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!

  • NovaOG@lemm.ee
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    6 days ago

    It’s so sad that liberals will literally cozy up to fascists and monetarily support them however they can… But a FOSS project run by commies gets them clutching their pearls super hard

    • cashsky@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      Just had a whole argument about this on that lemmyworld post that’s at the top about boycotting ml cuz someone brought up how they can’t donate if the developers are gonna use some of that money on ml server cost. They can’t see the bigger picture. Instead they wanna cry over how their $5 or whatever donation is gonna be used. Pathetic.

      • goferking (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.org
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        6 days ago

        What’s better is that’s also the user who either watches new on ml like a hawk or has a bot that just scrapes content to pull off ml comms to put on world comms.

      • mathemachristian[he]@lemm.ee
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        4 days ago

        i reported a fundraising website for the ukrainian neonazi and murderer sternenko and thats still up, but talking politics online is just inexcusable

    • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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      6 days ago

      Imo, it’s people just rationalizing not wanting to give $5 away. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with deciding you don’t want to donate, that’s your choice, but be honest with yourself. If they weren’t commies, people would be finding some other excuse to not donate.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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    7 days ago

    I’ve been around for long enough, time for me to donate.

    Sure the two top admins have some shitty opinions, but they still are the main people who have put this software out. The two have been tirelessly working on it for years and years, and have made code that helps everyone, whether you share their opinions or not.

    • 1984@lemmy.todayBanned from community
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      7 days ago

      You are paying for their programming, not their opinions. I dont think its a big deal if they have flaws or opinions i dont agree with.

      So they dont like trans people. How does that even matter? Any trans person can use the platform anyway. The code doesnt have any opinions, its just code, and that code can be used to support trans people. The little opinions of the devs have no effect on this.

      I cant believe how spoiled some people are here. We have a platform, free of ads, quality mobile apps, lots of instances, quite a lot of users. And its not owned by big tech. We own it.

      Focus on the pluses here. I dont think another Lemmy will come along anytime soon. Alternatives are not even close in quality.

      • doctortran@lemm.ee
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        6 days ago

        Alternatives are not even close in quality.

        Yes and we can go donate to those alternatives instead and help build them up.

        Completely divorced of their political views, I don’t think I want to donate to them simply because I don’t believe they’re doing a good job managing the platform. Donations aren’t just down, they lost those donations. And when confronted with this fact, and told that they should probably change some things if they want to keep getting donations, they’ve staunchly refused.

        This does not inspire faith in the development team.

        Meanwhile lemmy’s development is either too guarded or too complicated for anybody else to join the team and assist. It’s still just these two. If the platform is growing, it cannot just be these two.

        • 1984@lemmy.todayBanned from community
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          6 days ago

          Well, we will see. It would be stupid if Lemmy died because the users couldnt accept the opinions of two little devs, but sure, it may happen.

          Then a lot of users will go back to big tech, and the ad business will profit once again. Because we couldnt accept that two devs on planet earth had opinions we didnt like.

          Two people.

          • OpenStars@piefed.social
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            4 days ago

            What?

            PieFed, Mbin, nodebb, flarum - this is a partial listing of the software that does similar to Lemmy, and there’s more besides them even (okay so development on Sublinks seems to be exceedingly slow these days, but the code is still there if anyone wants to contribute…).

            And this doesn’t even begin to touch on the likes of Mastodon, Friendica, Peertube, Pixelfed, Loops (okay tbf this one isn’t federating yet iirc, but it planned to?), all of which share people’s thoughts and words in a social media atmosphere.

            Lemmy isn’t the sole competitor to Reddit by any stretch. Heck, a year ago Lemmy.World put out a post (I can find it if you really need me to?) all but outright announcing their intention to switch to Sublinks when it became ready. And at the time that had like 80% of all Lemmy MAUs (monthly active users).

            Lemmy is not what makes this place special. The people here are what make this place special. If the people move, then what makes it special will go with them. I personally migrated to PieFed 7 months ago (before it was fully ready), and now that PieFed has surpassed Lemmy in terms of features (e.g. we just added polls and post flairs), I am certain that I am not the only one willing to do so.:-)

            You are paying for their programming, not their opinions.

            Also, I was going to respond to your original comment but suppose I’ll combine it here: you do not seem to be aware that donations also go to support the server costs of Lemmy.ml. Thus, you are in fact paying for their opinions to be spread - they seem to not be offering the choice for others to receive only the code support but not Lemmy.ml?

            Check out PieFed - whether you stay with it or not is immaterial, I’m saying that you’ll be impressed as fuck with what you see. The sign-up wizard alone will probably make you fall absolutely in love with it. And if not, then the LONG list of features definitely will - e.g. categories of communities, which are user customizable and shareable. Then, even if you decide to keep using your Lemmy account, you’ll at least know what is going on with PieFed, which is amazing:-). (The Interstellar app supports PieFed officially, with that coming for Thunder as well.)

            • 1984@lemmy.todayBanned from community
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              3 days ago

              I was talking about reddit alternatives with quality mobile apps, not fediverse apps in general.

              In that category i didnt know any besides Lemmy, but ok, piefed is worth checking out. But which mobile app has the quality of Sync?

              And yes, im aware that some part of the donations may go to the Lemmy.ml instance but I also believe that developers need to have a decent salary. So its not strange that 1000 dollars per month is not nearly enough to live on. But people just ignore that and focus on not supporting lemmy.ml because they dont like the political views of the developers.

              But yeah I will check out piefed. Its good with more alternatives, specially written in easy languages like python, since rust is very difficult to contribute to. However, large python codebases tend to be very buggy due to lack of types, but maybe they use the optional type system. Its also slow, but doesnt matter so much when most of the cpu usage is the database.

              • OpenStars@piefed.social
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                3 days ago

                I’m not sure why a mobile app should be considered a prerequisite? Some people access solely by desktop, others by tablet, personally I access nearly 100% by Firefox on Android, so I’m mobile but not app, and I know I’m not the only one.

                Anyways, the connection between apps and platform is rather fluid - e.g. at one point many of the apps used by “Lemmy” were intended to work for Reddit, but then they ceased working for Reddit (which is just one of many reasons prompting many of us to come to the Fediverse over the years), and now they work for “Lemmy”. Some also work for Mbin and PieFed too, like Interstellar, and an unofficial fork of Thunder is being tested right now. Though PieFed’s API is still in development, so not many apps currently support it, that’s true.

                I’ve never used Sync, so I’m not positive, but I do know that PieFed has many features that people say that Sync has. But I’ve mainly only used a web browser to access PieFed (and tested it in Interstellar). Also, is Sync still being developed actively? (Or perhaps I am thinking of Connect.) The world of apps is constantly changing, and ones that aren’t maintained may one day stop working for Lemmy too, as the communication with the backend changes.

                Regarding “political views”, um I’m pretty sure it’s a bit more than something like whether to promote trains or cars, it’s EXTREMIST viewpoints like whether genocide is okay or not (the answer, it seems, depends on who’s doing it, for some reason?).

                In any case, it’s awesome to have alternatives. Even assuming total goodwill towards every dev of every platform, it’s good to not have all the hopes and dreams of the entire Fediverse placed into one platform. Like one thing I absolutely adore about PieFed is how it can add new features, which even Reddit was refusing to do near the end. They kept focusing exclusively on their profits, whereas PieFed keeps focusing on improving the end user experience, and I love that! 💘

                • 1984@lemmy.todayBanned from community
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                  3 days ago

                  Yep piefed seems cool, and it should develop faster than Lemmy since its easier language to be quick in too.

                  Will check it out, just for fun. I prefer apps on my phone but of course everyone is different. Sometimes the web version is so good that the app is just a wrapper around a web browser anyway.

        • kernelle@0d.gs
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          6 days ago

          Tesla doesn’t open-source their plans so you can build your own, better version of the cybertruck.

    • JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee
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      7 days ago

      FWIW, I freaked out once over something relatively minor across the Lemmy-modality, and the dev (one of the two, can’t remember which) was just a calm, gem of a person upon my temporary paranoia.

      Man, I was… blown away.
      (thought I was going to be banned to hell, yadda-yadda)

  • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
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    7 days ago

    I’d like to join my voice with those saying it’s worth donating even if you disagree with the devs personally. My impression is they’re decent about making Lemmy a tech project not a personal political platform, and treating the Internet respectfully as a forum.

    The Lemmy software supports so many communities to communicate, including the huge lemmy.world that famously hates .ml. Because the software is open, it can do that freely.

    You who hate capitalism, do you donate your ad data to capitalists so they can grow sickeningly rich off your use of their software? Then you might at least let these devs live comfortably off your use of the software. And if you pay in ways you see, instead of ways you don’t, does that trouble you so much?

    You don’t have to agree. And you can still use Lemmy freely! But since this software has been such a blessing to us wanting a non-reddit platform, I hope many will be happy to bless the devs back - and they’re only asking for a modest salary.

    • OpenStars@piefed.social
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      4 days ago

      My impression is they’re decent about making Lemmy a tech project not a personal political platform

      But… isn’t it impossible to donate solely to the software, when they also will use the funds to pay server costs for lemmy.ml? The referenced post did not exactly highlight that little tidbit of information… yet isn’t it true nonetheless?

      • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        Yes, but as pointed out elsewhere,

        • it works out about 2% of your donation, if that
        • the devs would be entitled to spend their salary on personal projects anyhow, it’s an effective salary not ngo funds
        • .ml serves as a useful test server and public beta for the rest of Lemmy
        • it’s effectively funding every instance, by providing the software - by that metric, the opposite .world gets the larger share
        • because of the small scales, ordinarily there’s not a lot of sense to separate .ml funding because it’s so small. It’s not like the devs are being devious

        To me, that stacks up fairly.

        • OpenStars@piefed.social
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          3 days ago

          I’m just being pedantic, but also the problem seems easily solved by having someone else moderate that instance, while they focus on just the coding.

          Of course they are 100% free to do as they choose and I would not dream of wanting them to do otherwise.

          Then too, the people deciding whether to donate can do the same - and it seems that the rather unusual moderation practices of lemmy.ml are a sticking point for whether they want to contribute funds or not. The amount of those funds, whether the devs have the “right” to do so or not, that is all besides the point. Some people just don’t like to fund things like genocide, period.

          But now we are veering into political territory that I know less about. Thank you for sharing those facts about the situation, as I continue to learn about it that is very helpful:-).

    • Spzi@lemm.ee
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      6 days ago

      it’s worth donating even if you disagree with the devs personally. My impression is they’re decent about making Lemmy a tech project not a personal political platform, and treating the Internet respectfully

      I want to underline this. And ask the reader to put themselves in the devs’ shoes for a moment.

      Usually, when people have strong opinions, like extreme political views, they try to further their goal wherever they can. To abstain from that desire, and create tools which can be freely used, even by their political enemies, requires a considerable amount of decency and deserves our respect.

      Either this, or they value FOSS so much (more), that they still keep Lemmy open for everyone.

      In a way, they support people from the opposite side of the political spectrum, by providing them their platform freely. Isn’t that exemplary in putting the fedi spirit above political differences?

      • doctortran@lemm.ee
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        6 days ago

        Okay, sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that these two developers, with their decisions in moderating that one instance, have dragged down the reputation of the entire platform. They’re asking for donations because they lost the donations they were already getting.

        And instead of questioning why that is and addressing it, they’re asking for more.

        This doesn’t inspire trust in them. I trust their ideology not to mess with the platform, what I don’t trust is their competence if they can’t stop hemorrhaging donation money by refusing to deal with the biggest wart on the platform. They have all of these people saying they would donate if they would just deal with this conflict, but they won’t. How badly do they need the money to keep developing if they’re not willing to separate?

        Here’s the better question: do they even want to keep developing if they had to separate from it?

        More importantly, just from a straight development perspective, this whole operation is a way too flimsy if it’s depending on these two people, alone, forever. There have been a lot of really clumsy mistakes and lack of best practices.

        What happens if they finally get another developer that really knows Rust and wants to join the project but doesn’t “fit in”? How are they actually going to expand the team so this project can grow and not be so dependent on them when they have the reputation they do?

        If the community were going to fork it, they would have forked it by now. I don’t think there are enough people around that can manage a fork of this platform as it exists, so we are tied to them. And I don’t think I like that. I would like to see this platform expand beyond them, but the current course doesn’t seem to indicate that will ever happen.

        • OpenStars@piefed.social
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          4 days ago

          If the community were going to fork it, they would have forked it by now.

          Why bother? Mbin, PieFed, nodebb, flarum, the list of alternatives goes on and on. Lemmy is fairly mature, that’s true, but also the devs kept adding new features, so there wasn’t a need to fork it. Plus, each individual instance already somewhat “forks” it each time they do an update - what I mean here is that some like Hexbear.net and Lemmy.world have extremely heavy modifications that they have made, affecting only their own instance (to clarify, the latter is more code checking iirc while the former was actual modifications).

          If anyone needs to they could fork Lemmy at any time. But who wants to learn Rust, a language that is super difficult yet unfinished, compared to e.g. Python that PieFed uses, or Mbin is PHP (and Sublinks iirc is Java, etc.)?

          Best to break away free from Lemmy entirely. Have you noticed how Lemmy is even more authoritian than Reddit? Yes modlog, but no modmail, no notification of a moderation event, no ability to contact a mod to ask why or discuss, no “right” to even know which mod it was - you simply submit your content, and if a mod decides that they don’t like it, then it disappears, without leaving a trace (in contrast, Reddit leaves removed posts still accessible to anyone with the URL), or without warning. The closest thing I’ve ever heard of that is like this is when Reddit “shadow-banned” someone. While on Lemmy, every single post removal is that way. The admins have total control using Lemmy, and mods have a lot, but regular users? Naw, that’s a different story… you all get much fewer freedoms than even Reddit offered (usually, unless they actually did shadowban you).

          I much prefer PieFed tbh:-). It has a ton of ideas pushing for democratization of moderation features, putting control of such matters into the hands of the individual users rather than forcing mods to have to do all the work of moderation. e.g. if someone doesn’t ero see posts containing certain keywords like “Musk” or “Trump”, a user can elect to filter those out (the available options there are: All, None, and get this: Some, which is very nice!:-), rather than making a moderator have to decide for the entire community as a whole (they still can do that, but now they don’t have to, bc the software provides another alternative for those users who want to, leaving the users who don’t want that filtering to see that content, while still sharing the same space, rather than having to make a new community:-).

        • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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          6 days ago

          They’re asking for donations because they lost the donations they were already getting.

          Nope, not even the tiniest bit. We know how vital lemmy is, and want to secure its long-term future by being entirely sustained by donations. We never at any point reached that goal, and given that nutomic had a new baby, this is more important now than ever.

          hemorrhaging donation money

          I have no idea what this means. We’re paying our daily living expenses so we can comfortably work on lemmy without having to find other work. The costs are food and rent.

          this whole operation is a way too flimsy if it’s depending on these two people, alone, forever.

          I’d love to be able to grow our co-op, and add more developers! Donations make that possible too, especially if they exceed 2 average dev salaries (we’re a long way off from that).

          What happens if they finally get another developer that really knows Rust and wants to join the project but doesn’t “fit in”? How are they actually going to expand the team so this project can grow and not be so dependent on them when they have the reputation they do?

          It’s clear you’ve never tried, because we’ve never and would never reject code contributers for petty reasons like “not fitting in”. If ppl don’t want to work with communists, that’s on them. Personally I’d never reject someone for their ideology, especially if what they’re doing is FOSS, which serves the common good.

          I would like to see this platform expand beyond them,

          We don’t stop people from forking lemmy and never would, that’s entirely their right.

        • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
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          6 days ago

          As Dessalines replied, your assertion of losing donations is wrong.

          But yes indeed, their views, those of .ml, and how both handle them, are driving some donors away. You’re asking them to lay down their views, hide or change their opinions, separate from the vocal community on their server (noting that .world is just as vocal, self-righteous and self-assured), in order to develop the software that you use freely (well, that you might then donate to).

          Honestly I feel that makes sense and nonsense at the same time. I can see it making sense in some circumstances; but personally I don’t think so in these. Maybe the rhetoric I see on .ml just doesn’t impact me the same as you?

          But as an overarching argument that for the sake of Lemmy they should change… That just seems too much to ask, over the internet. Maybe to ask politely and accept a no. Maybe in person, one might argue and counsel strongly. But people are entitled to their opinions and the internet isn’t actually such a good place to change them.

          So if the devs keep devving Lemmy, let them. They’re providing a good thing for us, and I hope more people donate.

          As to the technical aspects, it just feels like an emotional outburst. FOSS projects’ maintenance is always hard, and there are always difficulties. We do our best. They are trying to. And if a community came along that loves Lemmy and wants to develop it, they could either contribute or fork. Perhaps their fork would last longer? Perhaps not. But for now this Lemmy is here, and is Free, so we are glad to use it.

      • person1@lemm.ee
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        6 days ago

        I have very short experience with Lemmy, having just moved here from Reddit. I joined one of the most popular forums on .ml unaware of the fame of this instance, and from my short experience “Treating the Internet respectfully” is the opposite of what is found there.

        • OpenStars@piefed.social
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          I am sorry for your bad experience on Lemmy. Most people fall into the same trap, and more often than not, leave altogether. I am currently at 100% of the people that I’ve told about Lemmy actively chiding me for having done so, due to them having come here, seen that, and immediately noped out.

          It doesn’t help that Google points people to Lemmy.ml (DuckDuckGo properly points to Lemmy.World, as the most active instance, but lemmy.ml has an older history), which to a guest account shows only Local (rather than globally All) posts, which ofc are full of people making fun of the Western world and society - even to the point of saying that people who do such innocuous activities as having bank accounts should be killed (sadly, I’m not joking, although the people making such claims likely were… and yet… were they, were they REALLY?!).

          Nobody likes to be made fun of, so it’s no surprise that the likes of Reddit’s r/RedditAlternatives is filled with such stories of people encountering such and never coming back. But I am glad that despite Lemmy.ml’s efforts to hide it, you managed to find the nicer portions of Lemmy where we can actually enjoy conversations.:-)

  • AnonomousWolf@lemm.eeBanned
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    6 days ago

    I signed up for a medium donation.

    While I don’t agree with some things happening on .ml We should not discard imperfect allies. Thank you devs for the great work you’re doing.

    • vxx@lemmy.world
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      ml arent allies at all, they’re the problem, and they wont see a stinking cent from me. It would be like donating to elon musk because I like a twitter Account that posts there.

      It’s like supporting Ukraine but donating to putins propaganda outlets.

      • Bilb!@lemmy.ml
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        6 days ago

        Have you noticed that every other reddit alternative turned into right wing parapolitical forums? That’s so much worse.

  • Carl [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    7 days ago

    lemmy development mentioned

    dessalines criticized

    commies counter criticism

    thread turns into a shitshow

    aww yeah, it’s Lemmy time.

  • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works
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    Dessalines and Nutomic are criminally underpaid. Lemmy development still has a long way to go and we could get there much faster if people donated more. But in typical Lemmy fashion, people would rather sit on their high horses and throw stones from their glass houses.

    I started donating to the developers 2 days after I joined Lemmy and have given over $1k since then. I find the developers to be competent, mature, and reasonable. Similarly to many other contentious topics on this platform, the conversation regarding their perceived or imagined political beliefs is completely lacking in objectivity, logic, and nuance. Y’all actually be gossiping like teenagers about these developers even while taking advantage of the fruits of their unpaid labor. I’ve seen the evidence of their extremism and it’s quite underwhelming when you lay it all out.

    And even if I did have major qualms about the devs, I would still argue that it’s much harder to justify using any products or services from large corporations like Amazon or Reddit than it is to monetarily support a FOSS project such as Lemmy. Out of everything I’ve spent money on in my lifetime, Lemmy is easily among the most morally justifiable expenses.

    I eventually had to reduce my monthly contribution once sh.itjust.works started accepting donations, because I also feel strongly about supporting my own instance. It’s unfortunate that so many lemmings seemingly understand the fact that reddit has become an evil cancer and an alternative is sorely needed, but don’t seem to understand that creating such an alternative is a project that requires a massive amount of time and effort. Donating to your instance is great, but without continued development of the underlying software, it’s a futile effort. Even if you want to die on the hill of not donating to the big bad Lemmy devs, at least donate to PieFed or something! 2 patrons?!? As an early adopter userbase, we can and should be doing a lot more to support the fediverse monetarily, imo.

    • Nutomic@lemmy.ml
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      5 days ago

      Thanks for your donations and your understanding. Its a bit annoying that people ascribe various beliefs to me personally based on nothing more than comments from random lemmy.ml users. But it seems there is nothing I can do to change that.

      • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works
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        5 days ago

        People tend to generalize and assume a lot without actually taking the time to verify their assumptions. It’s very frustrating when people demonize admins due to the bad behavior of a handful of users. Trying to win the approval of random goons is a waste of time anyway.

        From my perspective you seem like a normal and good person and I think people will eventually come to see that as Lemmy grows up.

  • td_sp@lemmynsfw.com
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    7 days ago

    Damn this community is a fucking joke. It’s actually not funny, just sad.

    You all parade around the internet mounted on your high horses about FOSS this, decentralized that, libre this, reject capitalism that, etc.

    But the moment you are asked to contribute your part you all start pretending to be holy saints lmfao. Most upvoted comments in these threads go like this:

    “I can’t possibly donate to this project because this guy said that thing about trans”

    And meanwhile every day you forgo your moral codes to buy all kinds of shit. Otherwise you’d be living in the middle of a remote island.

    The people you all buy from don’t merely say something you find offensive, they do lobbying with their truckloads of money that affect how you live your life and further their own agenda.

    These Lemmy devs put their work under a license that gives up the ownership and just ask for a living wage, yet by your logic they don’t deserve it?!

    • iii@mander.xyz
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      It’s so surprising that a forum with mostly commie ideologues has a hard time finding non-freeloaders amongst the members

    • burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world
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      this is like you going out of your way to offer to give me a ride to the airport, and then you get mad at me for not being gracious enough about it, and then you accidentally hit a pedestrian at some point afterwards and use that against me.

      • aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee
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        No, it’s about someone building a car for you while also driving their own car. The car they built for you is unquestionably good even if you don’t like where they drive their own version. I don’t think it’s unfair for them to ask compensation for maintenance they do on YOUR version

    • hakase@lemm.ee
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      That’s correct. People actively shilling for authoritarian regimes committing human rights atrocities, denying genocides, and aggressively silencing all dissent do not deserve it.

      All they’d have to do is develop from behind the scenes and not actively contribute to one of the worst places on the platform, and I’d have no problem donating to them.

      But they don’t, and so I don’t, and instead I get to listen to your whataboutism, literally the guy in the “and yet you participate in society” meme.

      • nutomic@lemmynsfw.com
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        Lemmy dev here, for what its worth I stopped posting about politics years ago, and also dont do any moderation on lemmy.ml besides occasionally banning an obvious spam account. I simply dont have the time or interest anymore, and prefer to focus my time on development which benefits all Lemmy users.

        Posting from alt account because these comments are not federating to my home instance.

        • hakase@lemm.ee
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          If that were to become the enforced position of the entire dev team going forward, I promise that I will donate, and provide receipts.

        • Ledivin@lemmy.world
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          That’s a perfectly sensible position, but the money doesn’t go just to you.

        • person1@lemm.ee
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          Hi Nutomic. I’m new to Lemmy. I was quite impressed with what you have built, and was looking forward to helping Lemmy grow. It must have taken a lot of your effort. I was really enthusiastic about the project and a few weeks back your appeal for funding would probably have had me donating something.

          Unfortunately, I’ve already had some bad experiences on your instance. I probably would have stayed away from it had I known what it stood for, but - as someone pointed out - this is the oldest instance, has some of the largets forums, so naturally that’s where many people land first.

          And it really is quite an image problem for Lemmy. Someone compared you to Elon tanking (sorry for the bad pun) Tesla sales. Sure, up to some point one can say, imperfect allies, separation of code and ideology, that kind of thing. But I think you see from the comments that for a lot of people it’s too much.

          For me, the combination of your views and what’s represented by .ml fundamentally undermined my trust in Lemmy as a platform. I don’t have the means to validate claims of code or development processs being impartial. It could well be that you did a lot of excellent work and have superb integrity in separating your views from your contributions. I just honestly don’t trust that is the case.

          • el_abuelo@programming.dev
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            What would be the correct way to voice opposing views about these issues?

            Genuinely asking as to my ignorant eyes this looks like a reasonable way of discussing the issues, so I must have some kind of wrongthink here and would love to be guided back to a place where people can discuss opposing views safely.

            • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
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              Speaking from a place of explicit respect for minorities’ lived experiences, and using appropriate terminology that is both scientifically accurate and minimises harm.

              This comment fails on all three counts:
              “Biological men” is not a scientific term, because biologists don’t study men and women, they study males and females. Man and woman are genders, which are studied by psychologists and sociologists.
              “Biological men” is not a term that minimises harm. Calling trans women men is a form of misgendering, which has been well documented to cause psychological distress and worsen mental health.
              The comment denies the statement from lived experience by trans people, that trans people are being targeted by the owning class. Members of a privileged majority telling the minority that they’re wrong about their daily experiences isn’t respectful.

              Drag will be happy to provide sources for any of the claims in this comment which you have doubts about. In return, drag asks that you keep an open scientific mind, seek to minimise harm, and listen to minorities about our lived experiences.

              • el_abuelo@programming.dev
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                Thank you. No sources required, and I already try to do those things…hence my questions! I hope that my questions don’t cause harm, if they do I would like to find a way to learn without harming.

                If they had said “biological male” then this would be okay? Sounds equally as hurtful to me…what is the correct term use? Trans woman?

                The only thing I see them denying is that the same group of people spreading trans rights are also the ones spreading transphobia…which sounds logical to me?

                I appreciate that this sounds like I’m defending them but I’m really not, I suspect from what’s said in this thread that they have a storied history of being hurtful on this topic which i think is indefensible. But I am out the loop and have very little idea who this person is.

                • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
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                  Drag sees the effort you’re making and is grateful. You aren’t causing offense.

                  Yes, “biological male” would be scientifically valid language - in part - but it would not minimise harm. Trans women is much better, you’re right. Drag says it would be scientifically valid in part, because the trans women competing in the Olympics are required to no longer be entirely male. They must be on estrogen and testosterone blockers. That means regardless of what happened in the past, their body is currently performing many of the biological processes of a female, and not many of a male. In the parts of sex relevant to athletic performance, trans women are entirely non-male. Drag would say they’re females, except that trans women actually tend to be weaker than cis women due to lower testosterone. All bodies, male or female, produce testosterone. With testosterone blockers, trans women are at lower testosterone levels than a cis woman.

                  The only thing I see them denying is that the same group of people spreading trans rights are also the ones spreading transphobia…which sounds logical to me?

                  We, the trans community, spread trans rights. We pressured them into putting LGBT flags on buildings. The Olympic Committee are not the government, they’re a private organisation, and they weren’t pressured to allow trans women by governments, they were pressured by a group of scientists employed by the IOC Medical Commission (initially, in 2003. There have been developments since then).

                  We have been saying the owning class is attacking us for years. It should be obvious from Trump’s attacks on transgender people that billionaires hate us. And Rupert Murdoch owned media has been spreading transphobia all over the world for a lot longer than that.

                  If you’ll permit drag to speculate as to why: Capitalism and patriarchy are very closely linked. Trans people’s existence is a radical threat to the patriarchy at a basic level. If anyone can be any gender, if the “objective reality” of gender is destroyed, then gender oppression becomes nonsense. Rich white men want to preserve the social system that keeps them at the top, and trans people’s existence makes it obvious to everyone that they shouldn’t be.

      • td_sp@lemmynsfw.com
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        That meme literally says ‘We should improve society somewhat’ and lemmy is a perfect example of something that is ‘improved somewhat’ when you compare it to literally any other social media driven solely by profit and algorithms that reward whatever content the owners want.

        But the keyboard warriors now prefer lemmy die because comments of a dev who isn’t in control of the software said… Anyways I’m donating monthly now

        • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
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          Lemmy won’t die. They’ll have enough money to develop the software if they just take lemmy.ml offline, and then they’d get more donation money overnight.

  • 1984@lemmy.todayBanned from community
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    The original post on lemmy.ml by the creator of Lemmy had a lot more details, so maybe just link to that one?

    https://lemmy.ml/post/29579005

    Tldr: They are down to about 1000 dollars per developer and will have to take jobs and stop Lemmy development if they dont get 2500 dollars per developer.

      • AnonomousWolf@lemm.eeBanned
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        Do not discard imperfect allies.

        I do not agree with their political view etc. but I can see that the development of Lemmy is a net positive.

        Shutting down .ml won’t save them much money, it doesn’t cost much to run a instance, developing software instead of having a tech job on the other hand…

          • AnonomousWolf@lemm.eeBanned
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            I’m sure people would also be more willing to give money of they were Vegan.

            By being overly critical of our allies we damage our movement.

            • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
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              Drag hopes their financial system becomes desperate enough, and enough people say it’s about lemmy.ml, that they realise they have little choice but to take lemmy.ml offline. If that happened, they would still be able to develop for Lemmy full time, and the tankie nonsense would be gone. Everyone wins.

              If they would rather get jobs and stop working on Lemmy than take lemmy.ml offline, then drag’s none too pleased with their priorities and is comfortable enough with seeing them go. Someone will fork the software and keep working on it.

              • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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                Drag hopes their financial system becomes desperate enough, and enough people say it’s about lemmy.ml, that they realise they have little choice but to take lemmy.ml offline.

                The goal is becoming clear. Western-supremacist redditors will not tolerate any communist-friendly spaces on the internet that oppose US foreign policy goals. They can shut our communities down and kick them off reddit, but doing the same on the fediverse is proving difficult. Censorship and anti-communist witch-hunting is their life goal.

                For the record, I would never wish starvation on anyone, regardless of ideology. No one should have to be in a “desperate financial situation”, regardless of who they are and what they believe.

                • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
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                  You’re not being attacked. People are just refusing to give you free money. Lemmy.dbzer0.com doesn’t have the same problems, and they’re communist.

                  You can either dig your heels in, cry oppression, and stop working on Lemmy, or you can listen to other people and work to be someone they think deserves their money. “Identifying the goal” doesn’t change the outcome. And it’s wrong, too. Lots of communists on Lemmy who don’t like your server.

                  To paraphrase Gandhi: “I like your communism, but I do not like your communists.” People just don’t think you’re a good communist. Insulting them isn’t going to get you money.

                • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
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                  No. Communism has existed in the Americas and Australia for thousands of years. But the lemmy.ml mods won’t admit it. They think communism has never succeeded.

      • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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        Tbh, of all the tankie triad, .ml is the chillest, and my own experience is that, unlike the Nazis, they generally don’t cause issues off server. Now, if you wander into Hexbear and spout some mainstream view, well, good luck, partner, but it’s their server. Besides, I sometimes ask myself what the CIA would do and try to do the opposite for the sake of all mankind. It doesn’t really bother me that they run .ml.

        • morrowind@lemmy.ml
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          That’s because it’s not really part of the triad. It’s the developer instance, and it happens to be tankie adjacent cause they are

  • ungsund@lemm.ee
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    I came here because reddit is turning into a corporate shithole. Users getting banned because of Luigi apologia and so on and so on. Was really relieved that we did in fact have a great, open source alternative to reddit.

    My problem is the lead developers of this platform. They do not see the issues with their political bias being woven into their platform (and their transphobia), it will face the exact same shit thats happening to reddit today.

    I can’t pay money to people who deny the pain of trans people. I just can’t. And if the lead developers of Lemmy run out of funds, well then I guess they’ll have to just take a good look in the mirror if they don’t see the reason why Lemmy failed. For now I’m gonna use lemmy if I can, but you can’t expect people from reddit to come here and support you guys when their is really hateful shit being spewed by those people (tankies).

    • gravityowl@lemm.ee
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      They do not see the issues with their political bias being woven into their platform

      What the fuck are you talking about? Their ideology is not part of the project in the slightest. Which is why every other instance works perfectly even if they don’t agree politically with the dev team

      For now I’m gonna use lemmy if I can, but you can’t expect people from reddit to come here and support you guys

      That’s because you want to have your cake and eat it too.

      Go back to Reddit with such shitty takes where you move away from massive corporations only to leech off small projects supported by small donors and real people.

      You’re literally just another one of those people complaining about the lack of alternatives in tech while also being unwilling to support the products you’re currently using and talking shit about…

  • abobla@lemm.ee
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    I’ll do my part, I just wish my country’s currency wasn’t worth 1/6 of an euro :/

  • Sibshops@lemm.ee
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    I’m a (small) monthly supporter already! I wish lemmy had a way to give people a little checkbox in their profile for supporters.

  • gamer@lemm.ee
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    I started using Lemmy like 2 years ago, stopped for a long time, and came back a few months ago. I’m sure something has changed in that time, but I don’t know what.

    It could be because Lemmy is written in Rust, which is kind of notorious for how difficult it is to be productive in it. Or maybe it’s that there aren’t enough developers, or there isn’t enough funding.

    In any case, my motivation to help fund this project is not helped by the insufferable cuntery of the tankies in the .ml communities. Knowing that the core devs are also tankies makes me want to see it fail. Fuck those people.

    • perestroika@lemm.ee
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      As an Eastern European drone developer, I’m OK with donating even to people who might be called tankies …if what they do is building Lemmy. :)

      (As a side note, “riseup.net” needs donations too. Anarchist-run e-mail service doesn’t come for free.)

        • perestroika@lemm.ee
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          Sadly, my only invite code was recently used up for inviting someone who I encountered in real life… and I’ve only ever invited people who I’ve met in real life - because RiseUp has a policy of exacting vengeance from the inviter, if the invited person does meet local standards.