I've covered some of the points about anti-capitalism in the reply I just wrote for a similar post, so I'll link there to avoid redundancy.

I don't really understand the intended message with the Mastodon example. "Free speech" platforms are almost always swamped with neo-nazis, literal pedophiles and other super controversial people searching for sites to host their garbage whenever they get kicked from other places, and revolt most other people who would consider using the platform. This has nothing to do with the anti-capitalist and queer-only instances not wanting to host them, it would have happened even if those instances never existed. You might as well blame Beehaw for blocking the Trump fanatics and neo-Nazis who ended up populating Wolfballs. It doesn't make sense, they're not to blame. Almost any site bans those users, not just far-left, or even left, sites. Most centrists and almost any site with advertisers don't want to share space with Gab users screeching out edgy slurs and spam either. It's a basic expectation of being able to hold a productive conversation. Any community should be allowed to kick out anti-social invaders.

No, instances with basic standards kicking our hateful users isn't to blame for why general instances host them. It's the general instances that accepted them and didn't also say no. Those general instances were allowed to kick them out too, they chose not to. Most Lemmy instances historically have kicked them, even those run by liberal capitalists.

And if they allow they platform to be turned into a Nazi pub, they're certainly not being apolitical. Abstaining is a political decision. Trolley problem 101.

I'm fine with people not wanting to connect with instances filled with people who obsess about wanting to kill them. I don't see the issue here.

I do understand the value of exposing people to different to viewpoints, and the dangers of echo chambers, but there is a lot of space in-between complete isolation and letting everyone into everywhere. And I actually enjoy using separate communities for each. I was one of the few users who used the former Go Talk It Out (gtio.io) Lemmy instance, where any conversation was allowed provided it was good-faith and civil. There are some conversations where I do want a range of political opinions and where political opinions don't even matter, and others where I want to discuss a theoretical idea without unproductive spam from people who see a word and whine or troll. So I would rather see that system of federation, where instances specialise and choose who they link to appropriately.

Absolutely, discovering something new has always been a great part of all sites where users create their own communities. One I know even had a feature where each week they randomly (in a fun game) selected a nominated community to advertise sitewide. I've almost completely avoided large communities for the past... eight years, give or take. The fun was always on the fringe, nowhere near as much low-quality attention seeking or dumbing down to twitter screencap reposts there.

A pro-capitalist can absolutely value OS and freedom of information! But there is inherent tension. For one part, private property is a fundamental cornerstone of capitalism, which (I assert necessarily) led to the invention of intellectual property, a direct inhibition to freedom of information. FoI is not within the best interests of any leading business under capitalism, they have an active interest in maintaining market dominance, and the most power to make that happen through harassment or legislation. So, as a result, we get laws like copyright and major government agencies enforcing it even for things like films and medicine. Piracy like LibGen happen in spite of the worldwide attempts of publishers to destroy it.

Wolfballs admin was an example of a pro-FOSS (Lemmy-contributer!) capitalist who was able to provide benefit to with the project because they shared pro-FoI values. I'm not saying pro-capitalists can't have a place here, or can't add value, but a huge influx and culture shock is the quickest way for Lemmy sites to forget or misdiagnose the causes of reddit's failure and the strengths of Lemmy, and try to turn it into an ad-infested crypto-integrated hellscape or otherwise put profit above users. Even basic things like using an advertising income model creates censorship (Manufacturing Consent has a good section explaining this in detail).

Anti-capitalism is deeply rooted in lemmy.ml, and Lemmy, it's even brought up in the software documentation. It's not incidental or trivial, it is the cause for many effects. It's a big part of why we didn't do what other reddit alternatives did, and avoided their pitfalls. I don't want to be a product here. So yes, it is sad to see that shift into conflict with the software and community's founding values, and it's not just because of some team sports, it's because profit-seeking is what killed reddit and I don't want it to kill us.

I think they were lamenting the fact that people don't seem to recognize why capitalism's inherent forces tend to cause enshittification of services. That it's not just a bad CEO that causes this but the inevitable squeeze that will happens where user good-will is exchanged for money. This is why hopping from privately owned central service to another will not solve that problem.. but decentralized services that are not owned by any single agent (and therefore can't be bought, can't be turned into value for investors) can resist it.

It's good to see people here, good to see people protesting and taking control. So, I welcome you (if that amounts to anything :D) However, I wish people also take stock and ponder why social media service after another turns into crap.. :)

Yeah what the hell were those guys doing for years