Fediverse

Human rights mean a lot to me. I joined the Fediverse to make the world a nicer place. My efforts are pathetically small, but hopefully make at least a tiny difference.

I used to recommend Lemmy very strongly, thought the people who develop it were nice folks interested in making the world better too.

However, recent discussions with the developers has changed my mind completely.

I am very suspicious about their motivations now.

1/6

Lemmy's developers say "we are strictly against all forms of oppression (including genocide), and dont allow anything that promotes or supports oppression" and "We definitely are very staunchly against bigotry or persecution of minorities, and are strict about banning that".

This is difficult to fully reconcile with what actually happens on the developers' own instance, and those they feature.

2/6

The problem here isn't Lemmy's politics, but their attitude to threads about human rights violations.

On the face of it, the developers' main Lemmy instance has lots of uncontroversial general interest threads, but when you start digging on controversial topics a worrying pattern emerges.

The worrying posts are very reminiscent of the way certain churches have handled priest abuse claims: denial.

3/6

There's threads denyng the oppression of Uyghur muslims (this oppression has been well documented by NGOs, for example: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/actions/help-end-repression-uyghurs-china).

Other posts deny that North Korea is oppressive.

Meanwhile, another suggests celebrating Stalin's birthday as he was such a great guy.

(Incidentally, I have receipts, DM me if you want to see them for yourself.)

4/6

You get the picture.

These posts were on the main Lemmy instance, as featured on the official Lemmy website.

Over the past few days I have tried to engage with Lemmy about these posts in private, as I was sure it must be a misunderstanding.

However, Lemmy said that "none of the posts you linked are against our rules", and refused to even discuss the actual issues because "this format is not conducive to political disagreements".

5/6

I deeply regret ever having publicised Lemmy. I'm really sorry.

Don't use Lemmy.

For whatever my opinion is worth any more, I would now recommend that people cancel their donations to Lemmy, stay as far away from Lemmy as possible, and donate to another Fediverse project instead.

I was wondering whether to stay quiet, but it seemed better to speak up and say something

6/6

p.s. I put the wrong link for Amnesty, the Uyghur report is here:

https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa17/4137/2021/ug/

p.p.s. Someone has pointed out that 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.)

p.p.p.s. There was an older "reddit for the Fediverse" project called Prismo which had some working instances at one point.

Perhaps someone could resurrect it, to provide an alternative to Lemmy?

https://gitlab.com/prismosuite/prismo