It stems from the fact that lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml cofederate, that the project leads are communists, and the claim that lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml off of the same IP address.

The first two points are not in contention, but I haven’t, personally, been able to verify the third.

Now, lemmygrad is absolutely a trollish, auth-left hellscape. And I say that with… well, not respect, but not specific derision, either. That genuinely seems to be the aesthetic they’re going for. They’re not here to make friends with anyone but themselves, and they’ll play apologetics for China, North Korea, and Stalin’s takeover of the Soviet Republic all day long.

But even if the project leads are genuinely involved in that, it doesn’t really change the fact that the project is not inextricably tied to them. It’s an open source project. It can be forked, and forked again. No one actually needs lemmygrad or lemmy.ml. Or lemmy, for that matter. Everyone can hop over to kbin or Friendica and still access all of the same communities.

Shit, they’re accessible from Mastodon and Calckey.

And besides, it’s not like people avoid using software when it’s made by white supremacist capitalist techbros. In those cases, we all basically just go “yeah, but I’m not a white supremacist capitalist techbro” and carry on with our day. And those products generally can’t be wrenched from their control or oversight.

Most people chose Elon over learning that multiple websites exist…