I think what you got mixed up is the software side and moderation. You can use the same software as .ml and have nothing to do with it. It’s called instance and there are many. This isn’t just front end. There are different front ends (apps, web, …) as well but that’s a different story.
You are on pawb.social as you most certainly already know. That’s hosted and handled by different people than .ml. It’s just the same software and the software isn’t the problem
And since the software is free, no one profits from it. As an instance, it can choose to federate with .ml and even if (as my instance does, don’t know about yours), there is no guilt by association in my opinion. Being federated means you can see their content and they see yours but yours is moderated by your mods alone.
So they technically aren’t forks since the software is the same but they are still handled by different people because they are exact copies software side. I hope that makes it clearer.
Sorry I’m only getting back to this now, but thank you! I do understand instances and whatnot, but I guess my question boils down to this: if the whole of Lemmy somehow gets influenced by the shitty views of some or all of the devs (I’m not sure how many there are), and a fork is needed, does that bring down all of the instances and existing infrastructure of Lemmy with it? Like, the existing instances won’t be able to upgrade to the latest version, and then if they use the fork instead, will that screw with other things? I guess this is a question for a programmer, but it’s on my mind lol
It’s just the same software and the software isn’t the problem
I disagree, the devs and ml/grad hosts can decide which things to improve, mantain or force into the other instances, I think there were plans to hardcode the ml federation into it (saw it in a post that was removed for a different reason so I hope someone else kept the screenshot) because too many instances were defederating from them.
There’s also the devs keeping the blocking function half-assed so nobody can fully block ml/grad content.
They claim donations for the Lemmy software are not used to help their hosting of ml or grad, but they have proven to lie and be malicious, so there’s no reason to believe them.
Also using their software is helping them stay sort of relevant to the fediverse and nobody wants assholes to be relevant.
At any rate, there are already better alternatives that aren’t linked to propagandists, transphobes and history revitionists, so why not use something better?
I think what you got mixed up is the software side and moderation. You can use the same software as .ml and have nothing to do with it. It’s called instance and there are many. This isn’t just front end. There are different front ends (apps, web, …) as well but that’s a different story.
You are on pawb.social as you most certainly already know. That’s hosted and handled by different people than .ml. It’s just the same software and the software isn’t the problem And since the software is free, no one profits from it. As an instance, it can choose to federate with .ml and even if (as my instance does, don’t know about yours), there is no guilt by association in my opinion. Being federated means you can see their content and they see yours but yours is moderated by your mods alone.
So they technically aren’t forks since the software is the same but they are still handled by different people because they are exact copies software side. I hope that makes it clearer.
Sorry I’m only getting back to this now, but thank you! I do understand instances and whatnot, but I guess my question boils down to this: if the whole of Lemmy somehow gets influenced by the shitty views of some or all of the devs (I’m not sure how many there are), and a fork is needed, does that bring down all of the instances and existing infrastructure of Lemmy with it? Like, the existing instances won’t be able to upgrade to the latest version, and then if they use the fork instead, will that screw with other things? I guess this is a question for a programmer, but it’s on my mind lol
I disagree, the devs and ml/grad hosts can decide which things to improve, mantain or force into the other instances, I think there were plans to hardcode the ml federation into it (saw it in a post that was removed for a different reason so I hope someone else kept the screenshot) because too many instances were defederating from them.
There’s also the devs keeping the blocking function half-assed so nobody can fully block ml/grad content.
They claim donations for the Lemmy software are not used to help their hosting of ml or grad, but they have proven to lie and be malicious, so there’s no reason to believe them.
Also using their software is helping them stay sort of relevant to the fediverse and nobody wants assholes to be relevant.
At any rate, there are already better alternatives that aren’t linked to propagandists, transphobes and history revitionists, so why not use something better?