Good read, gives me a lot of hope for this project.
I look forward to an exciting future with all of you.
(Also- hopefully this wasn’t posted already)
https://join-lemmy.org/news/2023-06-17_-_Update_from_Lemmy_after_the_Reddit_blackout
This was written by the Lemmy devs.
I’m pledging $5/month each to mastodon.world and the lemmy devs. I recently quit drinking, so this is a drop in the bucket compared to what I used to spend monthly on alcohol.
Congratulations and good luck my friend, stay strong 💪, resist all temptation.
you should start a lemmy community on stopping drinking!
deleted by creator
Nice, fuck alcohol. I quit drinking years ago and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. My life is so much simpler and more fun now.
I personally think, at this time, it appears to be a good cause.
Is there a stopdrinking community on lemmy?
Yeah, these developer guys seem great, I’ll donate for sure. I love their vision.
Not sure if I’m getting wooshed or not, but you should know the lemmy devs are tankies who deny the Uyghur genocide. Your money is better spent going to non-affiliated instance admins to keep their servers running.
Cool, I’m definitely not ok with the tankie stuff and the denialism you refer to. I actually live in China and am critical of such points as much as I dare to be considering I have family here. I already have my own instance (lemmy.pro) on a robust server so yep, that’s a good way for me to contribute and I’m already doing that.
I’m going to donate to these guys. It’s the least we can do considering how busy they have been since the reddit uprising.
Absolutely! Here’s the direct link for donations: https://join-lemmy.org/donate
I just want to say I’m fairly vocal about bugs/issues/confusing things. But I totally understand lemmy wasn’t prepared for tens of thousands of new users overnight, it was just so sudden and unexpected. So even if me and other users sound grumpy just know that at least this one is aware it’s going to be a bumpy ride for a while as the internet adjusts to this massive upheaval.
Not only did reddit break reddit, it broke lemmy too! (but for different reasons)
Hey, even with all of the bugs and issues-
I have had much more enjoyable conversations on Lemmy, then I have on reddit in a LONG time.
For that- I can endure the bugs. Worth it IMO!
Holy smokes, growing 25 times larger in 2 weeks. Keep up the good work! I just need a good mobile app for iOS, beta is full according to test flight lol.
Its absolutely growing massively, I don’t think the DEVs could have expected this level of growth.
Yeah, this has been one of those black swan events. Nobody could have predicted Reddit would shoot themselves so vigorously in the feet like this.
Well, nobody could have predicted when or how Reddit would shoot themselves so vigorously in the feet. I think a lot of folks have been expecting them to do it eventually.
IMO Reddit had been sinking into enshittification since New Reddit came around, with the suggested posts and the ads.
However. No one expected the process to lurch forward so quickly. I think the Reddit admins were trying to enshittify things slowly, but after looking at what happened with Twitter in the last year or so, they realized they could “tear the bandaid off” so to speak, and maintain (perhaps I should say attain?) profitability.
It’s a bunch of horseshit. I was never comfortable with so much of the internet being concentrated into corporate-owned spaces and I’m glad to see that other people feel the same way.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if their venture capital angels had finally told them “enough, we’re not going to keep throwing good money after bad indefinitely. We’re cutting you off, get profitable.”
Speaking purely as an armchair CEO, I think they could have done it by trimming the fat and making a few minor adjustments (a reasonable API price, for example). They have an income stream, they just needed to learn to live within that income stream’s means. But modern capitalism’s credo is “grow, grow, grow! Always grow!” And so that’s not the direction they went, and ironically I think it’s ultimately going to kill them.
Full circle : coming back to dessalins’s best words : History of Lemmy
… and the Reddit redesign has become a bloated anti-privacy mess.
It was so sudden though. 1 month notice that the app I use was going to be gone. I don’t use Reddit outside of third party apps so here I am….
Same.
Yes, explosive growth and it’s a bit of a miracle we can post here right now.
To be fair , that’s Reddit’s achievement.
I’d say it’s an achievement that it survived the chaos and hasn’t yet buckled under the traffic or the chaos of managing the influx of users that probably don’t even bother reading rules.
I mean, this place was absolutely not prepared for this, and it definitely has a ways to go yet, but it’s come out a week later in a much healthier place than I expected.
I joined the TestFlight for Memmy today
Also testing Memmy, and so far loving it!
Also using Memmy, loving it so far.
Thank you!! Just tried it and so far love it! Has everything I missed from Boost so far
Thanks for sharing.
I love Lemmy, but I’m not a fan of the pressure for recurring subscriptions. Via Opencollective I was able to do a one-time payment.
Pledged on their $5/month tier on their Patreon page now. That’s the least I can do given what I understand they’re going through right now. :D
Same. If this is going to be my new online home, I’d like to contribute somehow. Especially since I cant code, this works
It seems to have become a habit that most good things about the internet is linked to the EU. I’m really grateful. That being said, I hope that Lemmy can become a collaborative project uniting a lot of devs rather than rely on two people.
About the scandal; as long as their opinions do not influence the platform I don’t see them as relevant to Lemmy. If they are illegal, let justice do its work.
…what scandal?
It appears that they support the CCP and deny the Uyghur genocide.
They specifically address this in the article and say it isn’t true.
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.
Here is Dessalines denying that any genocide is taking place: https://lemmy.ml/comment/471382
They can say “we don’t support genocide” all day long, but denying that any genocide is taking place and actively trying to persuade others that no genocide is happening isn’t any better.
I argue that it unintentionally supports a genocide since they’re using a platform to (inadvertently) hide the genocide from the public by convincing others that nothing of the sort is happening.
Link is down
Weird, I just went to it and it seems to work. I’ll SS it and post it in my comment for ease.
I for one do definitely believe that there is a genocide happening and I’m appalled that we can’t do more about it. But people trust in different sources of information. Not believing that a genocide is happening is not the same as actually endorsing genocide.
this may appear to you as an irrelevant detail, but… they who?
Sorry about the ambiguity. At least one of the main devs of Lemmy.
I saw someone else did a bit of research deeper down in the thread. It seems it’s questionable but they at least “only” control like two federated instances, lemmy.world not being one of them. Of course, still not good to have someone like that in the dev team :/
i mean, there’s only two people. they ARE the dev team for now.
yeah. not good at all, I’m not comfortable with it. I don’t understand people who have access to information on the internet and deny anything obvious, no matter whether it’s flat earthers, genocide deniers or ufo believers. how can a brain be this disfunctional?
Any specific link to that?
Update 2: My conclusion
- @dessalines@lemmy.ml, one of the developer of Lemmy, is a “tankie” who refuted the Uyghurs genocide.
- @dessalines@lemmy.ml is also an admin of and funds the website Lemmygrad.ml.
Update: So I dug around a little deeper, and found that
- @dessalines@lemmy.ml is /u/parentis_shotgun on Reddit. Source: https://archive.is/Ky9vd
- /u/parentis_shotgun moderates some subreddits, including r/InformedTankie, r/asktankies, r/GunZedong. Source: https://www.reddit.com/user/parentis_shotgun
- /u/parentis_shotgun got banned from r/socialism for “refuting the ‘China is genociding Uyghurs’”. Source: https://archive.is/CwFZC
- /u/parentis_shotgun then launched lemmy. Source: https://archive.is/132fW
- @muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml, one of the admin of lemmygrad.ml, referred to themself as @dssalines@lemmygrad.ml in a post on lemmygrad. They also claimed that they built Lemmy. It seems like @dssalines@lemmygrad.ml changed their username. Source: https://archive.is/LlzKb
- At this point, I am convinced that the admin @muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml is @dessalines@lemmy.ml.
- Another admin over lemmygrad.ml said that Lemmygrad is paid by @muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml, while another mod said that @muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml is funded by the NED. Source: https://archive.is/G5Dh7
- What is the NED? I have no idea, but Google suggests that could be The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an independent, nonprofit foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world.
- Lemmy was also funded by NLnet with financial support from the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet programme. Source: https://nlnet.nl/project/Lemmy/
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.
- Previous discussion on the moderation policy on lemmy.ml including response from @dessalines@lemmy.ml : Expressing concerns about moderation policy on lemmy.ml
- Accusation of a Mastodon user (probably the one they are referring to): https://mstdn.social/@feditips/106835057054633379
- Essays from @dessalines@lemmy.ml: https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/socialism_faq.md
Update: More info about @dessalines@lemmy.ml
It’s definitely good to have people like you investigating the backgrounds of key developers, as there might be ulterior motives behind them developing open platforms that compete with established Western companies outside of loving the free web and open source. Thank you!
However, I wonder how many opinions we disagree with would be unearthed by doing this kind of research on every core developer of Chrome, Windows, MacOS, Google or whatever. I think you would find a lot if you get people to air their honest opinions. In today’s climate, if these people were open about certain opinions they might hold (not saying they do, but statistically it’s likely some do) they would just be fired, so it’s easy for large corporations to shake damage to their reputation from having certain staff members. For OSS it is a bit harder, since although developers can be pushed out, and software can be forked, it’s all open and it’s harder to understate the contribution to the source code etc. that such a person could have contributed.
It does kind of suck when you hear that developers working on software you like have wildly different worldviews to your own, but sometimes you have to put things in perspective. Having said that, if this guy is the only developer I might feel less than happy about using Lemmy instead of Reddit.
Personally, I’d rather my open source, decentralized software be developed by a nearly fanatical communist than a slimy entrepreneur/capitalist. Either could try to pull the rug out from under you, but at least one is internally consistent until then…
but at least one is internally consistent until then…
Having to do the mental gymnastics required to make China not commit genocide does not suggest internal consistency…
I’d rather have open source, decentralized software be developed by none of those groups/slimy individual. Doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive.
@dessalines@lemmy.ml is /u/parentis_shotgun on Reddit. Source: https://archive.is/Ky9vd
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There is nothing that links to @dessalines@lemmy.ml there.
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Ask yourself: what is this person gaining from spreading misinformation and trying to make people to hate Lemmy developers?
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Wow, this is a lot to digest. Thank you for putting this all together.
@dessalines@lemmy.ml is /u/parentis_shotgun on Reddit. Source: https://archive.is/Ky9vd
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There is nothing that links to @dessalines@lemmy.ml there.
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Ask yourself: what is this person gaining from spreading misinformation and trying to make people to hate Lemmy developers?
Seeing as you’re spamming this reply - I’ll go ahead and spam my response to it.
Since you didn’t notice that in that post /u/parentis_shotgun claims to have made Jerboa and links to it - which links to github.com/dessalines/jerboa - you’re not very observant so I’ll provide you with some alternative posts as evidence.
Step 1) Visit /u/parentis_shotgun’s profile
Step 2) Old PgDn to load some posts. Find the one that says nothing but “Yes” on it. This post specifically.
Step 3) Click
Context
to see which question it is answeringStep 4) Read the question: “Wait a second, are you the same dessalines that narrated my The State and Revolution by Lenin and Fascism: What it is and how to fight it by Trotsky?”
Step 5) See /u/parentis_shotgun’s response: “Yes.”
“Misinformation”.
Ask yourself: What exactly do you get out of defending Tankies?
Alternative route #1: Find parentis_shotgun’s post about creating thumb-key - a privacy-conscious Android keyboard made for your thumbs. Notice it links to a Github profile for dessalines.
Alternative route #2: Find this post where they keep their “communist 101s” on dessalines.github.io/essays/
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(lemmygrad.ml) “funded by the NED”
Must have been stated as sarcasm if Ned is : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democracy
since they are fighting specifically against this kind of United States’s actions.I mean regardless of the devs’ opinions they are forwarding the democratization of information by working on this project
I agree with you yet I was not completely clear : I meant to say that lemmygrad.ml are fighting USA’s stance
Wow…thanks. I had no idea this was ongoing. As someone living in Asia and seeing these issues from up close, these ring close to home. I’ll be paying attention for any of these…moderations.
If you are not on lemmy.ml or lemmingrad there is nothing to look out for because these people have no influence on your content.
How about Lemmy.world? Whichgroupss will they influence mostly?
A lot of big communities are hosted on lemmy.ml. They have influence there.
@dessalines@lemmy.ml is /u/parentis_shotgun on Reddit. Source: https://archive.is/Ky9vd
-
There is nothing that links to @dessalines@lemmy.ml there.
-
Ask yourself: what is this person gaining from spreading misinformation and trying to make people to hate Lemmy developers?
Since you didn’t notice that in that post /u/parentis_shotgun claims to have made Jerboa and links to it - which links to github.com/dessalines/jerboa - you’re not very observant so I’ll provide you with some alternative posts as evidence.
Step 1) Visit /u/parentis_shotgun’s profile
Step 2) Old PgDn to load some posts. Find the one that says nothing but “Yes” on it. This post specifically.
Step 3) Click
Context
to see which question it is answeringStep 4) Read the question: “Wait a second, are you the same dessalines that narrated my The State and Revolution by Lenin and Fascism: What it is and how to fight it by Trotsky?”
Step 5) See /u/parentis_shotgun’s response: “Yes.”
“Misinformation”.
What exactly do you get out of defending Tankies?
E:
Alternative route #1: Find parentis_shotgun’s post about creating thumb-key - a privacy-conscious Android keyboard made for your thumbs. Notice it links to a Github profile for dessalines.
Alternative route #2: Find this post where they keep their “communist 101s” on dessalines.github.io/essays/
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You are amazing! Thanks for the time spent on OSINT
@dessalines@lemmy.ml is /u/parentis_shotgun on Reddit. Source: https://archive.is/Ky9vd
-
There is nothing that links to @dessalines@lemmy.ml there.
-
Ask yourself: what is this person gaining from spreading misinformation and trying to make people to hate Lemmy developers?
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thank you for the research & informing us
Happy to help. :)
@dessalines@lemmy.ml is /u/parentis_shotgun on Reddit. Source: https://archive.is/Ky9vd
-
There is nothing that links to @dessalines@lemmy.ml there.
-
Ask yourself: what is this person gaining from spreading misinformation and trying to make people to hate Lemmy developers?
Since you didn’t notice that in that post /u/parentis_shotgun claims to have made Jerboa and links to it - which links to github.com/dessalines/jerboa - you’re not very observant so I’ll provide you with some alternative posts as evidence.
Step 1) Visit /u/parentis_shotgun’s profile
Step 2) Old PgDn to load some posts. Find the one that says nothing but “Yes” on it. This post specifically.
Step 3) Click
Context
to see which question it is answeringStep 4) Read the question: “Wait a second, are you the same dessalines that narrated my The State and Revolution by Lenin and Fascism: What it is and how to fight it by Trotsky?”
Step 5) See /u/parentis_shotgun’s response: “Yes.”
“Misinformation”.
Ask yourself: What exactly do you get out of defending Tankies?
Alternative route #1: Find parentis_shotgun’s post about creating thumb-key - a privacy-conscious Android keyboard made for your thumbs. Notice it links to a Github profile for dessalines.
Alternative route #2: Find this post where they keep their “communist 101s” on dessalines.github.io/essays/
-
This is some really McCarthyism here.
Stop being lame, my dude.
This is so weird to me lol, maybe I’m just odd but it’s so weird seeing McCarthyism still rearing it’s ugly head after what… 5 decades? I am by no means an ML (can’t stand them as an anarchist) but this is wildly blowing out of proportion what @dessalines@lemmy.ml has said and done.
I mean like why link a ‘Socialist FAQ’ that’s literally just a ton of links to education on socialism and the different schools of thought it has? Not all communists are tankies (not even most) lol. Just generally shows a lack of familiarity with actual leftists / anticapitalists.
I think it’s more like 7 decades and I thought the same. Reds-under-the-bed is still a thing!
@dessalines@lemmy.ml is /u/parentis_shotgun on Reddit. Source: https://archive.is/Ky9vd
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There is nothing that links to @dessalines@lemmy.ml there.
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Ask yourself: what is this person gaining from spreading misinformation and trying to make people to hate Lemmy developers?
Please stop spamming this in the thread, it’s annoying af.
Sometimes people just like spreading drama. Other times they just have weird or different beliefs. Accusing someone of having ulterior motives isn’t useful or helpful unless you can demonstrate that this person isn’t just having an internet debate that they feel strongly about.
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I believe those people saying lemmy is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy were being sarcastic. Thanks for rounding this up though, I appreciate people who do the due diligence.
@dessalines@lemmy.ml is /u/parentis_shotgun on Reddit. Source: https://archive.is/Ky9vd
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There is nothing that links to @dessalines@lemmy.ml there.
-
Ask yourself: what is this person gaining from spreading misinformation and trying to make people to hate Lemmy developers?
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Jesus christ, what a dumpster fire that comments section was.
@dessalines@lemmy.ml is /u/parentis_shotgun on Reddit. Source: https://archive.is/Ky9vd
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There is nothing that links to @dessalines@lemmy.ml there.
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Ask yourself: what is this person gaining from spreading misinformation and trying to make people to hate Lemmy developers?
I never said anything about that person, your copy/paste comment is not relevant to what I said. I don’t hate the devs, I said the comments section of the post that was linked to is a dumpster fire of tankies and genocide apologists.
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You mean to say : except for that excellent comment you replied to ?
I’m referring to the comments section on the post he linked to, where half the comments are tankies trying to defend the actions of the admins who were banning users and calling them racist for criticizing the CCP/Kremlin.
Sure, but as I said, I don’t see any of this as relevant as long as it doesn’t affect the platform.
You leave reddit because the ceo introduces shitty pricing but you don’t mind the main devs being literal fascists?
The beauty of federated networks is you can avoid the platforms with these kinds of people altogether. I typically avoid lemmy.ml altogether unless I don’t have a choice and even then it’s pretty easily to find alternatives.
The project is open source and anyone can create instances, that’s why its irrelevant.
The way it works in practice is that the largest instances are where most people go. What is stopping those devs from imposing their views on the community, e.g. by censoring?
Reddit’s admins are taking decisions based on their worldviews and objectives that affect the content of Reddit, i.e. what we can talk about, what we can do, what tools we can use, what information we can access…
As of my current knowledge, the worldviews of Lemmy’s devs (that I certainly don’t share) don’t affect content on instances that they do not administrate or moderate. Even if they were building and shaping instances around hatespeech (which I don’t know they do), I’d simply block them and let the police and justice act on the potential crimes or offence they may do.
Girl calm down, please just take a step back. Maybe read up on communism or communists / the far left before blaring off takes like this. I’m not an ML and not a fan of them as an anarchist, but this is suchhhhh an overreaction to what they actually said.
Additionally if you don’t like the dev team, then fork it. Or volunteer to be on the core team. Submit some PRs. Start your own alternative. One of the cool things about having anticapitalists develop software is that it is open and you can do that. It actively does the opposite of what capitalism wants us to do. I think just that fact alone should make you pause and maybe reassess the language you’re using (Hitler and other fascists rose to power actively aided and funded by capitalists because it helped retain their power).
@dessalines@lemmy.ml is /u/parentis_shotgun on Reddit. Source: https://archive.is/Ky9vd
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There is nothing that links to @dessalines@lemmy.ml there.
-
Ask yourself: what is this person gaining from spreading misinformation and trying to make people to hate Lemmy developers?
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I’ve never subscribed to any of these things, due to multiple reasons like being broke, because I knew I’d never remember to cancel it if I quit using the service, hating subscriptions, realizing most of these collapse almost as fast as they skyrocket, among many other reasons. I know I’m a pessimist.
But it’s time to put my money where my mouth is, even if I just want a Reddit alternative. I’m old and grumpy enough to be sick of companies using people the way they do, and since I can’t code, I can pay.
If you’ve read this far, I implore you to really sit down and think about what this project means to you, what it could mean to you, and what it’s worth to you. Everyone does the whole coffee analogy - give up coffee for a day and you can support X. But as a Reddit refugee, I think that if I was willing to give Reddit a couple bucks a month to an app for their API access, why on earth wouldn’t I do the same here (even before all of Reddit’s recent BS)?
You can either pay or be the product being sold.
And to those of you who are developers, consider submitting some PRs! I’m certainly gonna take a look at the code
I’ve never paid Reddit a dime but I’m going to signup for at least whatever gold costs. Fuck spez.
Donated. Glad to support this project,
Dang these guys are so committed and it’s definitely understandable what they’ve just gone through. It’s definitely up to the community to help out wherever possible as that’s kinda what the fediverse is all about
I’m not down to subscribe ongoing (because I definitely will forget and think some fraud popped up), but I made a one time donation, and will likely make additional donations in the coming months and weeks. I’d love for this platform to thrive and have no qualms throwing up a few bucks for that here and there.
I hope we see more donations. I for one will for sure make a few over time
Nice. I hope this momentum continues to grow.
I personally think it’s going to explode in size, even more so than it already has.
The small, vocal minority of reddits (ie, most of us) came over to try it out as soon as we thought it could be a viable alternative. That caused a MASSIVE include in users to lemmy.
Next- since we are building lots of content here- lots of the other reddits will soon figure out- Wait, everyone who writes shit worth reading, went to lemmy. What am I doing in this toxic cesspool echo-chamber. And- more will come.
Feels so common to me as a web developer to find another instance of people seeing Web Sockets as really cool, and then tragically deciding they don’t fit due to scaling problems.
The occasional live comment update is kind of nice, but the glitches and other performance problems it causes weren’t generally worth it.