Good job everyone blocking and boycotting .ml! It's having an effect, users are noticing and MAUs on their comms are falling!
And for anyone asking "Why are we boycotting/blocking lemmy.ml?" Here's a quick recap:
Lemmy.ml is an instance run by admins who are hardcore tankies and will enforce their ideology on their instance through various means from allowing (and pushing it themselves) propaganda (Such as Russia being justified in some way to invade Ukraine) and known propaganda outlets (Like RT) to removing content on their instance critical of their favored authoritarian regimes such as Russia or China and even banning users for such speech or speech critical of them if it's off their instance (Just like the Reddit mods of ol!).
If it was just some random instance it would have been defederated from long ago like the rest of the "Tankie Triad" (Hexbear and Lemmygrad), but they've positioned lemmy.ml as the "flagship" instance and abused that position and influence to become large enough to keep other instances from defederating from them.
Which I believe is harmful to the Lemmy-verse's overall growth and outside reputation. I have seen it come up before on Reddit threads (and other testimonials from people who came back and tried it again) that "They tried Lemmy but it was a bunch of tankies and went back to Reddit"
I don't know about you, but I'd prefer Lemmy to not end up with the reputation for being "Tankie Central " or even worse "Voat 2.0".
So if you haven't joined the boycott yet, join today and help us foster a better healthier Lemmy-verse!
You can take a look around here on !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works for documentation of it or checkout this list of curated documentation
In a recent discussion in the Matrix chat, it was mentioned that donations to support development have recently fallen off quite steeply. I mentioned my reason for not donating anymore is because I can't support anyone who runs an instance like .ml. @nutomic@lemmy.ml said I could donate directly to him since he doesn't do as much moderation over there, but also mentioned that donations for development go towards server costs for .ml. Hell no.
That's a fair question, and maybe we should be concerned. They're already saying development will stop without more donations.
There are alternatives. Projects have died or been forked before because of the actions of their developers. OrganicMaps comes to mind (they are both a fork of something, and recently a new fork was started to detach from the developers (I can't think of the name).
I'm just one person, but I'm not going to give .ml any financial support, you can be sure of that.
If the political difference is between building a multistory carpark or underground carpark with a park on the ground level, sure, it's stupid. If the political difference is "Russia does nothing wrong, Ukraine deserved to get invaded because of nazi" and "Russia is to blame for being the aggressor", then it's definitely not.
You're allowed to fund propaganda machine, and people allowed to not do it.
And you are using the platform made by .ml admins so you are doing the same. I'm not condoning anyone's politics or opinions. Just be morally consistent. If you don't support their views then why are you using a platform they developed?
Because i was not aware those pieces of shit developed it. Because i am on a federation made by people those monsters want all to be genocided and im not paying a single dime.
Thus they are working for free to improve the platform i'm on. Platform that is used to counter russian propaganda.
Lol ok bud. Maybe calm down with the rhetoric. Far left is never going to have the amount of power you think they currently have meanwhile there is an actual Nazi uprising all over the world.
No, but I want the funds to only be used for Lemmy development, not for their tankie server. They are the ones that make it impossible to do one without the other.
Ooor I can make it clear where I draw the lines, and hopefully get the developers not to spend the donations on their tankie server. Weird how that works, right?
A bit hypocritical to continue benefitting off of their labor and time by using the platform but their political views is where you draw the line, yet you continue to use the platform. Maybe if you actually believed in what you said you would stop using the platform and go back to reddit. But do go on and preach from your virtue signaling high horse about how paying $30/per month for their server coet (which they use as a testing bed) is too much for you to handle.
No, I don't see it as hypocritical. My issue isn't their views as you're putting it, my issue is them using my donation to distribute tankie propaganda. If they didn't use my donations for that purpose, they'd get some.
What would be hypocritical would be if I sent them money, even though I heavily disagree with their tankie shit. But I don't do that, so we're all good!
No one is stopping other instances from defederating and stop interacting with .ml. That's the whole beauty of Lemmy. But got it so you can't be morally consistent in benefitting from their labor and time (and in a way paying you with their labor and time by you using what they developed) but you have a problem with what they choose to do with their only source of income , and yes donations are their only source of income in their personal lives. And yes you do have a problem with their views because you wouldn't be so fervent in calling their views propaganda. If you were morally consistent you would stop using Lemmy completely until they changed their political views.
No, I'm not morally inconsistent in any way. You still haven't explained how I am inconsistent. What moral maxims am I following that I'm violating by not donating to the Lemmy developers?
Also, again, they are free to have their views, but I don't want to support them running a platform that distributes those views while censoring other views. Again, this is in no way morally inconsistent. Is this really such a hard concept for you to understand?
It's not political differences, really. Go ahead and be communist, I don't care. It's the heavy handed moderation style. It's a 1 sided instance and anything to the contrary gets deleted and a time limited ban. They go against exactly what they think they stand for.
I could donate directly to him since he doesn't do as much moderation over there
I'm in the modlog a lot so I can confirm that that is true, however, like @fiddlesticks@lemmy.dbzer0.com mentioned, he shares a transphobic flavor of their mindset sooo yea
but also mentioned that donations for development go towards server costs for .ml. Hell no.
LMAO "Donate directly to me and you won't have to worry about it! Butttt it'll still go to the exact thing you're opposed to."