cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/70156 since it wasn’t allowed and I got banned. Worth checking the original post for comments.

For a long time I’ve been grappling with the project lemmy. As a person never really been interested in reddit I’ve found it fills the role of a decentralized forum platform, which is something I’ve been looking for for a long time.

Unfortunately a lot of it’s user, and even more concernedly It’s developers are of a certain political mindset. Believing and spreading propaganda denying current and genocides of the past, posting things like “defeat israel”, defending russia and china, pushing misnifnormation and propaganda in the dictatorship of Belarus’s favour and even supporting north korea.

It’s all pretty crazy.

In the beginning I believed Lemmy could grow to be more than it is now. But I’ve come to realize that Lemmy is just the gab of the left, but as an alternative to reddit so they can spread their stuff.

So I’ve decided that I am not vouching for Lemmy as a viable platform anymore. I don’t think Lemmy is going to have much of a future in the fediverse anymore either. I’ll actively work against Lemmy and it’s developers and there isn’t much projects or organizations that are going to want to associate with Lemmy either.

You could consider this a kind of goodbye, but I am just here on the fediverse doing my usual stuff. But you can consider it an end to ‘better’ world news and lemmy drama of the century. Now there will be 99% tankies on the platform instead of just 98.9%.

Another better desentralized forum will come, and when it comes I’ll be ready for it.

Peace and love, Chris from Norway

  • soronixa
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    23 years ago

    But there seems to be a major misunderstanding what lemmy.ml is about. This instance has always been niche, and we dont have any intentions to change it (in fact we like it this way).

    I do like it too, I find it much more friendly that reddit. but I would say having a niche instance as your flagship hurts the wider adaption of Lemmy. and fediverse needs Lemmy as an alternative to reddit, so it also hurts fediverse. I don’t want lemmy.ml to change drastically, I like to be here, but I also think it’s a good idea to have a more inclusive instance as Lemmy’s flagship.

    You talk about making Lemmy better, but what do you mean by that? Making it more mainstream, or getting more users?

    making Lemmy more welcoming to new users, making it a better part of the fediverse, and helping to spread its culture to more people. getting more users will be only a side effect. I mean if you agree that more people need to share lemmy.ml’s culture (FOSS, decentralization, privacy awareness, etc), then it would be a moral action to bring more people to Lemmy and increase the number of people who share its values.

    take soferman as an example, he liked decentralized platforms, he was into FOSS, he cared about privacy and he was social dmocrat (so I guess you would consider him a centrist). the only problem was that some opinions were too radical to him and in deep contradiction with his beliefs and worldview, and since he felt offended by these ideas, he felt he must work against them. two things could have happened, Lemmy could be kinder to him and educate him, or become as hostile to him as he was to opposing ideas. the second one happened, and the result was soferman leaving, and resenting lemmy’s culture, and becoming more defensive to such ideas in the future.

    I think if the first one had happened, we could have a soferman more open to other ideas, with a more realistic political opinions, spending more time learning about lemmy’s culture, and becoming a better person.

    I think you agree that making better people will make a better world, and if we had helped soferman become more mature, we had made a world slightly better. I mean what’s the point of socialising and social media if not making better humans? sure as an open source dev you want to make a better world with better people. but we made a slightly worse world by making someone hate us, by making him more defensive towards us. by making him less tolerant.

    These are not our goals and never will be.

    if I had to guess, I would say your goal is to see more people who share lemmy’s culture. I mean if your goal was just having a niche community with a friendly environment, you’ve already got it, (and I must say I like it.) but you’re keeping adding new features and improving Lemmy, so there is a higher goal here.

    If thats what you care about, another instance might be better for you (either an existing or a new one).

    I will stay here, because it’s friendly to me and I like it, I just wish more people could feel the same.

    • @nutomic@lemmy.mlM
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      23 years ago

      I dont know what the “fediverse needs”, but lets assume you are right. Lemmy.ml is not indented to be a direct alternative for Reddit, and there is no reason why we as developers should be the ones to create such an alternative.

      For the rest of your comment, read this post which addresses pretty much all of it.

      if I had to guess, I would say your goal is to see more people who share lemmy’s culture.

      It is not. Our goal is exactly like you say, to have a niche community with a friendly environment. The goals of Lemmy as a software project are completely separate from that.