Lead Lemmy Developer, Dessalines, denying the Tiananmen Square Massacre and praising the Uyghur Genocide

https://sh.itjust.works/post/8419342

Dessalines AKA “parentis_shotgun” on Reddit, is the main Lemmy dev, also the admin of lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml.

Their post and discussions on Reddit (archive as the original post must have been removed):

https://web.archive.org/web/20230626055233/https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/cqgztr/fuck_the_white_supremacist_reddit_admins_want_me/

Please join the discussions for Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem:

https://lemmy.world/post/16211417

And the discussions for finding/creating alternative communities on other instances:

https://lemmy.world/post/16235541

What is a tankie?

Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes or their allies. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

  • redcalcium@lemmy.institute
    0·
    7 months ago

    I may not agree with the devs political view, but I think their work developing lemmy is excellent and made me subscribe to monthly donation on opencollective. Lemmy is an open source project where the devs have absolutely no say over how the software being used, as evidenced by so many lemmy instances defederating from lemmygrad and lemmy.ml. Their political belief won’t affect other instance.

    • JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee
      0·
      7 months ago

      the devs have absolutely no say over how the software being used

      It seems like they have some strong say when it comes to their own instance. According to some recent posts, ML admins (and maybe even mods?) have the ability to erase any record of mod actions, for example disappearing critique of the CCP’s brutal actions in Tiananmen Square that were posted on ML. That left no record in the public mod logs, and the users were never informed that their contributions had been (completely) deleted.

      I’m only a 1yr Lemming myself, but I never saw such a critique aimed at any other instance, hence why I’m skeptical that the devs don’t have influence over how the software is used.

      • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        7 months ago

        the devs have absolutely no say over how the software being used

        According to some recent posts, ML admins (and maybe even mods?) have the ability to erase any record of mod actions, for example disappearing critique of the CCP’s brutal actions in Tiananmen Square that were posted on ML. That left no record in the public mod logs, and the users were never informed that their contributions had been (completely) deleted.

        That isn’t an example of them having a say over how people use the software. That’s them using their own property as they wish.

        • JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee
          0·
          7 months ago

          It’s more than just that IMO. It’s breaking the stated aim of open federation by tampering with comments, posts and mod records, which in turn get propagated or de-propagated to connected instances, right?

          Yes, you may say that ML is of course free to screw with their own instance, but 1) one instance (particular a significant one like ML) affects other instances, and 2) they’re breaking the spirit of their own software by shamelessly abusing admin powers, in turn helping to normalize that behavior to the Lemmy side of the FV.

          What’s the point of leaving oppressive, commercial social media only to run in to the same kinds of abuse of power on a supposedly transparent, user-run, P2P social network?

          • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            6 months ago

            It’s breaking the stated aim of open federation by tampering with comments, posts and mod records, which in turn get propagated or de-propagated to connected instances, right?

            I’m not convinced that this is in conflict with the aim of federation. The whole point is to give people the power to create their own instances with their own rules instead of having to rely on a single central authority. The network isn’t necessarily distributed — it’s decentralized. An instance can administrate their content as they see fit. An instance cannot alter the content produced by any other instance. An instance can only manage the content originating from itself.

            but 1) one instance (particular a significant one like ML) affects other instances

            Would you mind being more specific?

            they’re breaking the spirit of their own software by shamelessly abusing admin powers, in turn helping to normalize that behavior to the Lemmy side of the FV.

            Hm, well, it depends on your perspective. The whole point of the Fediverse is to give people the freedom and power to control how they interact with the service. A server has the freedom to associate with the users that they wish in the same way that you have the freedom to consume what you wish. The spirit of the software is to enable people to have this freedom that otherwise wouldn’t exist with a large central service. The way I like to look at the Fediverse is where each instance is like a country, and each community is like a regional/state/provincial government within the country, and federation between instances is like cross-border policies between nations.

            a supposedly transparent […] social network?

            I’m not sure what you mean by “transparent”.

            a supposedly […] user-run […] social network?

            It is user-run, in that any user can create an instance.

            a supposedly […] P2P social network?

            It’s not P2P. A P2P network would be distributed. The Fediverse is decentralized.