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.
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.
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'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.
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 astroturfing? The tanky astroturfing or astroturfing about the place being tanky?
Because before the influx, Lemmy.ml was absolutely tanky. It's just been completely drowned out by the flood, so it barely matters anymore.
Like, this entire platform has arguably gone through one of the most dramatic changes in a week in the history of the internet. What was here before is almost irrelevant now. What the devs believe is also irrelevant because it's open source and decentralized. Literally the whole point of this is to not be beholden to them.
Another phrase for Tankie ideology is Red Fascism.
I'd specifically like to highlight that someone who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp - so has firsthand experience with a fascist regime - described the Soviets as the following, emphasis mine:
Kurt Schumacher, who was imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, but survived WWII to become the first post-war SPD opposition leader in West Germany, described pro-Soviet communists as "red-painted fascists" or "red-lacquered Nazis"
So in what ways exactly is a tankie not a fascist?
a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
that exalts nation
"We did not hesitate to shoot thousands of people, and we shall not hesitate, and we shall save the country." - Vladimir Lenin
Well of course they aren't genocide deniers. You can't deny something that never happened. Also note that they did not deny being Tankies - they denied being Fascists. Tankies don't recognize themselves as Fascists and will vehemently deny that they are. Here's another phrase for Tankie for the uninformed: Red Fascist
Here is one of the Lemmy devs denying that the Uyghur genocide in China is happening:
Direct links to the posts will not work but still exist on the user's profile page: https://old.reddit.com/user/parentis_shotgun/ - hold PgDn until comments stop loading then Control+F. In fact feel free to peruse their history in general - it's quite interesting.
Now ask yourself why would someone who is not a Red Fascist Tankie piece of shit be answering questions on behalf of Tankies in /r/AskTankies while defending a totalitarian regime? Is it... perhaps because they're in support of such a regime because they are in fact a Tankie piece of shit?
They also lied about the "single user on Mastadon not providing sources". They did provide sources. The source were things said straight out of the dev's mouth.
Let's play a game of spot the difference between fascists (nazis) and fascists (tankies).
Nazis: Fascists who are directly responsible for the deaths of an estimated 12,000,000 people. Deny a genocide ever took place despite evidence to the contrary (Holocaust). Antisemites who forced minority ethnic groups to work in forced concentration and labor camps and starved them to death. These concentration camps began in 1933 and ended in 1945 lasting for a period of 12~ years. Had a secret police known as the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) whose job it was largely to suppress political opposition by any means necessary including execution of dissenters and spy on behalf of the Nazi party. Torture and execution were common - including that of women and children.
Tankies: Fascists who are directly responsible for the deaths an estimated 26,000,000 people. Deny multiple different genocides ever took place despite evidence to the contrary (Holodomor being the most well known). Antisemites who forced minority ethnic groups to work in forced concentration and labor camps and starved them to death. This Gulag network of death prisons began in 1919 and only ended after Stalin's death in 1953 lasting for a period of 34~ years. Had a secret police known as the Чека (Cheka) whose job it was to suppress political opposition by any means necessary including execution of dissenters and spy on behalf of the State. Torture and execution were common - including that of women and children.
Great post and I really appreciate bringing the sources to the discussion.
I know some people don’t have an issue with the developer’s views, so long as it doesn’t affect their software, but I’m not comfortable using Lemmy. I wouldn’t be comfortable using a Nazi developer’s software either.
Just because they said they weren't? They just dismissed the claim without linking to any real counter evidence by claiming it's just a random Mastodon user or whatever
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)?
This was a very well written statement and gives me a lot of hope for the future of the platform. I’ll be more than happy to invest my time and effort into it.
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.
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.
How many people were turned away by the whole tankie thing I wonder..hmmm
Imagine hearing some vague bs and making a distinct and principaled opinion about an entire universe of information.
Even if they are some flavor of doo doo, we take it, and make it what we want. I just don't see the point in outright noping. At least in this instance.
I just happened to get on lemmy at first. It was largely coincidence. Perhaps I'll try kbin, but this working how I need. I'm not real picky. I just like to write comments tbh.
Yeah I'm a pretty left-wing guy myself but I just like the kbin interface more. I think it's really cool how this stuff all works together. That's the real dream of communism!
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
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'd never seen any of the rumors, went to lemmy.ml for the first time (thinking I might join) and one of the top threads was a complaint that a post with anti-CCP analysis had been taken down by the admins and within 5 minutes of further research I was able to verify that, yes, the admins/devs are tankies. It's definitely not false.
I was completely unaware as well. I'm off to kbin. In my opinion, there is zero chance this doesn't cause issues down the line and it makes me feel uncomfortable using Lemmy.
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.
Saying they don’t support genocide isn’t really addressing the issue…
Most complaints are that they deny China’s treatment of Uyghurs and seem to conflate criticism of that with racism against “China” (conveniently ignoring the plethora of ethnicities in such a huge country). If they want to detach themselves from the controversy they should be making a statement denouncing the Chinese government’s treatment of people in Xinjiang. Their statement could be clearer.
One can quite easily twist "we deny genocide is taking place" into "we don't support genocide." It's easy to say you don't support genocide when you're saying there's no genocide in the first place. Frankly, everything I've read about these guys is repellent and there's no way I'd be donating money to them. I gave money to Ernest, the developer of kbin, instead.
That said, though, this is completely true:
We are individuals with our own opinions. If you disagree with these, it is no problem! You can still freely use the Lemmy software on different instances. If you host your own instance, we have no control over it at all and are unable to censor what users say.
It's an open source program operating with an open protocol and they can't stop the rest of us from using it. If they ever try it'll just get forked. So I see no problem with having Lemmy be a major part of the Fediverse's infrastructure.
Exactly. I have no issue using the lemmy software (lord knows the developers of most other major social media platforms I've used in the past have had some messed up political views). But there's absolutely no way I'll be donating a penny to them. Ernest and admins of other major lemmy instances, yes, but not the tankie devs.
Yeah they confuse criticizing China with racism against Chinese people. Additionally they claim that any source from and news agency or journalists in the US that says anything bad about the USSR or China is CIA propaganda and should be ignored but then exclusively site Chinese propaganda websites.
They say the same nonsense when Australian media also rightly criticizes them so it's not just a US issue. Just look at the way they tried to strong-arm Australia when they were called out a few years ago, they tried cutting off a range of imports to try economic pressure (which didn't work since plenty of other places will happily take wine, meat and product imports)