Important Update
We’re going to be setting up a fork to maintain some separation, add additional features, and remove references due to raised concerns.
So, we will not be changing software, and will be continuing business as usual.
We've forked the repositories and they can be found at these URLs: https://github.com/PawbSocial/lemmy and https://github.com/PawbSocial/lemmy-ui.
You can follow the instructions at https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/contributors/02-local-development.html for setting up a local development environment.
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Hey everyone!
We received feedback that raised concerns regarding the apparent moderation and censorship issues around lemmy.ml, and allegations made by Feditips about the Lemmy developers.
We'd appreciate some feedback from users of our community (users here, or on the Fediverse), furry.engineer, and pawb.fun.
As it stands, we have defederated from one of the more prominent problematic instances, lemmygrad.ml, but haven't taken any action against lemmy.ml.
So the question stands: Should we continue running Lemmy, or swap to an alternative?
The currently considered alternative would be kbin.pub (example instance: kbin.social) which shares being a FOSS project with full ActivityPub support.
If we continue to run Lemmy, we wouldn't be opposed to having a forked version that removes certain elements from the UI, such as the donate icon, but, we would require community assistance to maintain this fork.
Receipts:
Sorry for the late-ish response, but: I'm in favor of sticking this out for now.
I'm still wrapping my head around "fedi-reddit" as it stands now, and if I, an individual in the webtech industry, is still trying to grok the thing, I can only imagine the confusion of the masses. Having an instance of the most well-known, stable software available at the moment will be helpful for anyone looking to jump ship from Reddit.
While the Lemmy devs situation is unfortunate, thanks to the nature of FOSS, what we use is under our control, not theirs. Defederating and moderating the problem instances is always an option, as you've already done. Even updating this instance to a super minor fork (removing donate links/references to old Lemmy, using a different software name, and that's it), could easily be enough to distance them, if that's the goal. As others have already pointed out, this feels very similar to a Pleroma/Akkoma deal. (Side note: Until something bigger and better appears, I'm happy to help develop forks! My strength is in UI/UX, not backend. Maybe not much to do on that front, but ¯_(ツ)_/¯ )
This instance is pretty new so it wouldn't be the worst thing to replace this with something else before it gets bigger. But, especially when running a platform for others, there is something to be said for not being swept about too much by discoveries and events like this. ex. Just because a navy has a reputation doesn't mean that the ships are inherently bad. What matters is what those ships get up to and what flag they're flying.