Liberalism has an actual definition, and it is not the colloquial definition used in mass-media to refer to "the left half of what is acceptable."

Liberalism is an idealist (another word which has a very specific definition) political philosophy which champions private property, constitutionalism, republicanism, rule of law, and free trade. It has a philosophical canon, flowing through writers like Locke, Montesquieu, Mirabeau, Rousseau, Paine, etc. Further economic works, like Smith's "Wealth of Nations," are built on this philosophical underpinning.

Marxists are materialists. This is in contrast with the idealism of Liberals. While Liberals believe ideas are the force which drives change in the material world, Marxists understand that ideas are just a reflection of the material conditions they emerge from.

Liberals find themselves banging their heads against the walls of the institutions time and time again, because from their perspective, these institutions are just a reflection of ideas, and as long as the justification for an institution on paper is sound, there is no reason to think it cannot be reformed. An institution like the US Congress, or the Executive Branch is never at fault. It is simply a good institution simply being run by bad people. Marxists (and Anarchists) reject this quite simply, by looking at the material incentives involved, and the long ghastly history surrounding these institutions.

"Combating liberalism" does not mean being a piece of shit to anybody to the right of Bernie Sanders or Jeromy Corbin. There is a genuine struggle to ensure the new crop of social media platforms don't simply end up defending the legitimacy of the established institutions at the expense of genuine radicals who find themselves at odds with the actual longstanding policy and practices of these institutions. To avoid situations like when mastodon.lol banned CODEPINK, a prominent anti-war organization, for being "Tankies." This is Liberalism, and it should be combated.

It’s to push their beliefs and ideology.

What the FUCK do these liberals think they are doing every day on social media?

For the love of god, listen to some Citations Needed and stop self-congratilating your media literacy because some fucking dork with a website tells you the New York Times and Washington Post aren't biased.

Channeling Stallman and referring to the Windows 32 bit Application Programming Interface as lose32 instead of win32.

Here's one perspective: https://runyourown.social/

Personally, I run a Mastodon+Hometown server for around 100 people and it costs me about $30/mo. It costs me more to fill my car's gas tank. I could maybe start a patron or something, but at this stage, it is not even necessary.

About 3 years ago, I was a member of r/ChapoTrapHouse, which got banned from Reddit. The day after this happened, we had over 10,000 people sitting in a lifeboat Discord "server." Within the community, we had the experience and willpower to take Lemmy, kick the tires, make a couple adjustments which were necessary for our community, and make sure we weren't doing malpractice by hosting it. This all happened before Federation had been implemented in Lemmy.

Maintaining the fork was labor intensive, and a lot of the original developers burned out. We couldn't afford wages for development (the site still only exists due to volunteers), but the hosting costs were easily covered by user donations.

You need a tenant union. There may be tenant unions active in your area which you can contact for advice, or even support. Beware of retaliation though. This is something which needs to be thought about carefully and approached strategically. In this regard, it is no different from unionizing a workplace.

If the corporation is renting 500+ units, that means they are ripping off 500+ working class families / individuals. If those 500+ tenants organize to the degree where they can collectively withhold their rent, they've got the landlords by the balls. Individual action can only go so far.

The lack of "Lemmy etiquette" is basically the whole point of the project. There is no general rule. There are places for shitposting, there are places for serious discussion. The civility fetishists get their corner, the people who enjoy replying to bigots with pigpoopballs.jpg get their corner. There is a niche for everybody - and if there isn't - you can start one without being completely isolated from the rest of the network (at least, initially).

The situation on Reddit was absurd. The "Reddiquette" rules were generally okay, but very open to subjective enforcement. I spent many years on Reddit. I browsed a lot of different communities on there. But if one person on a community I browse makes a post saying "look what this asshole is saying" on another community I browse, and I go there an make an insightful comment, I am now "brigading." If somebody wants to politely debate whether trans people have a right to exist, or whether or not we should send the homeless to concentration camps, and I tell them to fuck themselves, I am being "uncivil."

Communities need mods and admins who have their back, not mods who become cops for the admins who become cops for the board of directors who only care about increasing KPIs and profit. The coolest thing that can happen on the Fediverse is landing in a place where the admins will eat a block or two to defend the integrity of their communities. This is something which is simply impossible on Reddit.

Generally positive, with caveats. Lemmy's early adopters were driven by an understanding that Reddit was not a viable platform for self organization, free discussion and association. We knew this day would eventually come.

The current wave of bans and hostile takeovers occurring on Reddit is nothing new for the radicals. We watched them suppress the Blue Leaks, we watched them shut down r/CTH in the middle of the George Floyd uprising, we watched them coup r/PresidentialRaceMemes, we watched them purge r/GenZhou, a community focused specifically on revolutionary theory.

Reddit has demonstrated time and time again that it is happy to serve as an instrument of counterinsurgency. This comes as no surprise, with an Atlantic Council alum heading their content moderation policy.

As one of the most astroturfed social media platforms on the Internet, Redditors bring a lot of those problems here. They tend to behave like they are the smartest people in the room, just because there are a lot of them. They like calling other websites echo chambers, when they hail from the biggest echo chamber on the English speaking net. The conspiracies I've seen them spread about the Lemmy devs and contributors have been absolutely wild.

I think time will heal most of them.

I worry that you can take the users out of Reddit, but you can't take the Reddit out of the users.

Federation means it’s almost meaningless which instance you register with, and as integration between instances and other Fediverse apps gets better it will just become more and more meaningless.

IMO, this couldn't be further from the truth. Different communities have different priorities, principles, and technical requirements, and will take different approaches to controversy. Some communities are low-profile and laid back. Others are magnets for abuse and may require additional moderation, and even technical changes, like disabling image embeds (as one example) to mitigate harassment. Some are filled with avid shitposters, while others insist on the utmost degree of civility. Some have advanced requirements for operational security. Some want broad access to the network, while other would prefer a quiet corner. Some might be focused on video and require an instance that can handle the additional bandwidth and storage requirements.

Who hosts your instance is important. The jurisdiction your instance is housed in is important. If a community requires special accommodations for accessibility or other reasons, that is important. If an instance wants to go above the technical level and do things like verify users (kinda like journa.host) that makes an important distinction from your typical instance.

In the beginning, we won't know who's trustworthy, but this is the Internet. There will be controversies, and we will see how various admins respond to these controversies. Over time, they will gain reputations, both good and bad. It is best if somebody who already has a good reputation, like a respected mod from another community is able to operate the new home for that community.

For now, it probably doesn't matter where you end up, but as time passes, it is good to keep an ear to the ground and see how things develop. Eventually you will find a solid niche. This is a problem even the fanciest join-xyz-fediservice website can't really solve, but it is meaningful.

BSD, Lunix, Debian and Mandrake are all versions of an illegal hacker operation system, invented by a Soviet computer hacker named Linyos Torovoltos, before the Russians lost the Cold War. It is based on a program called " xenix", which was written by Microsoft for the US government. These programs are used by hackers to break into other people's computer systems to steal credit card numbers. They may also be used to break into people's stereos to steal their music, using the "mp3" program. Torovoltos is a notorious hacker, responsible for writing many hacker programs, such as "telnet", which is used by hackers to connect to machines on the internet without using a telephone.