Please consider supporting Lemmy development

a year ago by sunaurus to c/meta

Hey folks!

I'm writing this because funding for the Lemmy project has dropped to critical levels, which could seriously impact its future development.

Thanks to the generous support of our lemm.ee community, our server infrastructure costs are covered, and we even have a few months of runway. I'm deeply grateful to everyone who has contributed - lemm.ee wouldn't exist without your help.

However, infrastructure alone isn’t enough. Our servers run Lemmy software, and without ongoing development, the platform cannot grow or even be maintained.

Lemmy is an open-source project with many contributors, but the vast majority of development work has been carried out by a small group of core maintainers. A few maintainers work full-time on the project, relying solely on donations and occasional grants to support themselves.

I've seen Lemmy development up close, and the maintainers have consistently gone above and beyond what I consider the standard for small open-source teams - they are constantly writing code, mentoring contributors, and keeping everything running. Their work is essential, and without continued support, it cannot be sustained.

If you value Lemmy, please consider supporting its maintainers directly. Every bit helps.

Please check out this post for more details about how to support the maintainers: https://lemm.ee/post/63034576

Thank you for reading, I hope you have a great weekend!

rickyrigatoni 55 points a year ago

People are avoiding supporting lemmy monetarily due to the actions of the developers. We do not reward bad behaviors here. If lemmy development ends most of us will just move to kbin or piefed. This is a non-issue.

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peregrin5 53 points a year ago

Just like with Elon Musk, if someone wants people to support them monetarily, they shouldn't work hard to make themselves objectionable to wide swaths of the population they are trying to extract money from.

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Irelephant 9 points a year ago

You can argue that, despite their opinions, the lemmy devs provide something of worth.

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peregrin5 20 points a year ago

Elon Musk made electric cars popular. Nazi scientists developed rocket technology. That's all fine and good, but I'm still not going to give them my money.

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4n41y4no5 -7 points a year ago

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hitmyspot 9 points a year ago

So does nestlé, I still boycott them as our values don’t align.

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4n41y4no5 -1 points a year ago

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person1 7 points a year ago

This is not wrong

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Jimbabwe 24 points a year ago

What actions of the developers are you talking about? I’m not trying to start a fight, I’m honestly out of the loop or whatever.

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infeeeee 34 points a year ago

See some stories here: !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works

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GoodEye8 27 points a year ago

I imagine the biggest point are the censorship, disinformation and tankie allegations. These are all documented in this post. Another point worth bringing up is that they are the admins of lemmy.ml, where most of the allegations happen. Lemmy.ml also has something of a tankie problem and one of the devs has said that the donations will also cover the cost of running the instance. So by donating to the devs you're also donating to an instance that possibly has no problem with censorship, disinformation and harboring tankies.

I would be willing to turn a blind eye if I could trust the devs to step away from lemmy.ml and focus solely on the development of Lemmy. But I don't trust the devs enough to actually do that so I personally won't be supporting Lemmy development until someone else becomes the maintainer of Lemmy.

EDIT: just to cover off the inevitable "what will happen if we stop supporting Lemmy. I don't want to go back to Reddit" fear. If Lemmy doesn't work out and it gets abandoned there's always Mbin. Anyone here from the Reddit exodus knows that it's annoying to migrate but Mbin can federate with Lemmy which means going from Lemmy to Mbin is going to be less painful than form Reddit to Lemmy.

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conditional_soup 22 points a year ago

AND it's open source software. Nothing is stopping anyone from just forking Lemmy.

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4n41y4no5 -9 points a year ago

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OpenStars 1 point a year ago

Mbin is one example, PieFed is another. Both are superb!:-)

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nutomic -6 points a year ago

lemmy.ml is part of Lemmy development as it is used to test new versions before release, take performance measurements and have first-hand experience with the mod tools. If I stepped away from lemmy.ml it would make Lemmy worse and cause more problems for other instance admins. In any case the costs for lemmy.ml hosting are already covered at a much lower donation level, anything you contribute goes directly to developer salaries.

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hakase 20 points a year ago

lemmy.ml is part of Lemmy development as it is used to test new versions before release, take performance measurements and have first-hand experience with the mod tools.

Then you really shouldn't be surprised that people don't want to donate when part of that support goes toward an instance that openly and aggressively supports authoritarian regimes, human rights violations, and genocide denial, and brutally censors any dissenting viewpoints.

If I stepped away from lemmy.ml it would make Lemmy worse and cause more problems for other instance admins.

The other option, of course, would be to run lemmy.ml in a way that doesn't actively piss off the majority of Lemmy users, but that doesn't seem to be a path you're willing to consider.

Honestly I'm genuinely torn about the situation. I've found such a great place here (outside of the tankie triad, of course), that as much as I disagree with your politics I'd probably donate anyway because of how great Lemmy is as a platform, if only you developed behind the scenes and weren't personally responsible for one of the worst places on said platform. As it is, as long as both a) lemmy.ml continues to be run the way it is and b) you continue to have an active part in that instance's abhorrent behavior, I can't in good conscience give you any financial support.

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Ledivin 10 points a year ago

They should try just using it for development instead of forcing out tankie propaganda, then.

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GoodEye8 4 points a year ago

I've given it some more thought. There's no guarantee that money going to the developers won't be used to for the instance they are financing. If I give you money and the lemmy.ml funds are empty, are you going to let lemmy.ml die? Considering you said it is used to test new versions of lemmy and measure performance and test how effective the mod tools are I don't think you would let lemmy.ml die. You'd finance it yourself, most likely from the money that is donated for the development of lemmy. So separating lemmy development and lemmy.ml instance costs wouldn't really change the situation.

But I also no longer think it's inherently necessary to step away from lemmy.ml. I get the value a real instance would give to development, so what I think needs to happen is a shift in what lemmy.ml is supposed to be. If the purpose of lemmy.ml is to support the development of lemmy then the primary goal of the instance should be that. Clearly the biggest issue people have is politics and how lemmy.ml is used as a vessel to push a certain kind of political agenda, which means if the primary goal is to support development then the instance right now contradicts its primary goal. It's dissuading people from donating to the development and it's making the main developers (you in this case) focus on the drama (for the lack of a better word) instead of spending time developing. I think the solution is pretty simple, lemmy.ml should take a hard anti-politics stance. Do a purge and kick all politics off the instance, including instance users who discuss politics on other instances. Have it be memes, technology, privacy and FOSS and gaming and everything else that doesn't necessarily lead to politics. Users who want to take part in political discourse can find instances that allow political discourse, and that includes you and Dessalines. If you want to be political create an alt account on a different instance. Communities that want to be political can find other instances to be in political. You don't need politics to run lemmy.ml. And for the sake of clarity also add to the instance about section that the instance exists to support lemmy development because currently that is not written anywhere.

If you think that's unfair to the current users of lemmy.ml I honestly don't see how you could resolve this situation without stepping away from lemmy.ml.

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mathemachristian -22 points a year ago

They're ^communists^ 😱

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gamermanh 46 points a year ago

Tankies, specifically

Authoritarian commies who have very different-from-reality opinions and word definitions

Oh, and transphobia

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towelie 16 points a year ago

It's so funny to me when I express an even remotely moderate opinion and get called a right-winger. Lol, is lemmy really where right-wingers would go for online discourse?

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mathemachristian -16 points a year ago

tankie is just the new scary sounding word for communist derived from when the soviet union helped defeat a CIA backed color-revolution in Hungary

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peregrin5 33 points a year ago

They're ^communists^ transphobic, class reductionists, support Russian invasion of Ukraine, support Uyghur genocide, support N. Korean dictators, worked hard to ensure Republicans won US elections, run an instance where they act like the authoritarian dictators they love and ban everyone who disagrees with them even slightly for being "liberals" 😱

FTFY

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4n41y4no5 -1 points a year ago

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person1 18 points a year ago

Hmm glad I found this post and the comments. I recently came here from Reddit and joined some random communities just to have something in my feed. I was a bit shocked at hammer and sickle posted non-ironically in the meme group. Noting that communists weren't better than Nazis got me called an ungrateful shit for existing (which I apparently owe to Stalin) and banned. Moved to the second-biggest meme community the search found, where I'm not banned yet but being educated by Westerners that life in communist coutries was cheerful and Holodomor was an oopsie.

I'm glad to hear that this is not all that Lemmy stands for, but a bit disappointed learning that top developers are a part of the problem. I'm conflicted about donating to say the least, and it does not bode well for lemmy adoption in general. I'll stick around to see if other servers gain momentum, but I'll need to keep an eye open for other reddit alternatives I guess

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hakase 22 points a year ago

Most of Lemmy is fine - just avoid the tankie triad of lemmygrad, lemmy.ml, and hexbear and you should be good to go.

Edit: And maybe also the instances that haven't defederated hexbear in particular, since when they show up threads tend to go to shit, as you're seeing here, unfortunately.

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person1 9 points a year ago

I can certainly see that Hexbear and the other two are very vocal and toxic here. Engaging in some discussion or getting my views challenged is fine, I'd rather not close myself in a bubble, but it's sad that they would be so quick to insult and ban you. It does worry that they have some of the biggest communities. I wish I could say "oh well the protocol is neutral" but I think that with most OSS projects it matters tremendously who is at the helm; also, another poster outlined quite well that these instances seem to be the showcase for the system.

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peregrin5 7 points a year ago

They are only big by number because they are some of the oldest instances. So they have a lot of inactive accounts and communities. The number of actually active users is less than .world or .ee.

They only seem more active because they are terminally online and have communities that are specifically designed to brigade threads when they don't like what's posted.

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Ofiuco 3 points a year ago

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nutomic 12 points a year ago

The roadmap contains a new feature for extended instance block, which also blocks all posts and comments from that instance's users. If some feature is not implemented in Lemmy thats not out of malice, but because we really dont have time to work in everything that people ask for.

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/5578

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OpenStars 1 point a year ago

I moved to PieFed before it was fully ready, and I've been able to personally defederate from lemmy.ml by blocking all users since I did. No admin approval required. That feature alone was worth it to me to put up with the pain of the platform not being ready yet.

Since then, the platform has greatly improved, and now has many MANY features that Lemmy (and a few that even Reddit) lacks. For example the most recent additions are polls and post flairs. Which tbf Lemmy has plans to add, but features languish in its roadmap for multiple years at a time so I would not expect them anytime "soon". Tbf Rust is a difficult language to work with, but that's just all the more reason to love PieFed, written in Python that many more people can contribute to. Which is what has been allowing it to add new features literally weekly as of late.

PieFed is extremely nice - come check it out! Make an account, and by the time you get through the setup wizard you will already have fallen in love with it.:-)

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4n41y4no5 0 points a year ago

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mathemachristian 1 point a year ago

Its supposed to be tankie TROIKA 😤

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Cowbee 1 point a year ago

Communism and fascism are entirely different, and conflating the two has roots in Double Genocide Theory, a form of Holocaust trivialization and Nazi Apologia. The Nazis industrialized murder and attempted to colonize the world, the Soviets uplifted the Proletariat and supported national liberation movements such as in Cuba, China, Algeria, and Palestine. I recommend reading Blackshirts and Reds.

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hakase 4 points a year ago

Person1, since you're new here, this is Cowbee, our resident tankie apologist/propagandist.

The most reasonable-sounding genocide denier and authoritarian regime supporter this side of the gulags. I highly recommend their alt's comments on Hexbear if you're interested in their more "mask off" persona. Also, remember the number one rule when interacting with hexbears: never directly engage them.

Edit: Here are some of Cowbee's Uyghur genocide denial comments, for example, if anyone's interested. Note the hardline tankie talking points, but couched in the classic Cowbee "reasonable" rhetorical style.

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4n41y4no5 4 points a year ago

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Cowbee 3 points a year ago

Quite an introduction, and quite a lot of slander. I'm a Communist, Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, etc, regardless of how you want to call me. I'm certainly not a genocide denier, and I'd say all governments are "authoritarian," what matters is which class is exerting its authority. My goal is in fact to dispel myths surrounding Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, Communism, etc.

If they check my Hexbear account, they'll see more conversation surrounding gaming and casual conversation, haha.

Edit: here's Hakase attacking feminism and here they are defending the arrests of animal rights protestors. Even more, here's hakase defending transphobes.

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dragonfucker -4 points a year ago

Nobody wants to argue with Cowbee

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dragonfucker -4 points a year ago

Drag is an anarchist and banned from lemmy.ml for being left wing, so drag hopes you will listen with an open mind to this:

Karl Marx said that communism is stateless. That means in communism, the government has no authority to coerce people. Authoritarianism isn't communism. In fact, Joseph Stalin never claimed that the USSR had achieved communism. He said they'd achieved socialism, and he made empty promises that it would be communist at some point in the future.

You know where communism was actually successfully implemented? America and Australia. Karl Marx and his friends were inspired by the Haudenosaunee people of North America. Marx called it "primitive communism".

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nutomic 8 points a year ago

You are not banned from lemmy.ml

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dragonfucker -8 points a year ago

Huh. Drag misremembered. It was just a community ban performed by the lemmy.ml admins, and it's expired

Drag will have to unblock that community and post more leftist history until the ban is permanent. Shouldn't take long.

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4n41y4no5 0 points a year ago

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dragonfucker -5 points a year ago

Every state burns oil. Therefore every state is oppressing drag. You logic would only work if they weren't harming everyone. Besides, the Palestinians and the Ukrainians have asked for our help.

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Sibshops 4 points a year ago

You can support lemm.ee, then, instead?

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rickyrigatoni 8 points a year ago

I might as well since I probably gave Sunaurus a big headache with this thread.

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OpenStars 2 points a year ago

Mbin, not Kbin. Kbin is dead.

There actually is one instance left, a tiny little hold-over in Poland, last I checked, but everyone else that was using Kbin has since switched to Mbin.

Except me personally, who switched to PieFed (which is fantastic btw!:-).

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4n41y4no5 -5 points a year ago

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doctortran 3 points a year ago

Freeloading where? They can be donating to the instance they are on.

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1984 -13 points a year ago

Those places suck and doesnt even have quality apps...

I dont think its a non-issue.

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rickyrigatoni 15 points a year ago

If those issues keep you off them, I'm good with that.

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Binette 3 points a year ago

I had them blocked for misogyny, no wonder lol

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1984 -20 points a year ago

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Neoinvin 5 points a year ago

showing an unbelievable lack of understanding and your whole ass on the internet huh? you're entitled to your opinion, like everyone else. but it sure is a stupid one.

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AnyOldName3 5 points a year ago

The Olympics have allowed trans women to compete against cis women since the 90s, and yet there's never been a trans medalist. If there was a genuine advantage to being trans in sport, at least one country in the past three decades would have loaded their team with trans women and cleaned house. However, taking enough hormones to make a masculine body into a feminine one after it's already grown means you've got way less testosterone than a cis woman, so that counters out any initial advantage. Claiming otherwise is misinformation. Spreading misinformation to the detriment of trans people is transphobic.

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4n41y4no5 1 point a year ago

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lily33 -15 points a year ago

This is bs, because you - and perhaps almost everyone else here - are supporting monetarily much worse people than the Lemmy developers.

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Rentlar 51 points a year ago

I've been around for long enough, time for me to donate.

Sure the two top admins have some shitty opinions, but they still are the main people who have put this software out. The two have been tirelessly working on it for years and years, and have made code that helps everyone, whether you share their opinions or not.

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1984 16 points a year ago

You are paying for their programming, not their opinions. I dont think its a big deal if they have flaws or opinions i dont agree with.

So they dont like trans people. How does that even matter? Any trans person can use the platform anyway. The code doesnt have any opinions, its just code, and that code can be used to support trans people. The little opinions of the devs have no effect on this.

I cant believe how spoiled some people are here. We have a platform, free of ads, quality mobile apps, lots of instances, quite a lot of users. And its not owned by big tech. We own it.

Focus on the pluses here. I dont think another Lemmy will come along anytime soon. Alternatives are not even close in quality.

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Randomgal 6 points a year ago

But Cybertruck owners? Nah fuck 'em.

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kernelle 1 point a year ago

Tesla doesn't open-source their plans so you can build your own, better version of the cybertruck.

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doctortran 4 points a year ago

Alternatives are not even close in quality.

Yes and we can go donate to those alternatives instead and help build them up.

Completely divorced of their political views, I don't think I want to donate to them simply because I don't believe they're doing a good job managing the platform. Donations aren't just down, they lost those donations. And when confronted with this fact, and told that they should probably change some things if they want to keep getting donations, they've staunchly refused.

This does not inspire faith in the development team.

Meanwhile lemmy's development is either too guarded or too complicated for anybody else to join the team and assist. It's still just these two. If the platform is growing, it cannot just be these two.

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1984 1 point a year ago

Well, we will see. It would be stupid if Lemmy died because the users couldnt accept the opinions of two little devs, but sure, it may happen.

Then a lot of users will go back to big tech, and the ad business will profit once again. Because we couldnt accept that two devs on planet earth had opinions we didnt like.

Two people.

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OpenStars 2 points a year ago

What?

PieFed, Mbin, nodebb, flarum - this is a partial listing of the software that does similar to Lemmy, and there's more besides them even (okay so development on Sublinks seems to be exceedingly slow these days, but the code is still there if anyone wants to contribute...).

And this doesn't even begin to touch on the likes of Mastodon, Friendica, Peertube, Pixelfed, Loops (okay tbf this one isn't federating yet iirc, but it planned to?), all of which share people's thoughts and words in a social media atmosphere.

Lemmy isn't the sole competitor to Reddit by any stretch. Heck, a year ago Lemmy.World put out a post (I can find it if you really need me to?) all but outright announcing their intention to switch to Sublinks when it became ready. And at the time that had like 80% of all Lemmy MAUs (monthly active users).

Lemmy is not what makes this place special. The people here are what make this place special. If the people move, then what makes it special will go with them. I personally migrated to PieFed 7 months ago (before it was fully ready), and now that PieFed has surpassed Lemmy in terms of features (e.g. we just added polls and post flairs), I am certain that I am not the only one willing to do so.:-)

You are paying for their programming, not their opinions.

Also, I was going to respond to your original comment but suppose I'll combine it here: you do not seem to be aware that donations also go to support the server costs of Lemmy.ml. Thus, you are in fact paying for their opinions to be spread - they seem to not be offering the choice for others to receive only the code support but not Lemmy.ml?

Check out PieFed - whether you stay with it or not is immaterial, I'm saying that you'll be impressed as fuck with what you see. The sign-up wizard alone will probably make you fall absolutely in love with it. And if not, then the LONG list of features definitely will - e.g. categories of communities, which are user customizable and shareable. Then, even if you decide to keep using your Lemmy account, you'll at least know what is going on with PieFed, which is amazing:-). (The Interstellar app supports PieFed officially, with that coming for Thunder as well.)

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JohnnyEnzyme 7 points a year ago

FWIW, I freaked out once over something relatively minor across the Lemmy-modality, and the dev (one of the two, can't remember which) was just a calm, gem of a person upon my temporary paranoia.

Man, I was... blown away.
(thought I was going to be banned to hell, yadda-yadda)

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milicent_bystandr 33 points a year ago

I'd like to join my voice with those saying it's worth donating even if you disagree with the devs personally. My impression is they're decent about making Lemmy a tech project not a personal political platform, and treating the Internet respectfully as a forum.

The Lemmy software supports so many communities to communicate, including the huge lemmy.world that famously hates .ml. Because the software is open, it can do that freely.

You who hate capitalism, do you donate your ad data to capitalists so they can grow sickeningly rich off your use of their software? Then you might at least let these devs live comfortably off your use of the software. And if you pay in ways you see, instead of ways you don't, does that trouble you so much?

You don't have to agree. And you can still use Lemmy freely! But since this software has been such a blessing to us wanting a non-reddit platform, I hope many will be happy to bless the devs back - and they're only asking for a modest salary.

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Spzi 17 points a year ago

it’s worth donating even if you disagree with the devs personally. My impression is they’re decent about making Lemmy a tech project not a personal political platform, and treating the Internet respectfully

I want to underline this. And ask the reader to put themselves in the devs' shoes for a moment.

Usually, when people have strong opinions, like extreme political views, they try to further their goal wherever they can. To abstain from that desire, and create tools which can be freely used, even by their political enemies, requires a considerable amount of decency and deserves our respect.

Either this, or they value FOSS so much (more), that they still keep Lemmy open for everyone.

In a way, they support people from the opposite side of the political spectrum, by providing them their platform freely. Isn't that exemplary in putting the fedi spirit above political differences?

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doctortran 7 points a year ago

Okay, sure, but that doesn't change the fact that these two developers, with their decisions in moderating that one instance, have dragged down the reputation of the entire platform. They're asking for donations because they lost the donations they were already getting.

And instead of questioning why that is and addressing it, they're asking for more.

This doesn't inspire trust in them. I trust their ideology not to mess with the platform, what I don't trust is their competence if they can't stop hemorrhaging donation money by refusing to deal with the biggest wart on the platform. They have all of these people saying they would donate if they would just deal with this conflict, but they won't. How badly do they need the money to keep developing if they're not willing to separate?

Here's the better question: do they even want to keep developing if they had to separate from it?

More importantly, just from a straight development perspective, this whole operation is a way too flimsy if it's depending on these two people, alone, forever. There have been a lot of really clumsy mistakes and lack of best practices.

What happens if they finally get another developer that really knows Rust and wants to join the project but doesn't "fit in"? How are they actually going to expand the team so this project can grow and not be so dependent on them when they have the reputation they do?

If the community were going to fork it, they would have forked it by now. I don't think there are enough people around that can manage a fork of this platform as it exists, so we are tied to them. And I don't think I like that. I would like to see this platform expand beyond them, but the current course doesn't seem to indicate that will ever happen.

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dessalines 11 points a year ago

They’re asking for donations because they lost the donations they were already getting.

Nope, not even the tiniest bit. We know how vital lemmy is, and want to secure its long-term future by being entirely sustained by donations. We never at any point reached that goal, and given that nutomic had a new baby, this is more important now than ever.

hemorrhaging donation money

I have no idea what this means. We're paying our daily living expenses so we can comfortably work on lemmy without having to find other work. The costs are food and rent.

this whole operation is a way too flimsy if it’s depending on these two people, alone, forever.

I'd love to be able to grow our co-op, and add more developers! Donations make that possible too, especially if they exceed 2 average dev salaries (we're a long way off from that).

What happens if they finally get another developer that really knows Rust and wants to join the project but doesn’t “fit in”? How are they actually going to expand the team so this project can grow and not be so dependent on them when they have the reputation they do?

It's clear you've never tried, because we've never and would never reject code contributers for petty reasons like "not fitting in". If ppl don't want to work with communists, that's on them. Personally I'd never reject someone for their ideology, especially if what they're doing is FOSS, which serves the common good.

I would like to see this platform expand beyond them,

We don't stop people from forking lemmy and never would, that's entirely their right.

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milicent_bystandr 4 points a year ago

As Dessalines replied, your assertion of losing donations is wrong.

But yes indeed, their views, those of .ml, and how both handle them, are driving some donors away. You're asking them to lay down their views, hide or change their opinions, separate from the vocal community on their server (noting that .world is just as vocal, self-righteous and self-assured), in order to develop the software that you use freely (well, that you might then donate to).

Honestly I feel that makes sense and nonsense at the same time. I can see it making sense in some circumstances; but personally I don't think so in these. Maybe the rhetoric I see on .ml just doesn't impact me the same as you?

But as an overarching argument that for the sake of Lemmy they should change... That just seems too much to ask, over the internet. Maybe to ask politely and accept a no. Maybe in person, one might argue and counsel strongly. But people are entitled to their opinions and the internet isn't actually such a good place to change them.

So if the devs keep devving Lemmy, let them. They're providing a good thing for us, and I hope more people donate.

As to the technical aspects, it just feels like an emotional outburst. FOSS projects' maintenance is always hard, and there are always difficulties. We do our best. They are trying to. And if a community came along that loves Lemmy and wants to develop it, they could either contribute or fork. Perhaps their fork would last longer? Perhaps not. But for now this Lemmy is here, and is Free, so we are glad to use it.

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OpenStars 1 point a year ago

If the community were going to fork it, they would have forked it by now.

Why bother? Mbin, PieFed, nodebb, flarum, the list of alternatives goes on and on. Lemmy is fairly mature, that's true, but also the devs kept adding new features, so there wasn't a need to fork it. Plus, each individual instance already somewhat "forks" it each time they do an update - what I mean here is that some like Hexbear.net and Lemmy.world have extremely heavy modifications that they have made, affecting only their own instance (to clarify, the latter is more code checking iirc while the former was actual modifications).

If anyone needs to they could fork Lemmy at any time. But who wants to learn Rust, a language that is super difficult yet unfinished, compared to e.g. Python that PieFed uses, or Mbin is PHP (and Sublinks iirc is Java, etc.)?

Best to break away free from Lemmy entirely. Have you noticed how Lemmy is even more authoritian than Reddit? Yes modlog, but no modmail, no notification of a moderation event, no ability to contact a mod to ask why or discuss, no "right" to even know which mod it was - you simply submit your content, and if a mod decides that they don't like it, then it disappears, without leaving a trace (in contrast, Reddit leaves removed posts still accessible to anyone with the URL), or without warning. The closest thing I've ever heard of that is like this is when Reddit "shadow-banned" someone. While on Lemmy, every single post removal is that way. The admins have total control using Lemmy, and mods have a lot, but regular users? Naw, that's a different story... you all get much fewer freedoms than even Reddit offered (usually, unless they actually did shadowban you).

I much prefer PieFed tbh:-). It has a ton of ideas pushing for democratization of moderation features, putting control of such matters into the hands of the individual users rather than forcing mods to have to do all the work of moderation. e.g. if someone doesn't ero see posts containing certain keywords like "Musk" or "Trump", a user can elect to filter those out (the available options there are: All, None, and get this: Some, which is very nice!:-), rather than making a moderator have to decide for the entire community as a whole (they still can do that, but now they don't have to, bc the software provides another alternative for those users who want to, leaving the users who don't want that filtering to see that content, while still sharing the same space, rather than having to make a new community:-).

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person1 3 points a year ago

I have very short experience with Lemmy, having just moved here from Reddit. I joined one of the most popular forums on .ml unaware of the fame of this instance, and from my short experience "Treating the Internet respectfully" is the opposite of what is found there.

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OpenStars 1 point a year ago

I am sorry for your bad experience on Lemmy. Most people fall into the same trap, and more often than not, leave altogether. I am currently at 100% of the people that I've told about Lemmy actively chiding me for having done so, due to them having come here, seen that, and immediately noped out.

It doesn't help that Google points people to Lemmy.ml (DuckDuckGo properly points to Lemmy.World, as the most active instance, but lemmy.ml has an older history), which to a guest account shows only Local (rather than globally All) posts, which ofc are full of people making fun of the Western world and society - even to the point of saying that people who do such innocuous activities as having bank accounts should be killed (sadly, I'm not joking, although the people making such claims likely were... and yet... were they, were they REALLY?!).

Nobody likes to be made fun of, so it's no surprise that the likes of Reddit's r/RedditAlternatives is filled with such stories of people encountering such and never coming back. But I am glad that despite Lemmy.ml's efforts to hide it, you managed to find the nicer portions of Lemmy where we can actually enjoy conversations.:-)

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OpenStars 2 points a year ago

My impression is they're decent about making Lemmy a tech project not a personal political platform

But... isn't it impossible to donate solely to the software, when they also will use the funds to pay server costs for lemmy.ml? The referenced post did not exactly highlight that little tidbit of information... yet isn't it true nonetheless?

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milicent_bystandr 3 points a year ago

Yes, but as pointed out elsewhere,

it works out about 2% of your donation, if that
the devs would be entitled to spend their salary on personal projects anyhow, it's an effective salary not ngo funds
.ml serves as a useful test server and public beta for the rest of Lemmy
it's effectively funding every instance, by providing the software - by that metric, the opposite .world gets the larger share
because of the small scales, ordinarily there's not a lot of sense to separate .ml funding because it's so small. It's not like the devs are being devious

To me, that stacks up fairly.

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OpenStars 2 points a year ago

I'm just being pedantic, but also the problem seems easily solved by having someone else moderate that instance, while they focus on just the coding.

Of course they are 100% free to do as they choose and I would not dream of wanting them to do otherwise.

Then too, the people deciding whether to donate can do the same - and it seems that the rather unusual moderation practices of lemmy.ml are a sticking point for whether they want to contribute funds or not. The amount of those funds, whether the devs have the "right" to do so or not, that is all besides the point. Some people just don't like to fund things like genocide, period.

But now we are veering into political territory that I know less about. Thank you for sharing those facts about the situation, as I continue to learn about it that is very helpful:-).

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conditional_soup 25 points a year ago

The devs also say that they would gladly accept any development help as well, if you're either unwilling or unable to financially contribute.

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VitoRobles 3 points a year ago

This needs to be more highlighted than just donations.

Not trying to call out politics. But I rather find a way to contribute open source than watch my money keep the lights on very specific servers.

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td_sp 24 points a year ago

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hakase 18 points a year ago

That's correct. People actively shilling for authoritarian regimes committing human rights atrocities, denying genocides, and aggressively silencing all dissent do not deserve it.

All they'd have to do is develop from behind the scenes and not actively contribute to one of the worst places on the platform, and I'd have no problem donating to them.

But they don't, and so I don't, and instead I get to listen to your whataboutism, literally the guy in the "and yet you participate in society" meme.

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nutomic 21 points a year ago

Lemmy dev here, for what its worth I stopped posting about politics years ago, and also dont do any moderation on lemmy.ml besides occasionally banning an obvious spam account. I simply dont have the time or interest anymore, and prefer to focus my time on development which benefits all Lemmy users.

Posting from alt account because these comments are not federating to my home instance.

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hakase 11 points a year ago

If that were to become the enforced position of the entire dev team going forward, I promise that I will donate, and provide receipts.

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Ledivin 4 points a year ago

That's a perfectly sensible position, but the money doesn't go just to you.

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davidagain 5 points a year ago

It also goes to lemmy.ml costs.

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person1 1 point a year ago

Hi Nutomic. I'm new to Lemmy. I was quite impressed with what you have built, and was looking forward to helping Lemmy grow. It must have taken a lot of your effort. I was really enthusiastic about the project and a few weeks back your appeal for funding would probably have had me donating something.

Unfortunately, I've already had some bad experiences on your instance. I probably would have stayed away from it had I known what it stood for, but - as someone pointed out - this is the oldest instance, has some of the largets forums, so naturally that's where many people land first.

And it really is quite an image problem for Lemmy. Someone compared you to Elon tanking (sorry for the bad pun) Tesla sales. Sure, up to some point one can say, imperfect allies, separation of code and ideology, that kind of thing. But I think you see from the comments that for a lot of people it's too much.

For me, the combination of your views and what's represented by .ml fundamentally undermined my trust in Lemmy as a platform. I don't have the means to validate claims of code or development processs being impartial. It could well be that you did a lot of excellent work and have superb integrity in separating your views from your contributions. I just honestly don't trust that is the case.

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dragonfucker 0 points a year ago

This seems pretty political. Have you apologised for it?

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el_abuelo 5 points a year ago

What would be the correct way to voice opposing views about these issues?

Genuinely asking as to my ignorant eyes this looks like a reasonable way of discussing the issues, so I must have some kind of wrongthink here and would love to be guided back to a place where people can discuss opposing views safely.

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td_sp 6 points a year ago

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dragonfucker -2 points a year ago

Lemmy won't die. They'll have enough money to develop the software if they just take lemmy.ml offline, and then they'd get more donation money overnight.

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AnonomousWolf 7 points a year ago

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burgerpocalyse 3 points a year ago

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aeshna_cyanea 2 points a year ago

No, it's about someone building a car for you while also driving their own car. The car they built for you is unquestionably good even if you don't like where they drive their own version. I don't think it's unfair for them to ask compensation for maintenance they do on YOUR version

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anas 2 points a year ago

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iii 1 point a year ago

It's so surprising that a forum with mostly commie ideologues has a hard time finding non-freeloaders amongst the members

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Abnorc 1 point a year ago

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AnonomousWolf 22 points a year ago

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nutomic 8 points a year ago

Thank you!

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vxx 4 points a year ago

ml arent allies at all, they're the problem, and they wont see a stinking cent from me. It would be like donating to elon musk because I like a twitter Account that posts there.

It's like supporting Ukraine but donating to putins propaganda outlets.

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SoftestSapphic -4 points a year ago

Inherently incompatible ideologies =/= imperfect allies

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bilb 3 points a year ago

Have you noticed that every other reddit alternative turned into right wing parapolitical forums? That's so much worse.

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NovaOG 22 points a year ago

It's so sad that liberals will literally cozy up to fascists and monetarily support them however they can... But a FOSS project run by commies gets them clutching their pearls super hard

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cashsky 14 points a year ago

Just had a whole argument about this on that lemmyworld post that's at the top about boycotting ml cuz someone brought up how they can't donate if the developers are gonna use some of that money on ml server cost. They can't see the bigger picture. Instead they wanna cry over how their $5 or whatever donation is gonna be used. Pathetic.

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mathemachristian 2 points a year ago

i reported a fundraising website for the ukrainian neonazi and murderer sternenko and thats still up, but talking politics online is just inexcusable

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goferking0 1 point a year ago

What's better is that's also the user who either watches new on ml like a hawk or has a bot that just scrapes content to pull off ml comms to put on world comms.

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conditional_soup 8 points a year ago

Imo, it's people just rationalizing not wanting to give $5 away. I mean, there's nothing wrong with deciding you don't want to donate, that's your choice, but be honest with yourself. If they weren't commies, people would be finding some other excuse to not donate.

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1984 21 points a year ago

The original post on lemmy.ml by the creator of Lemmy had a lot more details, so maybe just link to that one?

https://lemmy.ml/post/29579005

Tldr: They are down to about 1000 dollars per developer and will have to take jobs and stop Lemmy development if they dont get 2500 dollars per developer.

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dragonfucker -7 points a year ago

They'll get more money if they shut down lemmy.ml

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AnonomousWolf 2 points a year ago

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dragonfucker -3 points a year ago

People will be more willing to give them money if they shut down lemmy.ml

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AnonomousWolf 1 point a year ago

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4n41y4no5 1 point a year ago

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conditional_soup 1 point a year ago

Tbh, of all the tankie triad, .ml is the chillest, and my own experience is that, unlike the Nazis, they generally don't cause issues off server. Now, if you wander into Hexbear and spout some mainstream view, well, good luck, partner, but it's their server. Besides, I sometimes ask myself what the CIA would do and try to do the opposite for the sake of all mankind. It doesn't really bother me that they run .ml.

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morrowind 2 points a year ago

That's because it's not really part of the triad. It's the developer instance, and it happens to be tankie adjacent cause they are

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JudahBenHur 21 points a year ago

thanks for the post sir, happy to throw a few money units in

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ungsund 16 points a year ago

I came here because reddit is turning into a corporate shithole. Users getting banned because of Luigi apologia and so on and so on. Was really relieved that we did in fact have a great, open source alternative to reddit.

My problem is the lead developers of this platform. They do not see the issues with their political bias being woven into their platform (and their transphobia), it will face the exact same shit thats happening to reddit today.

I can't pay money to people who deny the pain of trans people. I just can't. And if the lead developers of Lemmy run out of funds, well then I guess they'll have to just take a good look in the mirror if they don't see the reason why Lemmy failed. For now I'm gonna use lemmy if I can, but you can't expect people from reddit to come here and support you guys when their is really hateful shit being spewed by those people (tankies).

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gravityowl -11 points a year ago

They do not see the issues with their political bias being woven into their platform

What the fuck are you talking about? Their ideology is not part of the project in the slightest. Which is why every other instance works perfectly even if they don't agree politically with the dev team

For now I'm gonna use lemmy if I can, but you can't expect people from reddit to come here and support you guys

That's because you want to have your cake and eat it too.

Go back to Reddit with such shitty takes where you move away from massive corporations only to leech off small projects supported by small donors and real people.

You're literally just another one of those people complaining about the lack of alternatives in tech while also being unwilling to support the products you're currently using and talking shit about...

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ungsund 6 points a year ago

Cool off.

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gravityowl -11 points a year ago

Why? So more users like you can come to this platform and use it while shitting all over it by contributing nothing to it?

As I already said, go back to Reddit

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imaqtpie 16 points a year ago

Dessalines and Nutomic are criminally underpaid. Lemmy development still has a long way to go and we could get there much faster if people donated more. But in typical Lemmy fashion, people would rather sit on their high horses and throw stones from their glass houses.

I started donating to the developers 2 days after I joined Lemmy and have given over $1k since then. I find the developers to be competent, mature, and reasonable. Similarly to many other contentious topics on this platform, the conversation regarding their perceived or imagined political beliefs is completely lacking in objectivity, logic, and nuance. Y'all actually be gossiping like teenagers about these developers even while taking advantage of the fruits of their unpaid labor. I've seen the evidence of their extremism and it's quite underwhelming when you lay it all out.

And even if I did have major qualms about the devs, I would still argue that it's much harder to justify using any products or services from large corporations like Amazon or Reddit than it is to monetarily support a FOSS project such as Lemmy. Out of everything I've spent money on in my lifetime, Lemmy is easily among the most morally justifiable expenses.

I eventually had to reduce my monthly contribution once sh.itjust.works started accepting donations, because I also feel strongly about supporting my own instance. It's unfortunate that so many lemmings seemingly understand the fact that reddit has become an evil cancer and an alternative is sorely needed, but don't seem to understand that creating such an alternative is a project that requires a massive amount of time and effort. Donating to your instance is great, but without continued development of the underlying software, it's a futile effort. Even if you want to die on the hill of not donating to the big bad Lemmy devs, at least donate to PieFed or something! 2 patrons?!? As an early adopter userbase, we can and should be doing a lot more to support the fediverse monetarily, imo.

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nutomic 4 points a year ago

Thanks for your donations and your understanding. Its a bit annoying that people ascribe various beliefs to me personally based on nothing more than comments from random lemmy.ml users. But it seems there is nothing I can do to change that.

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imaqtpie 2 points a year ago

People tend to generalize and assume a lot without actually taking the time to verify their assumptions. It's very frustrating when people demonize admins due to the bad behavior of a handful of users. Trying to win the approval of random goons is a waste of time anyway.

From my perspective you seem like a normal and good person and I think people will eventually come to see that as Lemmy grows up.

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nutomic 2 points a year ago

I hope youre right :)

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Sydnxt 1 point a year ago

All you had to do was say sorry, mate

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MyOpinion 12 points a year ago

Support sent.

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nutomic 3 points a year ago

Thanks!

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abobla 10 points a year ago

I'll do my part, I just wish my country's currency wasn't worth 1/6 of an euro :/

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SomethingBurger 6 points a year ago

Just donate 6 times the amount smh my head

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abobla 5 points a year ago

omg I'm so dumb, thank you very much.

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moseschrute 8 points a year ago

Just doubled my monthly contribution! Thanks for the reminder.

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nutomic 5 points a year ago

Thank you!

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moseschrute 0 points a year ago

I know you're incredibly busy. If you write 1 sentence of feedback for my Lemmy client I'll double my contribution again.
https://blorpblorp.xyz/

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nutomic 2 points a year ago

It looks good! Why dont you add it to the app list on join-lemmy.org?

https://github.com/...

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dragonfucker -2 points a year ago

This is who you're replying to

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gon 6 points a year ago

Made a small donation. Every bit counts, I hope.

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dryfter 5 points a year ago

So right now I'm not in a financial situation that I can even possibly think about donating.

My general issue with FOSS is the guilt trip I go on when devs plead for donations -- that's MY issue, not any of the dev teams -- but it plays a part in not using FOSS as much as I would like. I don't want to sell my soul, but that's about all I have to give right now so free ad-supported services and software are where I tend to lean to these days.

However, I am trying to put as much focus on supporting less shitty humans and buy locally whenever I can now. I didn't realize the views of the devs of Lemmy until a few days ago and I'm a little concerned to be even using Lemmy as a whole as it shows some level of tacit support for the devs and their beliefs. If they weren't open about it, obviously this wouldn't be an issue but since it's out in public it's an issue.

I swear I have a point to all this....

Is Lemmy funded just by direct contributions from users or do instances take extra money from their donations and funnel it down to the main project?

If anyone is familiar with the various 12 Step programs, this is pretty much how those main programs get funded. The local meetings take donations that pay for the rent and any other expenses and then donate left over funds to the main service organization while keeping a reserve for emergencies.

If I were in the position to donate, I would feel much better donating to Lemmy.ee rather than the main project considering their views on certain political issues. I would not be directly donating, but if the instance donated extra funds I might be ok with that. It just feels different for some reason.

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aeshna_cyanea 2 points a year ago

You realize it's the owner of .ee that made the post right. Since the instance is still running, still federated with the main one, and the post is still up, maybe that says something about how acceptable those politics are

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Sibshops 5 points a year ago

I'm a (small) monthly supporter already! I wish lemmy had a way to give people a little checkbox in their profile for supporters.

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jecxjo -2 points a year ago

or they could work to project completion and not add new features.

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GrumpyDuckling 3 points a year ago

I had made the suggestion to them that they could start offering some kind of managed hosting services for people running instances. I have a couple of instances running with a hosting provider. If I could have them running with the support of the devs then that would be awesome.

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nutomic 6 points a year ago

Working on Lemmy is already a fulltime job. Providing a managed hosting service would add another significant workload and leave much less time for the main development work.

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GrumpyDuckling 1 point a year ago

That makes sense. You could always set up a simple print to order site and slap the Lemmy mouse on a bunch of stuff. I'd definitely buy something.

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nutomic 2 points a year ago

Do you know a good site for that?

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GrumpyDuckling 1 point a year ago

A lot of people use shopify and then have the orders fulfilled by one of the many print on demand services. So once the store is set up then it's basically on auto pilot as far as I can tell.

I've never done it before, but they make it pretty easy to set up a store and collect payments.

Shopify is a Canadian company so that isn't an issue in the current political climate, but I'm unaware of any other issues people might have with the company.

https://www.shopify.com/...

path: 0 16852818 16854352 16856187 16863456 16863900, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0

GrumpyDuckling 1 point a year ago

It could be fun to have a community design competition and have those designs available as well.

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nthavoc 3 points a year ago

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gamer 2 points a year ago

I started using Lemmy like 2 years ago, stopped for a long time, and came back a few months ago. I'm sure something has changed in that time, but I don't know what.

It could be because Lemmy is written in Rust, which is kind of notorious for how difficult it is to be productive in it. Or maybe it's that there aren't enough developers, or there isn't enough funding.

In any case, my motivation to help fund this project is not helped by the insufferable cuntery of the tankies in the .ml communities. Knowing that the core devs are also tankies makes me want to see it fail. Fuck those people.

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nutomic 3 points a year ago

You can read the release announcements to see what changed. Be warned its a lot.

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SoftestSapphic 1 point a year ago

If they weren't tankies then I would

If the devs shit views destroy the project that's their fault

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perestroika 6 points a year ago

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kerntucky 2 points a year ago

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perestroika 1 point a year ago

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selokichtli 1 point a year ago

It's kind of clarifying to check the original post and the attitudes around there. I actually recommend it.

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Kevnyon -5 points a year ago

At the end of the day, even hardcore users are not willing to fork it over. Why? Because of all the content that is accessible without having to pay. People have gotten used to not paying for stuff like this over the years, what was going to make them start now? Development will always cost time and it will past a certain point always cost money. So many things cost money that if a site on its baby legs like Lemmy starts asking for more, you think its gonna get it? I doubt it and that sucks, but that just proves that you need that mainstream financial backing in order to host all the users and the content and it costs money, lots of it. And with hardcore users who are here before the mainstream, well, they aren't the casuals who sink money into it, just plain and simple.

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dragonfucker -6 points a year ago

The developers spend donations to the Lemmy software on their instance lemmy.ml. A lot of people don't want to donate to lemmy.ml

They'll be fine if they stop spending money on lemmy.ml

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nutomic 5 points a year ago

Note that lemmy.ml hosting is only financed via Opencollective. All donations through other platforms go exclusively to developer salaries.

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AnonomousWolf 3 points a year ago

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dragonfucker -4 points a year ago

Drag would propose that most of Dessalines' "development" wages are probably being spent on hours moderating .ml, and that's at least a grand per month.

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nutomic 5 points a year ago

Your estimate is wrong, have a look at all the code he writes: https://github.com/...

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dragonfucker -3 points a year ago

The most recent merge request is just him updating the version numbers in all the captcha-related .tomls, lol

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Randomgal -10 points a year ago

Are you telling me DeCeNtrAlIZaTiOn and FOsS are not enough to magically keep a project going?

Surprisedpikachu.png

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gamermanh -22 points a year ago

This fuckin spam everywhere today holy shit

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meta

@lemm.ee

login for more options

lemm.ee Meta

This is a community for discussion about this particular Lemmy instance.

News and updates about lemm.ee will be posted here, so if that's something that interests you, make sure to subscribe!

Rules:

Support requests belong in !support
Only posts about topics directly related to lemm.ee are allowed
If you don't have anything constructive to add, then do not post/comment here. Low effort memes, trolling, etc is not allowed.
If you are from another instance, you may participate in discussions, but remain respectful. Realize that your comments will inevitably be associated with your instance by many lemm.ee users.

If you're a Discord user, you can also join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/XM9nZwUn9K

Discord is only a back-up channel, !meta@lemm.ee will always be the main place for lemm.ee communications.

If you need help with anything, please post in !support instead.

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