I keep running into comments where users are arguing for avoiding Lemmy, claiming that Lemmy supports authoritarian governments, supports the CCP, sides with Russia in their invasion of Ukraine, denies genocides committed by nominal communist governments, and other similar political claims. I know there are communist instances and whatnot, but I’m well aware that identifying as a communist doesn’t mean that someone wants a dictatorial government or denies genocides.

  • Can we figure this out and have any supporting evidence either way to end the rumors?
  • Is there any evidence that Lemmy is advocating against democracy, pro dictatorships, denying and/or advocating for genocides?
  • Is there evidence that using Lemmy supports genocidal aspiring dictators and their accomplices?
  • Even if there is one instance that advocates for atrocities, genocides, dictatorships, and clearly false revisions of history, what does that have to do with the Lemmy as a system? Can’t those instances just be defederated?

To be 100% clear, I am not a communist, aspiring dictator, or support genocides. I also do not believe that communism = dictatorships and the end of human rights. I believe in democracy, equitable distribution or power, individual human rights and freedoms. If I had to define a personal political identity, I would mostly fall under the term anarchist and do not advocate for violence against innocent people despite their political viewpoints (except Nazis because they’re not innocent. Fuck Nazis).

  • @Guy_Fieris_HairEnglish
    43•2 years ago

    A few days ago the Lemmy devs made an update here: https://join-lemmy.org/news/2023-06-17_-_Update_from_Lemmy_after_the_Reddit_blackout

    In that update about half way through they aknowlage that everyone thinks they are tankies, deny it, and refer people to the about lemmy page here: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/users/07-history-of-lemmy.html

    The about lemmy page they have some very strong political views that are anti-usa media. (Most of which, I as an American agree with) . None of this really answers your question, I’m sure there’s more to it I don’t know. But maybe provides some context.

    I am tentatively here for the ride. 🤷‍♂️. They run lemmy.ml, and by design if I am not on lemmy.ml, they don’t have control over what I see, say, or do. They can have their own views, it does seem strange to put them at the forefront of the entire project though. And if they are the devs it seems they could push an update to nuke everything if they wanted. Idk what the context is to the whole thing.

    • Widget
      27•2 years ago

      They’re extremely pro-China. They deny the Uyghur genocide, by saying it’s just as real as “white genocide”. It’s mostly criticisms that I would say are valid except that mixing in the Chinese propaganda kinda spoils the whole thing.

      My expectation is that some people will just use it as an excuse because they actually enjoy Reddit turning into 9gag with NFTs. If it really becomes an issue, Lemmy will be forked, and new devs will lead it.

      (There’s also still kbin.)

      • ArugulaZ
        0•2 years ago

        Guess I made the right move when I picked kbin. I don’t need to find out that the NEXT social network I use is run by political extremist jagoffs.

        • @azuth
          13•2 years ago

          They don’t run the social network, they run part of it, lemmy.ml.

          Which you actually are federated to in kbin.social just like I am at lemmy.world. Meaning you interact with their users and communities.

          This is the whole point of fediverse, nobody exclusively runs it and gets to do whatever the fuck they want with it. They can do whatever they want on their part of the network but if it starts affecting other parts (instances like lemmy.world) they can just cut them off without losing any functionality.

          I also expect many many more people contributing to the development of this project as it picks up users. It’s necessary, not for political reasons but because the original development team is actually pretty small.

          • @Guy_Fieris_Hair
            -11•2 years ago

            They are the devs that program it all. If this blows up in a way they don’t like they could push an update that nukes the whole thing, no?

            • @azuth
              18•2 years ago

              No, the instance owners would have to manually download and install the update. Which I doubt they will do at the same time especially if there is not something important fixed or added with the update.

            • @SYLOH
              18•2 years ago

              It’s open source and not centrally run. So they can’t really “push an update” and even if they could, it would be quite easy to revert and continue development in a different direction.

            • arcturus
              1•1 year ago

              instances aren’t forced to update, however

              if the update nukes an instance, most instances probably just won’t update (and someone’s likely to fork the lemmy source code)

        • Widget
          5•2 years ago

          There’s also not really any penalty for making extra accounts at different servers. I signed up for both kbin and lemmy.world before I settled on kbin.

    • spiritEnglish
      12•2 years ago

      On another topic, there are rumors circulating that we are fascists or supported genocide. These claims are completely false, and like most viral twitter threads, are coming from a single Mastodon user on a personal vendetta who didn’t provide any sources.

      Well, they denied to be fascists or support genocide, without denying being “tankies”. I don’t know how they would respond to such claims, but I did found out that one of the developer did (or do?) hold “tankie” views. See https://lemmy.world/comment/311333 and https://lemmy.world/comment/329485 for more.