People are avoiding supporting lemmy monetarily due to the actions of the developers. We do not reward bad behaviors here. If lemmy development ends most of us will just move to kbin or piefed. This is a non-issue.
this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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Mbin, not Kbin. Kbin is dead.
There actually is one instance left, a tiny little hold-over in Poland, last I checked, but everyone else that was using Kbin has since switched to Mbin.
Except me personally, who switched to PieFed (which is fantastic btw!:-).
Just like with Elon Musk, if someone wants people to support them monetarily, they shouldn't work hard to make themselves objectionable to wide swaths of the population they are trying to extract money from.
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Hmm glad I found this post and the comments. I recently came here from Reddit and joined some random communities just to have something in my feed. I was a bit shocked at hammer and sickle posted non-ironically in the meme group. Noting that communists weren't better than Nazis got me called an ungrateful shit for existing (which I apparently owe to Stalin) and banned. Moved to the second-biggest meme community the search found, where I'm not banned yet but being educated by Westerners that life in communist coutries was cheerful and Holodomor was an oopsie.
I'm glad to hear that this is not all that Lemmy stands for, but a bit disappointed learning that top developers are a part of the problem. I'm conflicted about donating to say the least, and it does not bode well for lemmy adoption in general. I'll stick around to see if other servers gain momentum, but I'll need to keep an eye open for other reddit alternatives I guess
Most of Lemmy is fine - just avoid the tankie triad of lemmygrad, lemmy.ml, and hexbear and you should be good to go.
Edit: And maybe also the instances that haven't defederated hexbear in particular, since when they show up threads tend to go to shit, as you're seeing here, unfortunately.
I can certainly see that Hexbear and the other two are very vocal and toxic here. Engaging in some discussion or getting my views challenged is fine, I'd rather not close myself in a bubble, but it's sad that they would be so quick to insult and ban you. It does worry that they have some of the biggest communities. I wish I could say "oh well the protocol is neutral" but I think that with most OSS projects it matters tremendously who is at the helm; also, another poster outlined quite well that these instances seem to be the showcase for the system.
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What actions of the developers are you talking about? I’m not trying to start a fight, I’m honestly out of the loop or whatever.
I imagine the biggest point are the censorship, disinformation and tankie allegations. These are all documented in this post. Another point worth bringing up is that they are the admins of lemmy.ml, where most of the allegations happen. Lemmy.ml also has something of a tankie problem and one of the devs has said that the donations will also cover the cost of running the instance. So by donating to the devs you're also donating to an instance that possibly has no problem with censorship, disinformation and harboring tankies.
I would be willing to turn a blind eye if I could trust the devs to step away from lemmy.ml and focus solely on the development of Lemmy. But I don't trust the devs enough to actually do that so I personally won't be supporting Lemmy development until someone else becomes the maintainer of Lemmy.
EDIT: just to cover off the inevitable "what will happen if we stop supporting Lemmy. I don't want to go back to Reddit" fear. If Lemmy doesn't work out and it gets abandoned there's always Mbin. Anyone here from the Reddit exodus knows that it's annoying to migrate but Mbin can federate with Lemmy which means going from Lemmy to Mbin is going to be less painful than form Reddit to Lemmy.
Mbin is one example, PieFed is another. Both are superb!:-)
AND it's open source software. Nothing is stopping anyone from just forking Lemmy.
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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.
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.
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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.
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?
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.
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:-).
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?
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.
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.:-)
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The devs also say that they would gladly accept any development help as well, if you're either unwilling or unable to financially contribute.
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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?!
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.
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.
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.
If that were to become the enforced position of the entire dev team going forward, I promise that I will donate, and provide receipts.
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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.
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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).
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thanks for the post sir, happy to throw a few money units in
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.
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.
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I'll do my part, I just wish my country's currency wasn't worth 1/6 of an euro :/
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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
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