The advertisement in question
Support Lemmy development
An open source project the size of Lemmy needs constant work to manage the project, implement new features and fix bugs. Dessalines and Nutomic work full-time on these tasks and more. As there is no advertising or tracking, all of our work is funded through donations. Even so there is barely enough time in the day, and no time for a second job. The only available option are user donations. To keep it viable donations need to reach a minimum of 5000€ per month, resulting in a modest salary of 2500€ per developer. If that goal is reached we can stop worrying about money, and fully focus on improving the software for the benefit of all users and instances. We especially rely on recurring donations to secure the long-term development and make Lemmy the best it can be.
If you want more information before donating, consider the comparison with Reddit. It began as startup funded by rich investors. The site is managed by corporate executives who over time have become more and more disconnected from normal users. Their main goal is to make investors happy and to make a profit. This leads to user-hostile decisions like firing the employee responsible for AMAs, blocking third-party apps and more. As Reddit is a single website under a single authority, it means all users need to follow the same rules, including ridiculous ones like censoring the name “Luigi”.
Lemmy represents a new type of social media which is the complete opposite of Reddit. It is split across many different websites, each with its own rules, and managed by normal people who actually care about the users. There is no company and no profit motive. Much of the work is carried out by volunteer admins, mods and posters, who contribute out of enthusiasm and not for money. For users this is great as there is no advertising nor tracking, and no chance of takeover by a billionaire. Additionally there are no builtin political or ideological restrictions. You can use the software for any purpose you like, add your own restrictions or scrutinize its inner workings. Lemmy truly belongs to everyone.
Nutomic and Dessalines, Lemmy Developers
There are reasons for this, but I am focusing here on the impact that it has upon the recipients.
Zero mention of PieFed, Mbin, Sublinks, or for that matter, the operating costs of Discuss.Online. This ad is not promoting the “Fediverse/Threadiverse”, but instead funding the political messaging and curation of content on the Lemmy.ml instance, with some portion also going to development of additional software features. We are not told how much, but seeing the rather large number of entries in the modlog on that instance those curation and posting activities done by those asking for funding definitely do not take zero time. Note that the developers have refused to provide a means to fund only the software without also funding the lemmy.ml instance.
I have used PieFed for a year and never once seen anything remotely like this. I used to use Kbin before it forked into Mbin and again never saw anything remotely similar. The operating costs of DO are real and valid - and if the message had been for that purpose then I would have been fine with it. There are many many ways to fund development of the Threadiverse, and most of them do not require platforming messages that routinely call for the literal murder of everyone living in a Western civilization - a topic that has been discussed in great depth pretty much everywhere across the Threadiverse so let’s avoid going deeper into it here and instead I will just point anyone interested to [email protected] and leave it at that.
I did not appreciate seeing this 3-page advertisement (given the font size used, I had to scroll down almost exactly 3 pages worth to get to any other content). New users fleeing corporate enshittified social media will not appreciate it either. Thank you for letting me vent. There are many possibilities for a solution - including modifications to the Lemmy sourcecode as it runs on DO machines to remove this “feature” (while leaving other more opt-in calls for donations in place), and I am aware that I can click the prominent X button to make it go away (although nowadays the advertisement comes back when I revisit the page? it did not used to behave like that, but now it does for some reason, at least for me?) - but chiefly here I was focused on the poor look that it gives us. This is yet one more reason why I am being driven away from using Lemmy, as it enshittifies for the sake of its own profit, even if to a vastly reduced degree compared to corporate social media, and even if those profits are reinvested into the extremely dubious “benefit” of running by far the most controversial and contested instance across the Threadiverse.
Please remember the community guidelines prior to responding.
There are many many ways to fund development of the Threadiverse, and most of them do not require platforming messages that routinely call for the literal murder of everyone living in a Western civilization
‘death to america/marg bar amrika’ is an internationally recognized protest chant that’s been in use for 45 years. people using it aren’t saying that everyone in ‘a western civilization’ should be literally murdered, it’s a slogan to say ‘down with US imperialism’
a topic that has been discussed in great depth pretty much everywhere across the Threadiverse so let’s avoid going deeper into it here and instead I will just point anyone interested to [email protected] and leave it at that.
i made a whole post documenting all the people who are regulars on that comm calling me and others degenerate roaches. no posts have been removed, one user there got a slap on the wrist, only to just continue the same shit.
Calling people roaches strips them of their humanity, something Nazis loved to do. Likewise degenerate is often used by the right to describe PoC, LGBT, people with disabilities, etc.
Together that’s one hell of a dog whistle.
Note: I’m not a Luigi fanboy, so if anyone’s gonna downvote me over that, fine, but at least try to read what I’m saying from a general “don’t put words in people’s mouths” perspective.
It doesn’t show for me, but I have seen the massive “support lemmy development” banner in Lemmy-UI elsewhere. It’s annoying but I get it.
However, this is the first time I’ve seen it with the posturing it takes toward ml’s content policy and how “Luigi” as a verb is not just permitted but seemingly encouraged there. That’s a bridge too far and basically says “hey, crazies of Reddit, come to Lemmy and be toxic and call for murder all you want” without mentioning that instances can and do have their own policies of what is acceptable.
Is there a way for admins to turn that off? Even if they do want to help support development of the software, letting the two developers posture and put words in their mouths like that is, IMO, unacceptable.
how dare these extremists be UnCiViL
Do whatever you like… so long as I am free to do the same.
Well… in theory, admins can control whatever software runs on their machine, although in practice this would mean diligence to read through every line of code and be aware of what it does and what changes between versions.
Another practice is to simply switch to PieFed, which e.g. slrpnk is in the process of doing and others like quokk.au have already done (this in addition to those like zip and world that now maintain both software platforms side-by-side). PieFed also runs a lot leaner and with far less maintenance issues than Lemmy. Even clients benefit from its sending 25-fold less data per post. Discuss.Online I suspect has been holding out for Sublinks from jgrim, which got deferred due to his family situation.
But I was trying to not suggest solutions so much as bring attention to the problem. You may have hit the nail on the head: uncritical acceptance (even without examination) of their code is having all sorts of effects, some of which are quite good (I much prefer the Lemmy UI to PieFed, and Lemmy’s search functionality is simply divine, especially in comparison to PieFed’s that may as well not exist, outside of some narrow scopes like inside a specific community), but some of which are quite bad (particularly anything relating to the political stance of lemmy.ml, which especially in the Western world is more than a tad bit controversial).
I don’t want “free speech” advocates to come over here from Reddit, or Xhitter, or Facebook (or Nostr, whatever)! But… yeah, that is precisely how you would entice them to do so, by dog whistling hard enough so that they hear what you wanted to convey, even/especially if lemmy.ml itself does not have to deal with the fallout of that decision, with those people joining different instances than it.
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