Too many people are confusing the two. Whenever lemmy.ml or its devs do something stupid, people go “Lemmy is getting worse and worse,” or “I’m leaving Lemmy,” or worse, “I’m leaving for Beehaw.”
If you’re using Beehaw, then you’re using Lemmy. Lemmy is the software these instances run on. If you don’t like lemmy.ml, join another instances that have rules that match your philosophy. Some instance hosts authoritarian or fascist shit? Turn to another Lemmy instance. Lemmy.ml is not even the biggest instance. People who just joined and are unfamiliar with the platform will just think the entire Lemmyverse is run by autocratic admins if we don’t get our terminology right.
Just out of curiosity, what did the devs do that was stupid?
Yeah I’m out of the loop too. Though AFAIK lemmy.ml has always been awfully run instance full of tankies.
The fuck is a tankie?
From usingenglish.com. Originally a western communist who supported Stalin’s authoritarianism, usually backed by tanks, the modern tankie supports pretty much any authoritarian government or dictatorship that opposes the West.
I don’t think there is a clear and consistent answer to this question. Like asking a conservative what “woke” means, it is used to refer disparagingly to a wide variety of people that a given person doesn’t like.
Every person that I’ve seen describe it says some variation of “they’re fake marxists that support anything that opposes the west, include fascist and violent regimes.” Conservatives use “woke” to refer to anything that opposes christofascist white supremacy, from gay pride parades to a black person appearing in a movie.
There are liberals who use “tankie” to refer to anyone left of socialdemocracy, but not a single time have I seen the term being used that way to define another user on any lemmy instance yet.
I’m pretty far left myself in my way of thinking, and I don’t support some people that I would agree adhere to the description of tankie. There’s a clear definition, even if it is used in a derogatory way. It’s someone who thinks that left ideas should be spread in an authoritarian way. Which, in my opinion, is pretty much the definition of fascism. Power for power’s sake, domination just to say they won. Authoritarian imposition of ideology is antithetical to socialism.
The Marxist-Leninist explanation of the term: https://youtu.be/LcJ5NrJtQ8g?t=24
In case you’re interested in hearing both sides 😉
The devs hold extreme political views. They are on board with the Tiananmen Square massacre being necessary and shit like that. Like this post says though, there are plenty of instances that are totally run by normal people. Additionally, the Lemmy server code is open source, so that helps to ensure that it isn’t doing anything nefarious behind-the-scenes.
Exactly. My instance is run by a normal guy. I mean, he’s a Chief Information Security Officer and none of those guys are REALLY normal, but still.
Damn, so they’re not only tankies, but the dumbest kind of tankies. If you’re going to simp for authoritarian regimes with red flags, at least don’t defend the ones that are actively privatizing public sectors of the economy and dismantling whatever nominal socialism there actually exists.
https://lemmy.ml/post/1167199
More details in the link above, here is the introduction:
"My concern is that users are being banned and content is being removed on lemmy.ml citing a rule that is not publicly stated anywhere that I have seen.
Moderators of lemmy.ml are removing posts and comments which are critical of the Chinese government and are banning their authors."
So, the dev is another /u/spez.
Source: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/47012/-/comment/196579
Text:
Here is one of the Lemmy devs denying that the Uyghur genocide in China is happening:
https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/xq49ct/deleted_by_user/iq954mu/
“The Uyghur genocide is as real as white genocide.”
Here they are again denying it:
https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/xq49ct/deleted_by_user/iq951cv/
“The holocaust was a genocide that actually happened, with all the evidence that goes along with it. There is no Uyghur genocide.”
“Do you believe in anything as soon as the word “genocide” gets attached to it? What about “white genocide”? Are you a white genocide denier?”
And just so nobody can deny that parentis_shotgun is a Lemmy dev: -
“I’m one of the devs of Lemmy” https://i.imgur.com/5kp9BP0.png
Direct links to the posts will not work but still exist on the user’s profile page: https://old.reddit.com/user/parentis_shotgun/ - hold PgDn until comments stop loading then Control+F. In fact feel free to peruse their history in general - it’s quite interesting.
One of my favorite posts is their defense of the government of North Korea in /r/AskTankies: https://old.reddit.com/r/asktankies/comments/tb1836/okay_but_dprk_seriously/i04d1wu/
Now ask yourself why would someone who is not a Red Fascist Tankie piece of shit be answering questions on behalf of Tankies in /r/AskTankies while defending a totalitarian regime? Is it… perhaps because they’re in support of such a regime because they are in fact a Tankie piece of shit?
most of the drama has been around beehaw, people don’t like the political affiliations of the main dev… but idk what you’re gunna do about that besides move to kbin witch uses lemmy anyways.
Kbin and Lemmy are both based on ActivityPub, but they don’t use each other.
I don’t think the drama has been only around BeeHaw, the existence of Kbin itself is mostly because of the Lemmy devs being holocaust deniers, believing in “white genocide”, and stuff like that. I also wasn’t convinced at some point until I was pointed at the receipts, see the “Read right here” comment on this post: https://lemmy.world/comment/562635
Am I missing something? They’re specifically saying the opposite of what you said - that the Holocaust happened and that white genocide isn’t real. The statement “Are you a white genocide denier?” is mockery, not an actual inquiry.
They deny communist genocides… The holocaust wasn’t the only genocide…
Oh, right. So, they’re Uyghur genocide deniers. And North Korea supporters too apparently. Which… I mean… isn’t much better.
That part does seem to be true, and yeah, it’s not great. As far as I can tell, though, nothing about their ideology can really affect Lemmy. If it wasn’t open source, or was flooded with ads to monetize it, I would probably be in the anti-lemmy camp. But (so far) that’s not the case, and as long as that remains true, I don’t see much of a problem with the platform as a whole.
Ironically, Lemmy being decentralized like it is is pretty antifascist. Not gonna try to parse out how fascist sympathizers justified that in their world view, but I’m not complaining.
Yeah, I haven’t read to much into the history of the developers, other than a lengthy summary of posts that someone posted a few days ago. But he seems to be strongly anti-censorship, which would have to be a modified form of fascism.
Yeah, that’s fair. I’m staying on Lemmy following the same line of thinking; but I cancelled my monthly donation to them, thinking it would sure be swell if they ran out of money and have to transfer the reins of the project to other people, at which point I’d donate again.
And if they don’t and Lemmy just dies because of the lack of funds because of who they are, I’m thinking it’s not the end of the world either, because there’s Kbin to take over that’s awfully similar anyway.