Hey folks!
I’m writing this because funding for the Lemmy project has dropped to critical levels, which could seriously impact its future development.
Thanks to the generous support of our lemm.ee community, our server infrastructure costs are covered, and we even have a few months of runway. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who has contributed - lemm.ee wouldn’t exist without your help.
However, infrastructure alone isn’t enough. Our servers run Lemmy software, and without ongoing development, the platform cannot grow or even be maintained.
Lemmy is an open-source project with many contributors, but the vast majority of development work has been carried out by a small group of core maintainers. A few maintainers work full-time on the project, relying solely on donations and occasional grants to support themselves.
I’ve seen Lemmy development up close, and the maintainers have consistently gone above and beyond what I consider the standard for small open-source teams - they are constantly writing code, mentoring contributors, and keeping everything running. Their work is essential, and without continued support, it cannot be sustained.
If you value Lemmy, please consider supporting its maintainers directly. Every bit helps.
Please check out this post for more details about how to support the maintainers: https://lemm.ee/post/63034576
Thank you for reading, I hope you have a great weekend!
People are avoiding supporting lemmy monetarily due to the actions of the developers. We do not reward bad behaviors here. If lemmy development ends most of us will just move to kbin or piefed. This is a non-issue.
Mbin, not Kbin. Kbin is dead.
There actually is one instance left, a tiny little hold-over in Poland, last I checked, but everyone else that was using Kbin has since switched to Mbin.
Except me personally, who switched to PieFed (which is fantastic btw!:-).
Just like with Elon Musk, if someone wants people to support them monetarily, they shouldn’t work hard to make themselves objectionable to wide swaths of the population they are trying to extract money from.
You can argue that, despite their opinions, the lemmy devs provide something of worth.
So does nestlé, I still boycott them as our values don’t align.
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I think kitkats taste nice but I haven’t had one in years. Whether you think they are shit or not, the point is that they provide some value for some people. On ethical grounds, I don’t buy them.
For many people, this is the same thing. Lemmy provides value to me. However, it is open source with other forks and the devs don’t run my home instance. If Lemmy required advertising or a fee to use, it would have failed. However users are not under an obligation to donate. Generally, I would advocate donating for foss software. However, there is a difference between supporting software and supporting people.
Kitkats aren’t as nice as they used to be.
The must have heard I was boycotting and stopped trying. Sad, really, when you let yourself go.
Elon Musk made electric cars popular. Nazi scientists developed rocket technology. That’s all fine and good, but I’m still not going to give them my money.
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This is not wrong
Hmm glad I found this post and the comments. I recently came here from Reddit and joined some random communities just to have something in my feed. I was a bit shocked at hammer and sickle posted non-ironically in the meme group. Noting that communists weren’t better than Nazis got me called an ungrateful shit for existing (which I apparently owe to Stalin) and banned. Moved to the second-biggest meme community the search found, where I’m not banned yet but being educated by Westerners that life in communist coutries was cheerful and Holodomor was an oopsie.
I’m glad to hear that this is not all that Lemmy stands for, but a bit disappointed learning that top developers are a part of the problem. I’m conflicted about donating to say the least, and it does not bode well for lemmy adoption in general. I’ll stick around to see if other servers gain momentum, but I’ll need to keep an eye open for other reddit alternatives I guess
Most of Lemmy is fine - just avoid the tankie triad of lemmygrad, lemmy.ml, and hexbear and you should be good to go.
Edit: And maybe also the instances that haven’t defederated hexbear in particular, since when they show up threads tend to go to shit, as you’re seeing here, unfortunately.
I can certainly see that Hexbear and the other two are very vocal and toxic here. Engaging in some discussion or getting my views challenged is fine, I’d rather not close myself in a bubble, but it’s sad that they would be so quick to insult and ban you. It does worry that they have some of the biggest communities. I wish I could say “oh well the protocol is neutral” but I think that with most OSS projects it matters tremendously who is at the helm; also, another poster outlined quite well that these instances seem to be the showcase for the system.
They are only big by number because they are some of the oldest instances. So they have a lot of inactive accounts and communities. The number of actually active users is less than .world or .ee.
They only seem more active because they are terminally online and have communities that are specifically designed to brigade threads when they don’t like what’s posted.
Sadly that is not enough, blocking instances at user level leaves you forced to deal with their users who will spread propaganda in every comment.
Defederate? My instance already defederated those 3 but their posts still appear if someone from a sever that aligns with them (I can’t see any other reason to keep a federation with them) crossposts to their instance, now that post will federate with the rest anyway. Defederation should be total, but they left loopholes by design.
And it still won’t matter because not all countries have a no-bullshit instance/comm, so it’s extremely easy to see someone post propaganda about a country without enough users on the fediverse and nobody will know, but if someone from that country challenges it, the users will pile on them (specially if it’s a populist) and downvote them (I can safely say that the only news I’ve seen about my country are goverment propaganda, but lemmy users get MAD if it’s pointed out).
Lemmy as it exists right now must dissapear, it’s designed maliciously to keep the propaganda going instead of fighting it, it’s just the other extreme of Reddit.
I am waiting for PieFed to get more developed to see if it gets better blocking capabilities, because I’m tired of the lemmy loopholes.
The roadmap contains a new feature for extended instance block, which also blocks all posts and comments from that instance’s users. If some feature is not implemented in Lemmy thats not out of malice, but because we really dont have time to work in everything that people ask for.
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/5578
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Its supposed to be tankie TROIKA 😤
Communism and fascism are entirely different, and conflating the two has roots in Double Genocide Theory, a form of Holocaust trivialization and Nazi Apologia. The Nazis industrialized murder and attempted to colonize the world, the Soviets uplifted the Proletariat and supported national liberation movements such as in Cuba, China, Algeria, and Palestine. I recommend reading Blackshirts and Reds.
Person1, since you’re new here, this is Cowbee, our resident tankie apologist/propagandist.
The most reasonable-sounding genocide denier and authoritarian regime supporter this side of the gulags. I highly recommend their alt’s comments on Hexbear if you’re interested in their more “mask off” persona. Also, remember the number one rule when interacting with hexbears: never directly engage them.
Edit: Here are some of Cowbee’s Uyghur genocide denial comments, for example, if anyone’s interested. Note the hardline tankie talking points, but couched in the classic Cowbee “reasonable” rhetorical style.
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To quote a popular hexbear aphorism present in this very thread, “‘Omg rude online’ like there’s no worse sin”.
Quite an introduction, and quite a lot of slander. I’m a Communist, Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, etc, regardless of how you want to call me. I’m certainly not a genocide denier, and I’d say all governments are “authoritarian,” what matters is which class is exerting its authority. My goal is in fact to dispel myths surrounding Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, Communism, etc.
If they check my Hexbear account, they’ll see more conversation surrounding gaming and casual conversation, haha.
Edit: here’s Hakase attacking feminism and here they are defending the arrests of animal rights protestors. Even more, here’s hakase defending transphobes.
You’re not a communist, you’re a state capitalist.
I’m a Communist, specifically a Marxist-Leninist. I’m not an Anarchist, but I’m not a “State Capitalist” either. I advocate for gradually building towards a fully publicly owned and planned global economy along democratic lines, ie Marx’s conception of Communism.
So you’re a revisionist.
drag refers to any Socialist system with a state as “State Capitalist,” which is a misnomer I reject. I support the NEP and I support the PRC’s Socialist Market Economy, I support Cuba, Vietnam, etc, but drag in particular is saying even a fully publicly owned economy is “state capitalist” if it has a government.
You want a “socialist” revolution, and would turn your nose up at a communist revolution creating communism immediately. Drag thinks you have to support the idea of a communist revolution in order to be a communist. Unless you already live in communism.
I wouldn’t turn my nose up if the creation of a fully publicly owned and planned global economy along democratic lines was possible to do immediately. It isn’t, so I don’t “support” that just like I don’t “support” unicorns.
Now, I’m sure you’re actually using Communism to speak of Anarchist-style Communism, but I’m not an Anarchist, I’m a Marxist, I want Marx’s conception of Communism, not the Anarchist conception.
Nobody wants to argue with Cowbee
Drag is an anarchist and banned from lemmy.ml for being left wing, so drag hopes you will listen with an open mind to this:
Karl Marx said that communism is stateless. That means in communism, the government has no authority to coerce people. Authoritarianism isn’t communism. In fact, Joseph Stalin never claimed that the USSR had achieved communism. He said they’d achieved socialism, and he made empty promises that it would be communist at some point in the future.
You know where communism was actually successfully implemented? America and Australia. Karl Marx and his friends were inspired by the Haudenosaunee people of North America. Marx called it “primitive communism”.
You are not banned from lemmy.ml
Huh. Drag misremembered. It was just a community ban performed by the lemmy.ml admins, and it’s expired
Drag will have to unblock that community and post more leftist history until the ban is permanent. Shouldn’t take long.
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Every state burns oil. Therefore every state is oppressing drag. You logic would only work if they weren’t harming everyone. Besides, the Palestinians and the Ukrainians have asked for our help.
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What actions of the developers are you talking about? I’m not trying to start a fight, I’m honestly out of the loop or whatever.
See some stories here: [email protected]
I imagine the biggest point are the censorship, disinformation and tankie allegations. These are all documented in this post. Another point worth bringing up is that they are the admins of lemmy.ml, where most of the allegations happen. Lemmy.ml also has something of a tankie problem and one of the devs has said that the donations will also cover the cost of running the instance. So by donating to the devs you’re also donating to an instance that possibly has no problem with censorship, disinformation and harboring tankies.
I would be willing to turn a blind eye if I could trust the devs to step away from lemmy.ml and focus solely on the development of Lemmy. But I don’t trust the devs enough to actually do that so I personally won’t be supporting Lemmy development until someone else becomes the maintainer of Lemmy.
EDIT: just to cover off the inevitable “what will happen if we stop supporting Lemmy. I don’t want to go back to Reddit” fear. If Lemmy doesn’t work out and it gets abandoned there’s always Mbin. Anyone here from the Reddit exodus knows that it’s annoying to migrate but Mbin can federate with Lemmy which means going from Lemmy to Mbin is going to be less painful than form Reddit to Lemmy.
Mbin is one example, PieFed is another. Both are superb!:-)
AND it’s open source software. Nothing is stopping anyone from just forking Lemmy.
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Isn’t that the point? Is t that how main and kbin started?
lemmy.ml is part of Lemmy development as it is used to test new versions before release, take performance measurements and have first-hand experience with the mod tools. If I stepped away from lemmy.ml it would make Lemmy worse and cause more problems for other instance admins. In any case the costs for lemmy.ml hosting are already covered at a much lower donation level, anything you contribute goes directly to developer salaries.
Then you really shouldn’t be surprised that people don’t want to donate when part of that support goes toward an instance that openly and aggressively supports authoritarian regimes, human rights violations, and genocide denial, and brutally censors any dissenting viewpoints.
The other option, of course, would be to run lemmy.ml in a way that doesn’t actively piss off the majority of Lemmy users, but that doesn’t seem to be a path you’re willing to consider.
Honestly I’m genuinely torn about the situation. I’ve found such a great place here (outside of the tankie triad, of course), that as much as I disagree with your politics I’d probably donate anyway because of how great Lemmy is as a platform, if only you developed behind the scenes and weren’t personally responsible for one of the worst places on said platform. As it is, as long as both a) lemmy.ml continues to be run the way it is and b) you continue to have an active part in that instance’s abhorrent behavior, I can’t in good conscience give you any financial support.
Would you donate to Lemmy if lemmy.ml hosting was funded separately?
At this point, I’m not sure I would trust the truthfulness of that claim. The hard-core refusal to do so up until this point has been both surprising and unsettling, to say the least.
I would consider it, but being completely honest, this whole event has really soured me on it. I probably just start looking outside of lemmy sometime in the coming weeks 🤷♂️
There was no hardcore refusal because this matter wasnt even mentioned as a blocker for donations until a few days ago. In fact lemmy.ml hosting is only funded via Opencollective, so if you donate through any other platform the money goes entirely to developer salaries.
Probably not - for me it’s more that the majority of my negative experiences on Lemmy have come on lemmy.ml, so the sticking point really is your involvement with it.
For a lot of other people in these threads though, it does seem like funding the hosting is the biggest deal. If the server costs for lemmy.ml are as low as you say, splitting off the hosting costs separately in some way (like taking donations directly from lemmy.ml that go into their own account separate from general Lemmy donations, for example) probably would see at least some sort of increase in donations to the overall Lemmy project. Especially if you made an announcement that this is what you were doing and maintained an official “separation of finances” position going forward.
If it wouldn’t be too much extra work, it’s probably worth a shot.
In other words your experience on Lemmy has been mostly positive? Then why dont you want to support the development of this free software? Keep in mind that lemmy.ml is exclusively financed via Opencollective, all other donation platforms go directly to developer salaries.
They should try just using it for development instead of forcing out tankie propaganda, then.
I’ve given it some more thought. There’s no guarantee that money going to the developers won’t be used to for the instance they are financing. If I give you money and the lemmy.ml funds are empty, are you going to let lemmy.ml die? Considering you said it is used to test new versions of lemmy and measure performance and test how effective the mod tools are I don’t think you would let lemmy.ml die. You’d finance it yourself, most likely from the money that is donated for the development of lemmy. So separating lemmy development and lemmy.ml instance costs wouldn’t really change the situation.
But I also no longer think it’s inherently necessary to step away from lemmy.ml. I get the value a real instance would give to development, so what I think needs to happen is a shift in what lemmy.ml is supposed to be. If the purpose of lemmy.ml is to support the development of lemmy then the primary goal of the instance should be that. Clearly the biggest issue people have is politics and how lemmy.ml is used as a vessel to push a certain kind of political agenda, which means if the primary goal is to support development then the instance right now contradicts its primary goal. It’s dissuading people from donating to the development and it’s making the main developers (you in this case) focus on the drama (for the lack of a better word) instead of spending time developing. I think the solution is pretty simple, lemmy.ml should take a hard anti-politics stance. Do a purge and kick all politics off the instance, including instance users who discuss politics on other instances. Have it be memes, technology, privacy and FOSS and gaming and everything else that doesn’t necessarily lead to politics. Users who want to take part in political discourse can find instances that allow political discourse, and that includes you and Dessalines. If you want to be political create an alt account on a different instance. Communities that want to be political can find other instances to be in political. You don’t need politics to run lemmy.ml. And for the sake of clarity also add to the instance about section that the instance exists to support lemmy development because currently that is not written anywhere.
If you think that’s unfair to the current users of lemmy.ml I honestly don’t see how you could resolve this situation without stepping away from lemmy.ml.
So you expect us to make a lot of major changes to the oldest Lemmy instance in existence and disappoint many users. All for the goal of maybe possibly getting a few more donations, without any guarantee. Its more likely that youre a cheapskate looking for any excuse to avoid donating, and keep using Lemmy without contributing at all. If you dont want to donate at least be honest, I would respect that.
I’m simply explaining the grievances people have that is stopping them from donating and what I personally would do in your situation to alleviate those grievances. That grievance is the nature of lemmy.ml which you’ve either voluntarily or involuntarily let slip into promoting a very specific political agenda that most lemmy users don’t agree with. If you’re genuine in your desire to have lemmy.ml as something that helps development then it should be apparent to you how the current state of lemmy.ml contradicts that desire. If you can’t acknowledge that I can only assume you’re using the development of lemmy as an excuse to keep lemmy.ml as it is.
Which segues to the end of my previous comment. If you think that’s unfair to the users of the instance then the only thing that you can do is step away. You can always start a new instance or you can work something out with the existing instance owners to get the data and feedback you need to develop Lemmy. And to be clear those instances can’t be Lemmygrad or Hexbear because those two instances are also not acceptable for most Lemmy users and wouldn’t solve the grievances people have.
At the end of the day it is not my concern if you get funded or not. I have no issue funding the development despite your obviously transphobic stance and Dessalines stance on Uighurs because I am capable of separating your work from who you are. I don’t have to like you to support your work so I’m willing to compromise here. But me tolerating both of you doesn’t mean I’m going to compromise supporting a platform that is actively promoting an agenda I cannot accept. I’ve already compromised on tolerating you, how about you compromise a bit to meet half way? If you’re unwilling to compromise this is my final alternative to supporting lemmy. Remove yourselves from the project, let someone more reasonable than you to take over and I’ll donate to them.
You have to understand that at this point Lemmy is bigger than you and its popularity is growing in spite of you and lemmy.ml. The fact that Lemmy is growing but your donations are shrinking should make that point evident. It’s up to you if you’re going to adjust to the new reality or stick your old ways and run into monetary issues.
They’re communists 😱
Tankies, specifically
Authoritarian commies who have very different-from-reality opinions and word definitions
Oh, and transphobia
It’s so funny to me when I express an even remotely moderate opinion and get called a right-winger. Lol, is lemmy really where right-wingers would go for online discourse?
tankie is just the new scary sounding word for communist derived from when the soviet union helped defeat a CIA backed color-revolution in Hungary
“Tankies” don’t really enjoy communists. It’s not honest dialogue to mix them up with each other
lol
how does this fascism keep getting into my anticommunism?
Ad hominem and appeal to authority at the same time. Impressive.
Yes silly me for not putting up a proper counter-argument to “lol”.
Why would the CIA back a revolution demanding minimum wage and the right to unionise?
To destabilise the soviet union of course. They can still take away those rights later, like they did after the collapse of the soviet union.
https://hexbear.net/post/4475702
the original source from the comments:
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2025/0318/104-10110-10525.pdf
If the state had agreed to the students’ demands for minimum wage and the right to strike, there wouldn’t have been any instability. Suppressing revolutions with tanks doesn’t make society more stable. Sounds like the USSR sucked just as bad as the USA if they fell for that easy bait.
FTFY
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How like a tankie to decide someone else’s argument for them since you’d rather argue against a strawman than actually be concerned about the facts.
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I wasn’t saying the person you mentioned doesn’t exist or got banned. I’m saying you’re putting words into my mouth I never said, pretty blatantly. Though I feel you focusing on this other dude who got banned that isn’t even a part of this conversation and Gaza which I never mentioned is just more deflection on your part.
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You can support lemm.ee, then, instead?
I might as well since I probably gave Sunaurus a big headache with this thread.
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Freeloading where? They can be donating to the instance they are on.
This is bs, because you - and perhaps almost everyone else here - are supporting monetarily much worse people than the Lemmy developers.
Those places suck and doesnt even have quality apps…
I dont think its a non-issue.
If those issues keep you off them, I’m good with that.
I had them blocked for misogyny, no wonder lol
Yeah? I dont agree its transphobic to want women to still be competetive in the sports they are competing in.
I dont think we should have men identifying as women, coming in and beating women in women sports.
Thats not transphobic, and even if it was, its my opinion still, whatever you label it as.
The Olympics have allowed trans women to compete against cis women since the 90s, and yet there’s never been a trans medalist. If there was a genuine advantage to being trans in sport, at least one country in the past three decades would have loaded their team with trans women and cleaned house. However, taking enough hormones to make a masculine body into a feminine one after it’s already grown means you’ve got way less testosterone than a cis woman, so that counters out any initial advantage. Claiming otherwise is misinformation. Spreading misinformation to the detriment of trans people is transphobic.
showing an unbelievable lack of understanding and your whole ass on the internet huh? you’re entitled to your opinion, like everyone else. but it sure is a stupid one.
Well I dont pick those opinions to please you, so… :)
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Weight classes to take care of body differences? Those are to take care of body differences in the same gender! Lols.
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