this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

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Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration)

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jointhefediverse.net seems to be a commonly linked resource for directing people to join the Fediverse.

Curiously, it does not list Lemmy under the list of Reddit alternatives. Their GitHub README explains why.

Previous relevant discussion: https://lemmy.ml/post/78808

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[–] [email protected] 129 points 4 months ago (13 children)

Lemmy was removed due to:

  • reports of how the developers handle certain types of content (post removed, view an incomplete archive)
  • the behavior of its creator
  • how the sotware itself handles users' privacy.

All valid concerns.

[–] [email protected] 81 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Point 1 and 2 really need to be addressed.

It would be so much better if lemmy wasn't developed by genocide white-washing tankies.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 4 months ago (8 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (6 children)

Any way to migrate a self hosted lemmy instance to piefed?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (3 children)

No, it's not geared up for that. There's a platform called sublinks where the intention is to be initially compatible enough with Lemmy that it can be a drop-in replacement, but they haven't released anything yet.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Have you checked how muh software do you use that is enabled by capitalism?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

You should ask it on lemmygrad.ml :D

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago
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[–] [email protected] 59 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

I hate it when people try to gatekeep like this. I don't need to be handheld. If there's a Fediverse alternative to something and it mostly works, it should be on the website. Anything less is not useful at best.

Edit: I say this as someone who has historically criticized the behavior of the devs as well as multiple Lemmy communities BTW.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago

I agree 100% with this. The developers or the operators of lemmy.ml may be assholes, but the beauty of decentralization is I can simply not use their instance. I do not. Thus, while a warning label is necessary, I think more good is done by making people aware of the alternative to Reddit than by sweeping the whole thing under the rug.

As for user privacy, I'm not sure Lemmy is any worse than any other Fediverse app. There were a couple of bad things like being unable to delete a hosted image, but that has been fixed. Once again, warning label, not rug sweep.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Well, since you've vocally criticised the developers and they haven't bothered changing their ways, wouldn't you agree they deserve to be gatekept?

On the other hand, it's not for you to decide the criteria for what is included on jointhefediverse's curated list. I personally think it is a perfectly reasonable judgement call they've made.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (4 children)

No, I don't. If it's about instances I'd understand it a bit more, even though I wouldn't entirely agree with that either (I'm a free speech stan), but this is a page listing Fediverse alternative software. The software is fine and relatively untainted from the intentions of the Lemmy devs from what I can tell (although that was not originally the case). They deserved to be criticized, but not censored from Fediverse articles listing alternatives to big tech platforms.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (9 children)

It's not "censorship" when somebody decides to omit a software from a curated list over the developers' horrible takes. See also Soapbox.

Edited to add: Free speech does not obligate anybody to boost or acknowledge subjects that they disagree with.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (8 children)

Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments and private institutions. When an individual such as an author or other creator engages in censorship of their own works or speech, it is referred to as self-censorship. General censorship occurs in a variety of different media, including speech, books, music, films, and other arts, the press, radio, television, and the Internet for a variety of claimed reasons including national security, to control obscenity, pornography, and hate speech, to protect children or other vulnerable groups, to promote or restrict political or religious views, and to prevent slander and libel.

  • Wikipedia

They are suppressing information about the fediverse based on political views. They had it up and then they took it down. Please explain how this is not censorship. I don't know where people get the idea that censorship is an inherently negative thing.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (3 children)

It's kind of a tradeoff. As much as I like Mbin, it's not at feature parity with Lemmy yet, having only one mobile app is probably a deal breaker to a lot of users.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Well, since you've vocally criticised the developers and they haven't bothered changing their ways, wouldn't you agree they deserve to be gatekept?

No. In fact, I strongly dislike that whole attitude of 'do what I want or else I will cancel you'. I am not the arbiter of what is ultimately right and wrong and neither are you and neither is parent commenter.

I believe people have the right to make their own choice. And since Lemmy has significant user base and significant active discussion and thousands of communities, I think the users have the right to make that choice for themselves. Make them aware of the situation, make them aware of the potential downsides, make them aware that lemmy.ml is run by tankie assholes, maybe recommend some better instances, and let them choose for themselves.

That is why I like Lemmy and the fediverse as a concept. I can choose the instance that has the policies that I want. Among those policies is which other instances to defiederate from.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 4 months ago (3 children)

No, they're not.

how the developers handle certain types of content

Doesn't matter if you stay away from .ml.

the behavior of its creator

Kind of valid, but open source and open license negates a lot of that.

how the sotware itself handles users’ privacy.

You think anything else on the Fediverse is better? When you post something publicly, it's public. Doesn't really matter what the software does. If you don't have End to End encryption, it's not private.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 4 months ago (2 children)

To me the first one is an instance problem (ml, hexbear?), and not a lemmy problem. It has looked like they've been trying to separate the two as much as possible.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 4 months ago (1 children)

But the Lemmy project and specific instances are not so easily separated. From the archived mastodon thread:

lemmy.ml (the official Lemmy instance) resolves to the same IP address as lemmygrad.ml (the instance that contains the most disturbing material).

Lemmy.ml also federates with lemmygrad, and the devs advertise lemmygrad on their "join lemmy" site.

Do the Lemmy developers themselves run the lemmygrad.ml site? (Its main logo is a tank, incidentally.)

So yeah, newcomers are presented with a join-lemmy site that promotes Lemmygrad and Lemmy ML, both of which appear to be run by the Lemmy devs.

That pretty much makes it a Lemmy problem.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (2 children)

On what basis can anyone declare one instance to be the 'main' one? I've seen a number of people claim the same thing about .world, but none of them need to be considered the 'main' ones. The entire motivation for the creation of the fediverse is to allow segmentation.... I think people simply want to make it an issue because without these little cross-community spats things get boring.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Unfortunately, .ml is a default instance and the main devs instance, what happens there reflects on all of us

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

I don't see it on that page. Going to "See all servers" lists "lemmy.ml" at a random position in the list. Looking at "Join a server" and using "Generic" or "All topics" also lists it in a random position. Am I missing something?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (6 children)

It was made very clear from the start that .ml was not meant to be a 'default instance'.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (3 children)

To me, the only solution to this is to do a hard fork. Take the code (It's AGPL), rename it if Lemmy is trademarked, and encourage admins to use it and contributors to target it. Maybe start a non-profit or LLC while we're at it.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Good luck finding Rust devs interested in link aggregators. That fork would probably fall behind, and people would switch back to Lemmy as they keep delivering features.

Mbin and Piefed use more popular languages and haven't caught up yet

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

To be honest, at this point forking the jointhefediverse website would probably be easier

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 4 months ago (3 children)

What is the issue with user privacy? These do not sound like valid concerns to me.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (2 children)

it's federated. It's the only way it can work. Everything still on that ist must suffer from the same thing. Federation means handing stuff to someone else. Once that's done, it's out of your hands forever.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

Once that's done, it's out of your hands forever.

Correct but fedi is supposed to be the public forum of the future.

Social media worked the same... you handed your shit posts to faceberg or sundar the creep, do people think when they deleted their "creation" it was removed?

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (8 children)

This is all quite old drama, and the issue itself is fixed now, but at one point someone kicked off about how if you uploaded a picture to Lemmy, there was no easy way to delete it (you could delete your post, but the image would still be there at whatever URL was created for it, and it wasn't even that easy for admins to find and remove it) - so I'm guessing that it stems from that.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, seems like it's just how ActivityPub works / how federated networks are.

Recently came across this very interesting writeup: https://gitlab.com/spritely/ocappub/blob/master/README.org (via https://social.coop/@cwebber/113639985634239856)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

No that cant be why they do not list lemmy. The other services there federate in the same way.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago

The linked post given on the second point is a bit flimsy. It's basically saying that if you use evidence published by a person with shitty views, you must have them too. To me, that's absurd as claiming that referencing FBI statistics makes someone a federal agent.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (5 children)

These concerns, and more, are why just today, during a conversation with some friends looking to get off traditional social media, I advised them to join pixelfed, peer tube, mastodon, and loops, but suggested they strictly avoid Lemmy.

The communities aren’t right for anyone who isn’t seeking something exactly like Lemmy or leftie-Reddit-lite. I don’t even really like it here all that much anymore. Not the content; the interactions… across all my accounts.. even joining “nicer” spaces is not a particularly nice or pleasant experience, plus the more interested is a woman, and Lemmy is a horrible sausagefest echo chamber not at all suited to a normal average woman person who isn’t techie. I’m techie, so I’m used to the vibe, but for your average cis-woman, Lemmy is a very very bad fit.

Bring on the downvotes if you like (the echo-chamber anti-voice sentiment is part of why people shouldn’t be recommended this platform, after all) but these are legit concerns for people who may want to join, and those of us already here can and do steer people elsewhere as a result.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

Lemmy is a horrible sausagefest echo chamber not at all suited to a normal average woman person who isn’t techie.

Far be it from me to point out this is exactly how reddit started.

The foundational promise of lemmy and the fediverse writ large is freedom from proprietary software and closed-protocols; the kind of people who are going to be interested in seeking out those types of alternatives are going to gravitate toward techy men.

It takes time for new social media sites to fan outward from their initial adopters, that's just how it goes.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (3 children)

First link is completely unviewable for me on mobile, the entire thread is a chain of posts that say “Please don't use Lemmy :( Human rights, oppression” with a show more button that doesn’t work, and the original thread is gone. Could you(/someone) paste what it says? I’d try on desktop but our internet has been out since the fires started in LA

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

since the fires started in LA

Sorry to hear

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

Thanks, fortunately I’m not in any evacuation zones, it’s just really bad air quality here

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