this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Asklemmy
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Fedi.Tips still recommends that people
I think while the fediverse is still in its relative infancy we need to exercise caution with how we promote it. I'm not saying anybody is wrong for using Lemmy, I engage with it regularly, but my account is on Kbin. I'm saying that while the dust is settling it's more important that we advertise any alternative to Reddit, not one specific instance etc.
That's personally what would stop me from doing it anyway. Fuck spez, but also fuck human rights denial
Nobody ever directly engages the devs on the articles that created this whole affair. They simply accuse them of some vague "human rights denial" "genocide-supporters" "tankie" without any real substance. Go ahead and search out the articles. I read through some of them.
Yes, they are leftist essays. The devs didn't write them, they just compiled them together. I skimmed through a couple and read the titles of the rest. Some of them deal with topics such as Maoist China and the number of deaths from the Cultural Revolution. The article puts together an argument, with cited sources, that the common death figures are overblown.
Maybe the author is wrong, I don't know. I'm not an expert in this field nor do I have the energy to do as much research as I'd need to feel comfortable leaning one way or the other. But from reading the article, at no point does the author condone genocide.
Is this what we've come to? Someone can't post an article challenging one small piece of the narrative without all of a sudden being totally disavowed? I think it's absurd. Wrong or right, people should be allowed to discuss and share reasoned analysis.
Eh, the core dev is a bonafide tankie though, which immediately apparent when you check his activities on Lemmy.ml and lemmygrad, but who cares. The software is open sourced, with plenty of contributions from people all over the world in the past few months. The moment the dev brought politics or other shenanigan into the software, it'll going to get forked immediately.
Yeah this is where I fall in my thought process. Lemmy is a tool like any other software, it can be used by good and evil for good and evil. I just want to exercise caution when advertising a reddit alternative that one such alternative is already experiencing controversy (earned or not).
Maybe a “viva la fediverse” would make more sense if someone wanted to cause a stir on r/place
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, my point is more steeped in caution. The uninformed don’t know there is a difference between the software and the instances run by the devs, I just don’t want this federated space to be associated with controversy while it’s young. There is plenty more we can say to promote reddit alternatives.
I think stuff like this: https://lemmy.ml/post/1167199
is what's more provably worrying. Modlogs are public, and if I'm interpreting this information correctly, I think the devs are engaging in scummy practices.