I never said it wasn’t, but I probably could have - my main point with mentioning that Lemmy is FOSS was that the developer’s politics doesn’t (necessarily) mean that the platform is bad.
I like this post! I follow some people elsewhere who are mostly hyping up kbin because the main developer of Lemmy is a tankie and the main developer of kbin maybe isn't - but it's such a weird thing to apply a purity test to. Other comments mentioned it but Lemmy is FOSS, so even if you disagree with the political leanings of the developers, you are totally free to do what you want with it. Barring the presence of any backdoors (which would likely/hopefully be caught because, again, FOSS) the main developers don't have access to any instances created with the software. I don't really understand the concern.
Now, if there's a functional concern with the Lemmy platform and how it's being developed, then yeah, that's when a fork should be looked at. It shouldn't be looked at by an individual community (with a lack of people who can help), but a more widespread effort. But forking because the "lead" developer doesn't match your purity test? Nah.
I like this idea! A lot of the younger people I know (and, realistically, the older ones as well) have only ever gotten their news from Facebook, and MAYBE local news stations (or, more accurately, their official Facebook pages)
Showing people the value of local journalism is great.