• jnj@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    The Lemmy project openly describes itself in its public documentation as anti-US, and was apparently founded around the idea that Reddit is fundamentally anti-China and pro-US: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/users/07-history-of-lemmy.html

    The doc starts off talking about open source, but it quickly becomes clear that the Lemmy project is primarily political in nature.

    To me this is concerning – what happens when largely pro-US Reddit refugees swarm a community (community in the general sense, not the Lemmy sense) which was intended by the founders to combat those peoples views? Sure, instances and people can choose to ignore the lemmy.ml instance, but the founders control the project at a much deeper level than that.

    Personally I hope that alternative implementations that are compatible with Lemmy arise, totally outside of the influence of the original founders. Yes there is kbin, but I actually prefer the Lemmy model (from what I’ve seen so far), and I think there would only be benefits of having another high quality implementation which is totally separate yet totally compatible with the original Lemmy. It would make the whole thing more resilient, and could be fertile ground for future improvements to flourish.

    • b_n@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Is that post really anti us and pro china though? To me it looks like anti pro us, and anti anti china.

      Also, how do you see the founders controlling the project more? Especially at the “much deeper level”?

      I’m a New Zealander living in The Netherlands, whether you choose to believe that or not.

      • jnj@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Is that post really anti us and pro china though? To me it looks like anti pro us, and anti anti china.

        I had already formed conclusions after reading through one of the founder’s comment histories (which I’d encourage), so my reading of it may have been biased. Either way it’s clear that the motivation driving them is, or at least was, largely political in nature.

        Also, how do you see the founders controlling the project more? Especially at the “much deeper level”?

        They own the github repo, they control what code gets committed, they control whether the project lives or dies really. They have the power to lose interest or decide to abandon the project, at which point the best hope the community has is that others pick it up. It’s not normally something I worry too much about with open source projects but again, strong geopolitical associations makes it feel precarious to me – if they don’t like where things are going, maybe they’d feel motivated to actively shut it down and discourage any peaceful transition of (code) ownership. Obviously this is all conjecture.

        I’m a New Zealander living in The Netherlands, whether you choose to believe that or not.

        I’m not sure why you think I’d have trouble believing that!

        • MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Couldn’t someone just fork it and update current servers with that fork and still keep all of the data though? It should still just work the same but just not be from a codebase controlled by the founders

          • Cows Look Like Maps@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            That’s right. It’s a legitimate solution if the lead dev drives it into the ground. I don’t think lack of developers to fork or maintain it would be an issue. The only barrier I see is adoption of yet another platform. So in my mind, there’s always an option to just separate if Lemmy turns into one big tankie brigade. But forking is still a PITA and not ideal.

            • MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              I don’t think using a fork would separate it into another platform. It would still be Lemmy. They would only need to separate of their code bases change so drastically between the two that going to other instances from the forked one starts breaking things. And even then workarounds could then be put in the former version so everything still plays nice.

          • carbon_based@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            I’d think if they would resist a “global citizen” approach in favour of the now de-facto “hegemonic nations” approach, that would be a good reason for offering such a fork. … It could quickly supersede the “old Lemmy” when people start to realise that the new system allows migration and resilience against domain-takedowns. :-)
            @[email protected]

    • ronaldtemp1@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Criticising pro-US doesn’t necessarily mean anti-US, you can be in the middle. Similarly, criticising anti-China doesn’t necessarily mean pro-China. Praising when something good was really done and criticising when something bad was really done, you can achieve at least some level of unbiased, rational and reasonable opinion.