually been my plan, jump ship when .ml's toxicity finally sank Lemmy, cuz I'm too lazy to do anything until shit actually happens
- but how the hell else do you expect this to get done?
  I dont, specifically because of who the money goes to
  We can’t just expect people to work for free all the time in a predominantly capitalist world. They have to eat.
  They can also just not continue development if they don't get the money. That's a fine option, too
  Are you developing the platform? Do you have another idea for How to pay their bills?
  No, and many, but it's also not my concern at all given the shitstains the developers are
  
  they expect other ppl to tap in, they think they are stopping other ppl from helping lol
- .ml is needed for development. I'd support its existence even if I'd rather defederate.
  
  .ml is needed for development
  An instance is, it does not have to be theirs or run the way they do
- I mean, that’s a fundamental part of many open source projects. I recently got an email from a few asking for the same because of economic troubles, and many donors are feeling the squeeze right now and cut their donations first.
  It doesn’t necessarily mean that a project is about to fail. But it’s often the case that with better support, they could aspire to do more.
  
  they either have insane funding and no releases, or low to no funding and constant releases lol
  
  Spamming the entire page of every instance is not a fundamental part of FOSS projects, and is just another example of the dogshit Lemmy devs being dogshit

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