Is lemmy.ml turn into authoritarian?
I just realised, I can't post anything on lemmy.ml
So, I checked https://lemmy.ml/modlog, there's a new moderator.
All posts and comments talking about China, Jinping, Russia, and Putin have been deleted and users banned
You're viewing a single thread.
I think this is bad for Lemmy as a whole, as a community but only due to misunderstanding and generalizations... People are going to equate the "censorship" on the server lemmy.ml as censorship on Lemmy, the platform/software. That is just NOT THE CASE. Please, whenever someone mentions lemmy.ml and its censorship or the likes, be fast to mention that that is a specific lemmy server and the beauty of lemmy is its decentralization and the fact that it is open source. There are plenty of other servers.
I fear that this kind of thing drives people away from Lemmy, when it should not.
Well, the situation is a bit more complex. Admins of this "specific Lemmy Server" are creators and main maintainers of the Lemmy project as such.
So, generalization you are afraid of makes some sense.
I have replied to someone else further down with my opinion on this topic. I think it also fits in a reply to you, so I will just copy paste it here:
Yes, it might sound worrisome, but I dont think you are pushing authoritarian ideology by using Lemmy. The code itself is fine. The code is not authoritarian. The server which hosts your account is also not authoritarian.
Lemmy is, right now, the best alternative for a reddit-like platform. It is something created for the users, by the users. By using lemmy, you are not enriching the wallets of the shareholders. By using something like reddit, you provide content and a select few get to buy a new yacht.
Also, plenty of people are contributing code to lemmy. It is no longer just these 2. The code is also Open-Source. Anyone can fork it and create a new version of lemmy, with compatibility with the current version of lemmy. By using lemmy, you are allowing the possibility that, at any time in the future, someone else comes and says “I have some ideas to improve lemmy, let’s do this on my own terms”, forks it and continues the work without massively spliting the community.
You have many good points here. Still, I have a feeling that Lemmy as a platform and as a software is still very coupled with its creators.
Yes, there are other contributors as well. But these guys currently own the official repo and make key decisions. And if you donate to Lemmy you pay a salary to these two guys (afaik, Lemmy is their full-time work these days).
So, for me, it is still rather complicated.
I don't see a problem about their work, just because of their political orientation. And frankly, neither should you.
They develop good software, which is open source and everyone can inspect it. There is nothing wrong about them getting paid for it. Not giving donations to them because of what they believe would be the same as an employer running you through a political evaluation before actually employing you.
Don't get me wrong: there is nothing wrong about not donating (i did not). But not donating, solely because of some ideology a developer of open source Software has (which does not reflect in the code), seems quite stuck up to me.
I guess lemme ask this. If the devs of lemmy were open Nazis, went to rallies, openly promoted it, etc, would you still feel the same way?
What are you asking about? I don't support extremist ideology - be it left or right. Extremism and violence was never beneficial to the political discourse or greater public. So i disagree with those ideologies. I vote on laws and elect people which i believe will keep extremism out of our system.
If it comes to the quality of someones work, private conviction does not matter. Sure, they might let personal beliefs bleed into their work. But there the beauty of Open Source comes into play: I can check it myself and if i don't have the capability to do so, many others do.
So if they are on the far spectrum of something i disagree and i am very greatfull for good quality of work they provide for free, i might still give a small donation. If they are actually extremist, i prefer to let the authorities deal with it. Where i come from the police actually cracks down on this kind of people and they probably are better at doing so than me myself.
Just because there will be people who ask about freedom of speech... Someone way smarter than I said something like: "Your freedom ends where someone else's freedom begins". This should be the base rule to identify extremism. So to stay with NAZIs: A far right person who doesn't want Jewish people owning a store infringes on someone else's freedom. Therefore that person is an extremist, should not be protected by his freedom and authorities should deal with them.
Yes yes, the authorities should deal with them but would you support them? Would you recommend their software if it was good, would you use their products?
Right now I am using their software - so are you. Even though there was again a post about one of the devs. In the very best case those where some rather controversial statements about how the Chinese government treats Uyghurs. I strongly disagree with those statements and am still using lemmy and suggest it to friends. IMO the technical solutions is sound and much better than reddit.
I mean, you didn't answer the question though. My post was literally just two questions and you didn't answer either.
By using lemmy, you are not enriching the wallets of the shareholders.
You actually have no guarantee that any given deployment doesn't harvest and sell data. They probably don't, but it's not guaranteed.
The data is public. It doesn’t matter.
Only if it's actually having an effect on the Lemmy project.
From what I've seen, the Lemmy devs recognize that their opinions aren't welcome everywhere, and that Lemmy should not have any biases.
That might still have secondary effects such as in what kind of moderation features they develop and support
Hint: the moderation tools they are choosing to develop are none.
They are intentionally refusing to develop any moderation tools despite current moderation tools not working and it being the biggest issue instance admins are facing.
"Intentionally" is a bit overdramatizing, don't you think?
It's just not as much of a priority, which is still questionable.
It also has the largest worldnews community, which bans you for discussing a literal war in Europe
psssst... check out !worldnews@sh.itjust.works
Censorship is certainly the kind of thing that drove people away from dotworld for preemptively defederating from Hexbear by fiat.