• spirit@beehaw.orgEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    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

    • Red Army Dog Cooper@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      So um, no one on the face of this earth hates fascism more than a communist, the evidence you dug up only seems to reinforced the not a fascist and its utterly rediculous to call us that.

    • andobando@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Nothing here says he’s a fascist. His “genocide denial” stance stems mostly from the idea of being anti-capitalist and not trusting US-centric sources. Its not entirely without merit. Noam Chomsky for example is accused of the same thing for the Pol Pot genocide, though at the time he was right for the same reasons – accusations started flying in the US based on completely banal sources.

      I used to be like this, its not entirely harmful. And in any case, I don’t give a shit about his politics. We should be thinking about how to separate peoples politics from the platform, and the work hes done on Lemmy does exactly that.

      • OrangeSlice@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        Noam Chomsky for example is accused of the same thing for the Pol Pot genocide, though at the time he was right for the same reasons

        It’s also a valid opinion to criticize Chomsky for his reaction to the Cambodian genocide.I can’t recall all the details of how things went down, so I have no comment myself, but I do have other criticisms of him.

        It doesn’t make him a fascist, or a Nazi/Nazi sympathizer. That would detract from what I have to say about the people who actually are, since that’s a separate conversation. Same goes for the devs perhaps (but that’s also a separate conversation).

      • GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        Noam Chomsky for example is accused of the same thing for the Pol Pot genocide, though at the time he was right for the same reasons – accusations started flying in the US based on completely banal sources.

        You’re giving Chomsky’s version of the story, but it’s such a weird story because one of the only communist projects Chomsky ever spoke in favor of was easily one of the worst ones (along with Peru), ones that even hardcore “tankies” disavow. Like, wasn’t this the motherfucker that said the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a victory for the “left”?

        Granted, there is misreporting on Cambodia, which started when it was contemporary and continues to this day, but that misreporting is mostly on the magnitude of the crimes committed, not the basis of calling them crimes (i.e. they were still awful).

        Anyway, Chomsky is a shitty left-neoliberal [PDF]

        • andobando@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          He didn’t speak in favor of it. Sources came up saying millions were being killed in Cambodia. Chosmky questioned the sources saying “where the fuck is this coming from? Nothing supports this”. Thats his version of the story, yeah but hardly any evidence he supported Cambodia.

      • Slawtering@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        2 years ago

        It is extremely harmful when people like them go around non-tankie left wing subs and eventually gain control through nefarious means and eventually transition it into yet another tankie propaganda sub. Or when they moderate a supposedly general left wing sub but any criticism of authoritarian communism gets you muted and called a liberal, eventually allowing their propaganda to seep through to regular socialists as any criticism is shot down. /r/GreenAndPleasant is guilty of the latter.

        It’s not really the politics but the way power hungry people get.

    • gk99@kbin.social
      01·
      2 years ago

      See, it’s all this stuff that really makes the

      Such slander doesn’t deserve any response

      statement feel very Steve Huffman to me. It very clearly does deserve a response because the problem doesn’t end with just saying “nope lol that’s not us” and people like me have to go digging through all this bullshit just to figure out the facts: they believe anti-China news and similar is U.S./media propaganda and will moderate opposing viewpoints with “Orientalism” bans and similar. That’s not a hard statement to type, and if this viewpoint is in good faith then I struggle to see why they refuse to just say that and consistently resort to “if you don’t like our moderation policy feel free to join/start a different instance!” without ever actually clarifying the moderation policy. Even lemmygrad pretty much says outright “if you like capitalism, fuck off.”

      • ram@lemmy.ca
        1·
        2 years ago

        I mean, dude’s not CEO, he doesn’t control the instances. He does own a very large instance, but I don’t think it’s even the most dominant instance post-redditting.

        I disagree with his views, though I will admit to some sympathy on some aspects (not the genocide stuff), but ultimately, he’s just a dude who makes this software. He doesn’t own it, he doesn’t have a monopoly on its control, and really, the entirety of the Fediverse could, if he went full Huff, say “fuck you” and defederate his instance. That’s the power of a distributed service. Heck, your own instance, kbin.social, could lemmy.ml at any time and it’d have little impact overall.

        Even were I to concede to him being “Huffman-like” (which I do not agree with), I don’t think he’s actually relevant enough in the real-world usage of the software to care about as far as that goes.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          2 years ago

          Having gotten involved a bit over the last week, I think he’s generally a good guy. I disagree with his politics, but none of that has anything to do with software development. He writes good code, and when he’s not overwhelmed with nonsense, he’s quite helpful.

          There’s another major dev, but I don’t know anything about him. I think they just want to build a cool tool that they can use to provide a safe space for discussion, and they want to make that available to others as well. That’s pretty cool, and that’s something I can support.

          • ram@lemmy.ca
            0·
            2 years ago

            Ya, I don’t have any personal interactions with him and am withholding real judgement without. Even his politics, it’s hard for me to really condemn him when I don’t even know the lens he’s viewing things through. End of the day, I’m taking a best guess based on a few (3?) instances where he’s ever been recorded saying something that’s shit.

            But also, even the worst tankie’s better than the best right winger, any day.

            • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
              0·
              2 years ago

              Eh, I consider myself to be the opposite of both politically, but I have no problem contributing to FOSS projects lead by either. But I agree in general, I’ve had better luck with socialists than fascists when it comes to FOSS.

              • GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml
                1·
                2 years ago

                Slightly contra- the other user that responded to you, I need to ask: You’ve spoken with rightwingers before, right? Most westerners have had the “privilege” at least a few times to allow such people to speak for themselves. Have you ever had an even slightly comparable interaction with a “tankie” where they also got to speak for themselves, rather than be told about what they believe third-hand?

  • SummerIsTooWarm@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Thank you and @dessalines and other contributors for your effort. It must be really overwhelming to suddenly have so many new people using lemmy. Being overloaded is to be expected in these circumstances. Please make sure that you don’t overwork yourselves now and set limits on how much work you do.

  • JCreazy@midwest.socialEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Great to see an update. I know you guys got overloaded quickly and I appreciate what you are doing. I’ll check out the donation link.

  • XLRV@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Thanks for everything, I’m happy to see Lemmy and the Fediverse growing like that.

      • Binzy_Boi@lemmy.ml
        1·
        2 years ago

        I was recently sharing Lemmy to some people and how the entire Reddit blackout is stupid considering everything the platform has done in the past and the mindset of the CEO.

        Someone brought up Voat and they were lamenting how that failed, and I decided to check out the WayBack Machine captures for it, and Christ, nothing but antisemitism and racism.

        • Lenins2ndCat@lemmy.ml
          21·
          2 years ago

          OH BOY VOAT

          Yeah. Free speech absolutism does not attract a good crowd, and once you attract that crowd you will not attract any other crowd because the content output they produce is repellant to any normal person.

          • ram@lemmy.ca
            1·
            2 years ago

            I spent a bunch of time on Voat as a kid, thinking I could be a free-thinking free speech absolutist who simply disagreed with the things other said around there.

            What I observed is a crowd of people of an extreme ideology, who would try and one-up one another with further extremes, moving the overton window within the platform further to the extreme. As it continued, some would hit their breaking point and simply leave due to the toxicity, while others opted to continue the “who can be more offensive” game. The userbase, as it was, was doomed to forever become worse and worse, and smaller and smaller.

            I believe that in the later years of Voat, the actually closed down the public-facing site and user registrations. I’m not sure what the Voat devs thought, but it’s pretty clear it didn’t go the way they’d expected as they had to pretty much hide their users from the greater internet.

      • BrambleDog@kbin.social
        1·
        2 years ago

        I went to VOAT in 2020 just to check it out. I kept clicking the random page and I shit you not it cycled through about 20 Qanon/maga subreddits and one random bird watching community.

    • SkyNTP@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      I’m a nerd and I’m here because Reddit has forsaken the nerds and is treating its user base like cattle to be herded. I guess most people want to be herded. That’s fine for them, but I want something more, where we make our place for ourselves, to our own liking. Not so that some investors can get richer. I suspect many of you are here for similar reasons.

      I would like to contribute, and have the skills to, but unfortunately no time at the moment. For now I am mostly watching to see how things develop, but sooner or later I may just jump in if I find things are moving too slow.

  • Kuvwert@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    God I appreciate these dudes. I don’t envy them one bit right now…

  • Die4Ever@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    I had such a hard time explaining to someone today that there is no universal set of Lemmy rules/politics and you can run your own instance with literally 0 rules

    people have forgotten that things can exist outside of the few billionaire/trillionaire closed source walled gardens they’ve become so reliant on

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Yeah, I think that’s great. I think it’s awesome that something like Lemmygrad can exist, while also a community criticizing Lemmygrad (there are several) all on the same platform, and without any real central control.

      If you don’t want to see certain content, you can block it and move on, while getting the benefits of federation.

      I joined communities from a half dozen instances, and I’ll probably join communities from even more as I get better at finding communities.

  • Binzy_Boi@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Looking forward to donating come next month, sorry to hear the struggles with the funder as of late.

  • kilgore@feddit.deEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Thanks for the hard work, and also clearing up the whole genocide thing! ^^