Why should I care who made the software if they don’t profit off my use of it? I’m not giving anyone at .ml a dime. Nor can they cash in and sell .ml the way (say) Reddit could do with its users – at least not without risking blanket defederation and the flight of pretty much everyone using that site…
Neither Lemmy nor Kbin is a “system built for propaganda.” They are systems built for community and communication. Which means they can certainly be used for propaganda, but also for many other things. I’m not going to write off an entire protocol just because a fraction of the people who use it are being jerks.
You haven’t seen it, because you’re using kbin, but every unaltered lemmy instance has a donate link in the top bar on every page of the site. So, yes, they do profit off it.
As I said above, I’m also on lemmy.ca. That has a donation link with funds going solely to the admins at that instance.
But even if every penny went to Chairman Mao Ze Lemmy or whatever, it wouldn’t matter to me because I wouldn’t donate a penny. So again, no one’s profiting off my use.
Ethical/moral support gets thorny with open source software, and even more so with networks like the fediverse. There is a limit to how much you can impune the creators of a tool relative to its usage, and vice versa.
There’s quite a few far-right and fascist Mastodon instances and forks (Gab, Truth, Parker, etc.) The creators of Mastodon can’t really stop them from using the software with the license they initially have. But they wouldn’t exist if Mastodon was closed source either (and perhaps neither would we). Is it morally better that no one use Mastodon because bad instances are able to exist because of them? I personally think not.
Now, fortunately, because of the federated ActivityPub system, servers can actively choose to cut off, and even hard block instances, and most have done so to these services. This also came up with lemmygrad, an instance that had worse tendencies with tankie concerns with lemmy/ml. Many have now chose to defederate with lemmygrad or are considering it.
Several communities have been established on the lemmy software, and those intermingle with kbin as well. They have been willing to defederate with problematic instances as well, despite the problems this poses in the threadiverse model vs the federated microblogging/social posting model (many times you have to isolate the entire instance instead of just specific communities, which means of you encounter bad actors you may be forced to orphan larger communities people from other instances participate in, etc; see the recent beehaw sijw/lw defed debacle). Does this mean that using the lemmy software, despite the instances’ and users’ opposition to the potential views previously discussed is morally bad? Again, I personally think not.
With situations like with GitHub employees protesting contracts with the DoD, the opposition to providing support on ethical grounds is understandable, as it’s active, deliberate action that goes toward an organization that perpetuates violence. But for a system that can very quickly shun a project owner or section of a community or even fork just as quickly? I view it as no different than protest forks.
Your phone was most likely made in China. And unlike Lemmy, that most likely means that some of your money was sent to China. But it still doesn’t mean that using a phone demonstrates support of the CCP.
The software is made by tankies, any use of it is support of them.
There are better ways to access the Fediverse (such as kbin) that aren’t built as a system for tankie propaganda.
Why should I care who made the software if they don’t profit off my use of it? I’m not giving anyone at .ml a dime. Nor can they cash in and sell .ml the way (say) Reddit could do with its users – at least not without risking blanket defederation and the flight of pretty much everyone using that site…
Neither Lemmy nor Kbin is a “system built for propaganda.” They are systems built for community and communication. Which means they can certainly be used for propaganda, but also for many other things. I’m not going to write off an entire protocol just because a fraction of the people who use it are being jerks.
You haven’t seen it, because you’re using kbin, but every unaltered lemmy instance has a donate link in the top bar on every page of the site. So, yes, they do profit off it.
As I said above, I’m also on lemmy.ca. That has a donation link with funds going solely to the admins at that instance.
But even if every penny went to Chairman Mao Ze Lemmy or whatever, it wouldn’t matter to me because I wouldn’t donate a penny. So again, no one’s profiting off my use.
Ethical/moral support gets thorny with open source software, and even more so with networks like the fediverse. There is a limit to how much you can impune the creators of a tool relative to its usage, and vice versa.
There’s quite a few far-right and fascist Mastodon instances and forks (Gab, Truth, Parker, etc.) The creators of Mastodon can’t really stop them from using the software with the license they initially have. But they wouldn’t exist if Mastodon was closed source either (and perhaps neither would we). Is it morally better that no one use Mastodon because bad instances are able to exist because of them? I personally think not.
Now, fortunately, because of the federated ActivityPub system, servers can actively choose to cut off, and even hard block instances, and most have done so to these services. This also came up with lemmygrad, an instance that had worse tendencies with tankie concerns with lemmy/ml. Many have now chose to defederate with lemmygrad or are considering it.
Several communities have been established on the lemmy software, and those intermingle with kbin as well. They have been willing to defederate with problematic instances as well, despite the problems this poses in the threadiverse model vs the federated microblogging/social posting model (many times you have to isolate the entire instance instead of just specific communities, which means of you encounter bad actors you may be forced to orphan larger communities people from other instances participate in, etc; see the recent beehaw sijw/lw defed debacle). Does this mean that using the lemmy software, despite the instances’ and users’ opposition to the potential views previously discussed is morally bad? Again, I personally think not.
With situations like with GitHub employees protesting contracts with the DoD, the opposition to providing support on ethical grounds is understandable, as it’s active, deliberate action that goes toward an organization that perpetuates violence. But for a system that can very quickly shun a project owner or section of a community or even fork just as quickly? I view it as no different than protest forks.
Your phone was most likely made in China. And unlike Lemmy, that most likely means that some of your money was sent to China. But it still doesn’t mean that using a phone demonstrates support of the CCP.