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On Reddit and it’s federated rivals, Lemmy and kbin
(www.jayeless.net)
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this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2023
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Fediverse
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This magazine is dedicated to discussions on the federated social networking ecosystem, which includes decentralized and open-source social media platforms. Whether you are a user, developer, or simply interested in the concept of decentralized social media, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as the benefits and challenges of decentralized social media, new and existing federated platforms, and more. From the latest developments and trends to ethical considerations and the future of federated social media, this category covers a wide range of topics related to the Fediverse.
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I've been leaning into this from Kbin, as a way of dipping into communities on Beehaw and other Lemmy instances while keeping my distance from Lemmy's devs.
I have one concern. As we're seeing with Reddit, it's a huge effort to move internet communities. If Lemmy-the-app becomes untenable even for more reasonably admin'd instances, then the most obvious solution won't be to fork Lemmy (a huge undertaking) but rather to move to an app that's maintained by more reasonable people. That's probably going to involve a messy migration, some data loss, some loss of community, and some dead links.
I'll keep using Kbin as a way of tapping into existing communities, but when it comes to building new ones I'd much rather see it done on kbin.social or other Fediverse instances where there's no long-term dependency on Lemmy's devs.
What's wrong with Lemmy's devs?
The linked article summarizes the problems in the paragraph starting "I've been aware of Lemmy for a long time". For an alternative view: the Fedi.Tips account on Mastodon – typically a cheerleader for all apps of the FediVerse – shared some more pointed words about them in this thread and reiterated the warning just yesterday after noticing the Lemmy team's successful recruitment campaign on Reddit.
I was one of the people they recruited, and ran into problems myself only after signing up at lemmy.ml and being surprised by the amount of CCP propaganda posted there. At first I thought it was strange that I was being downvoted for pointing it out, and that the devs (also admins of that instance) ignored/downvoted me when I flagged the issue for their attention. After researching a bit, I found that Lemmy's basically developed and maintained by two people, both of whom seem to be westerners fetishizing Mao Zedong Thought – literally to the point of writing lengthy apologetics for the CCP's human rights abuses including the Uyghur genocide.
They're clearly skilled engineers, but I can't trust or support them, and relying on instance of Lemmy means I'd have to do both.
they're also pretty open about this, it's not some dark secret.
And I’m pretty open about not wanting to support a site ran by people who think like that