• rs5th@lemmy.scottlabs.io
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    1 year ago

    This update, specifically how funding is happening, helped me understand some of the reasoning behind the narrow focus of the Lemmy developers. I appreciate them foregoing their regular paychecks to work on stability. Hopefully things settle down soon to the point that the extra eyes and hands on the project are more helpful than they are distracting.

  • spirit@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Update 3: @[email protected] did state that they (singular) disagree that a genocide is taking place.

    Update 2: My conclusion


    Update: So I dug around a little deeper, and found that


    On another topic, there are rumors circulating that we are fascists or supported genocide. These claims are completely false, and like most viral twitter threads, are coming from a single Mastodon user on a personal vendetta who didn’t provide any sources. Such slander doesn’t deserve any response and is best left ignored.

    Update: More info about @[email protected]

    • SilentStorms@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I don’t agree with these views at all, but I don’t agree with the view that no one should use lemmy because of the opinions of the developers. Its an open-source project, just don’t use anything hosted by them. Like I don’t support the US military, but that doesn’t stop me from using the internet.

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        One sore point there is that the code comes by default with a donation link (the heart at the top) to join-lemmy.org. Even without the tankie issue it should rather go to a page local to the instance explaining donation options, and the default should be “The admin didn’t set this up, if you urgently need to get rid of money here’s a link to Doctors without Borders”.

        OTOH there’s now a huge influx of people including tons of developers so I expect tankie influence to be drowned out sooner than later.

        • conderoga@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          A bunch of developers isn’t going to do anything though if they retain control over everything. I think after learning about this background, and their weird claims surrounding it yesterday, the path forward I would prefer is for a strong fork to emerge of the original code that instances deploy instead.

          • Scary le Poo@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Forking the project would beyond stupid, and to so blithely suggest it leads me to believe to you don’t actually know much about that which you are discussing.

          • Pigeon@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            People have a tendency to call anti-trans hate “politics” even when they would never call racism and sexism that. But it’s just hate speech.

            Giving hate speech free rein does not help anybody, and I’d argue it especially doesn’t lead to more actual free speech, because that just leads to the most hateful people taking over a platform while most people, not willing to put up with that, just leave. And voila, you get shit like Voat. It doesn’t solve everybody’s differences when hate speech is allowed to thrive, it just boosts the hate speech over and above everything else, and creates a hateful echo chamber. This has happened so many times now.

            Even choosing to do nothing and not ban the instance would have been a choice based on ideology/politics/whatever you want to call it, imo. “Software should allow any and all speech, including hate speech” is not a neutral or apolitical stance either.

            For all I know, he could be trans, or have trans friends or family, and in the current world state, where trans people are being subjected to escalating real world suffering … If it were me, I wouldn’t just step aside and allow my personal project to be used to hurt me or my loved ones, either. I’d be upset if a friend created software, allowed it to become a powerful tool for people who’d wish me dead, and then just handwaved all responsibility and refused to do even attempt to do anything because any attempt at moderation would count as “politics” while creating the software in the first place and freely allowing it to be used for hate… Wouldn’t be, somehow?

        • barsoap@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          It’s the tankie “It’s not a genocide, no I’m not denying that people are getting murdered I’m saying that they had it coming for reasons other than being of a particular group” kind of genocide denial-support.

          About the only thing that makes tankies not technically fascist is that they come up with elaborate rationalisations of why everything they do serves the common good. They manage to rationalise any and all human rights abuses and atrocities as “necessary evil”.

          Once upon a time a German lyricist/composer wrote a song satirising that kind of attitude. The GDR’s ruling party adopted is as their hymn, unironically. Do watch it it’s glorious in its insanity.

          • cnnrduncan@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Most far-right fascists also make up excuses for the genocides they support - the Nazis said that Jewish people were responsible for the collapse of the Weimar economy (and a lot of other bullshit) for example.

            • barsoap@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Yeah but fascists don’t believe it, or even put much effort in those arguments. It’s merely a signal to their supporters saying “Yep we hate Jews”.

              And I do grant tankies the point that they don’t inherently hate Uyghurs – what they hate is there being cultural aspects not under their control as that means a current of mass psychology outside of party control. The most they will countenance is “Socialism with Uyghur characteristics” next to “Socialism with Chinese characteristics”, under the condition that it’s about weave patterns of traditional hats or something, not loyalty to the party’s prerogative of interpretation: If Bejing thinks a particular weave pattern is counter-revolutionary then it is, Uyghurs don’t get a say.

              • iie@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                what they hate is there being cultural aspects not under their control

                china claims they were interning uighurs to prevent extremist terrorism and separatism, not control culture. xinjiang shares a border with afghanistan. the claim is that uighurs were going off to fight in syria and other regions, then coming back to start shit at home. china claims the mass detainment of uighurs was to provide language and vocational training to counter the sway of jihadists returning from the middle east.

        • EthicalAI@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          This. I’d really love it if someone could go through these links one by one and provide a detailed summary and rebuttal. I just want to know both sides of the issue. I totally believe in US propaganda, but highly doubt this is purely that.

          • barsoap@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            I quite doubt you’ll see such thing as sane leftists generally simply discount tankie talking points out of hand – you look for certain patterns and the sources they cite and say “eh, not worth reading”, and also “eh, not worth replying to” because talking to a tankie is talking to a TV. They have a closed world-view, are able to bend reality itself to fit their core beliefs in the same way hardcore flat-earthers can.

            You’ll be able to head over to random socialist places and find people who can readily address points, cut through the historical revisionism and selective reading that tankies do, but you’ll have to actually, well, ask questions and things might get egg-headed. If you address tankies directly I recommend going for broad-strokes arguments and questions and refuse to let yourself be dragged into areas that can’t be wikipedia’d quickly, say, the status of unions in the USSR. An unprepared tankie is not unlikely to flat-out claim that they were independent from the party. Ask them about whether they think people should be sent to Gulag over their interpretation of Darwin, suchlike: They will either deny it, at which point they disagree with Stalin which means that he did, in fact, do things which were not right, which is inconsistent with what they believe in, or they will support it, outing themselves as batshit crazy plain for everyone to see (and also disagreeing with post-Stalin USSR scientific community, much less the world’s scientific community).

            Coming to the question of “why are tankies the way they are in the first place” though we come, at least from an Anarchist POV, to vanguardism as a core feature everything hinges on: The idea that for radical change to be possible, the masses must be led by a revolutionary vanguard. Marxist-Leninists all tend to fall into that category in one way or the other (and there’s plenty of e.g. Trots who are cringe but perfectly fine human beings) but it’s tankies who take it up to 11 by declaring themselves (and of course Stalin etc) infallible, and any opposition to their exalted “infallible” positions as counter-revolutionary. Thus, if you are not of the exact same opinion as them you’re the enemy and voila you have a cult going that can justify anything to itself.

            This “change is caused by small groups leading broad masses” thing then leads to the “everything is a proxy war” type of thinking you see: It is inconceivable for tankies to think that Ukrainians would have a free will, a desire to decide their fate, and as they were drifting further and further away from Russia of course the CIA must be behind that. It’s pure projection.

            (And, just for the record, yes, even Anarchists technically form vanguards. From “farming commune doing its thing and writing revolutionary poetry” to “Let’s stop right-wing militias from slaughtering native people and then live among the natives and talk about humanism”, see Chiapas).

            (Also, Tankiedom is a CONTELPRO programme, their purpose is to make lefitsts in general look bonkers and inherently oppressive. Convince me otherwise).

            • thoro@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              Look I’m decidedly on the fence because of what I perceive as my own ignorance on these topics, but I’m sorry, if the reaction to the lead dev’s link bomb like this is to just dismiss it without rebuttal and take the Western media’s word at face value, then I have to at least entertain the notion that they might not be wrong here.

              Manufacturing Consent ingrained a deep skepticism of mainstream media in me that has only served me well for over a decade. It’s not a dismissal of mainstream sources, mind you, but an understanding of their biases and a healthy skepticism and unwillingness to tow the line without my own independent research or the backing of a source I fully trust.

              Unfortunately, I find that my anarchist comrades often hold strong opinions on these issues when they have not done any of this research themselves or have only done surface level research at the same level of an average liberal. This again leaves me on the fence until I feel comfortable having an opinion.

              In the meantime, the lead devs may have their own ideological views, but they have really not been pushing anything heavily on this platform and have been accommodating. I don’t think the FUD spread over their beliefs helps any of us, and while they may be ML instead of anarchist or liberal, this culture also helps ensure that anti-racism, anti-transphobia, anti-capitalism, and more are cultural staples of the platform and acts as a deterrence to trolls and real, outright fascists from viewing this platform as a place to call home.

              A Reddit clone with a leftist, not liberal, culture is one I fully embrace, personally.

            • iie@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              sane leftists generally simply discount tankie talking points out of hand

              how is this sane? tankies might well be wrong, but I don’t see how they’re obviously wrong. the west does lie about its enemies. a million iraqis died on a lie in our lifetimes. i’m not here to fight a court case, i just find the dismissal baffling.

            • EthicalAI@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              I mean my stance is anarchism or left libertarianism, and I agree with most of what you said. But I also am just totally unfamiliar with these regimes. The only thing I’ve ever been taught is “bad”. I don’t really trust what I have been taught to be honest. I feel like there is a lot more nuance than the American POV. Also I’ve traveled enough to know that propoganda is EVERYWHERE. Every country propagandizes every other country. So it’s just hard to know what’s true about geopolitics tbh.

              I think China and the USA are both terrible regimes, but in such a way that it’s generally fine to live there, which is a weird modern phenomenon. I bet Russia and Cuba aren’t what the US teaches. I suspect NK is a repressive hellscape IRL same as on TV lol.

              • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                Cuba can arguably be called democratic by now, though in a very different form than capitalist democracies. EU media is often apprehensive about the whole issue but acknowledges change, while in the US it’s the same old talking points up to “Batista did nothing wrong”, depending on where you look. It’s a bit further ahead in that aspect than Vietnam, which the US has much better relations with.

                Russia tends to get completely misunderstood by everyone but its neighbours: Moscow’s rule has been based on conquering and oppressing neighbouring regions ever since the Mongols left. It provides them access to раздолье, meaning both expanse and liberty, a word with right-out mythical meaning to the Russian soul, though maybe Americans might actually understand. There’s a wide-spread notion among Russians, looking outside, that they want to be a “normal” country, but what that would entail completely eludes everyone, including the opposition.

                Because, well, everyone is dozing, not just the depoliticised masses. Quoth Pushkin:

                Whatever heavy load it carries,
                The wagon’s light on steppe and street.
                Grey Time, the coachman, never wearies
                And never leaves the driver’s seat.

                At dawn we jump inside the wagon,
                Quite happy for our necks to break.
                Scorning all soft delight and languor,
                We yell “Get going, for fuck’s sake!”

                By noon we’ve lost that daring folly,
                Being jerked around. We’re wagon-sick
                Afraid of every hill and gully,
                And yell “Slow down, you lunatic!”

                But on we rush round every bend.
                We’re used to it, come evening’s yawn.
                Heading to night, to journey’s end,
                We doze. Time drives the horses on.

                …quite a lot of soul-searching will be needed for Russia to get its shit together and install a GPS on that cart of theirs. Luckily they messed with the wrong people: Ukrainians, due to cultural closeness, are about the only people capable of cutting off Russia’s balls cleanly and thus throw the country into a proper existential crisis instead of trying to find, again, glory in old patterns. There’s nothing wrong with Russia attaining glory – just not like that. It worked out for them in the 1500s conquering what we now call Russia, but the time of imperialism is definitely over. Which is btw why Europe is so “unexpectedly” hawkish: The EU is a decidedly anti-imperial project, “let’s band together, united in diversity, so that no empire has a chance to challenge us”. Russia’s behaviour is an affront to all of that and cannot be permitted to stand.

                As far the US is concerned it’s good ole cold war memories, they like fucking over Russia because it’s the USSR. I mean it would be kinda rich, the US criticising another country for being imperialist…

                • iie@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  the russian soul

                  I hope you’ve lived in Russia all your life, because it seems pretty gauche to make sweeping statements about the essential character of an entire population you are not a member of

  • Rentlar@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Sure, I think the tankie and extremely pro-CCP/Kremlin views expressed by the developers and lemmygrad server members are outright dumb. But I do appreciate that they leave room for all of us of differing views to exist without constantly clashing, by creating this federated system.

    You know you’ve done well when you’ve made something that’s bigger than yourself and your own interests.

      • Rentlar@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Sorry if I didn’t provide sufficient proof, depends on which aspect you would have liked me to clarify on?

        tankie views: essays on github by the main developers I’m not trying to argue right or wrong in this comment, just to show these are texts representing the beliefs held by the lead developer.

        Tankie moderation: Orientalism stipulated as reason for comment rule and ban on a Ukraine-related thread

        Creating something bigger than themselves: From open sourcing lemmy, and structuring lemmy in a way that gives liberty for instance owners to rule as they please.

        • Scary le Poo@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          Thanks for the reply and info. So basically he’s a communist of some stripe or another. I am hard left (USA hard left so left of center for those of you who live in normal countries) so my views do not align with his.

          I can’t figure out how this relates to software development though. Who gives a shit if he’s a communist or if he bleaches and waxes his asshole every Thursday? Literally to the point of people suggesting forking lemmy (these people clearly have absolutely no idea how software development works to be suggesting something so stupid).

  • thedarkfly@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    It seems to have become a habit that most good things about the internet is linked to the EU. I’m really grateful. That being said, I hope that Lemmy can become a collaborative project uniting a lot of devs rather than rely on two people.

    About the scandal; as long as their opinions do not influence the platform I don’t see them as relevant to Lemmy. If they are illegal, let justice do its work.

    • flora_explora@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      While I agree with the first part, I think the last sentence is a really really bad take. What is and isn’t illegal depends very much on governments and is usually pretty arbitrary. And especially leftists get persecuted overly harshly in many countries of the global north. So even though I don’t agree with the views of the two Lemmy devs, I don’t wish “justice” on anyone.