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.


[ original post continues ]

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:

  • Crashdoom
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    1 year ago

    We’re going to be setting up a fork to maintain some separation, add additional features, and remove references due to raised concerns.

    • @SpitfireA
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      21 year ago

      Neat!

      If I had any sort of coding knowledge I’d help out.

  • @crashdoom We’re not on pawb.social, have been considering signing up (*waves paw from Mastodon*), but I like the idea of a fork.

    It sounds like Kbin federates upvotes as microblog /boosts/, of all things, which makes absolutely no sense (i.e. upvoting there comes across as boosting to people on Masto and vice versa), while Lemmy does it as stars/“favorites”, which is much more in line with the concept of an upvote.

    And there’s precedent for forking – the Pleroma devs were shitty, though I can’t remember how, and now there’s the Akkoma fork.

  • Harlan
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    81 year ago

    Sorry for the late-ish response, but: I’m in favor of sticking this out for now.

    1. 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.

    2. 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)_/¯ )

    3. 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.

  • @Wander@yiffit.net
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    81 year ago

    Hey there! This is something I’ve come across myself as well.

    In my case I decided to go with lemmy for the time being, but only because Kbin seems to need a bit more development. I tried to get it to post to Mastodon, but it simply won’t… and posts from Mastodon to Kbin didn’t work either (they were all classified as microblog).

    I’m pretty sure that eventually there’ll be a fork, like there has been for Pleroma / Akkoma, Mastodon / Glitch Social or Misskey / Calckey.

    Since this is the month of reddit’s exodus, it’s probably worth it to have something setup to take in refugees and stay afloat until there’s a fork with better and much needed features. It’s only a matter of time.

    Since it’s open source, using lemmy at the moment does not mean I agree with the dev’s political viewpoints, nor do they have access to our user’s data. But regardless I do agree that it would feel better to jump on a fork at some point. But right now I would focus on building the community / instance first.

    • CrashdoomOPMA
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      81 year ago

      This is fair, and I had been thinking about forking before replying to the other feedback post, but realized I utterly wouldn’t have time to be able to manage it to the level it really needs.

      But, I’d be happy to contribute and support a fork if the community wanted to run with one.

      • @Wander@yiffit.net
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        61 year ago

        We could definitely put together a list of features and together with other likeminded instance admins discuss the path forward. I’m sure many others will be interested. But in the meantime, in my humble opinion we might ride it out and use the momentum of the reddit exodus.

    • Kye Fox
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      71 year ago

      Mastodon combability is a biggie. I can directly attribute lots of participation and even new accounts to me boosting posts I made on here on my Mastodon account.

      The Reddit exodus is likely to bring lots of people with good ideas and skills, just as the various exoduses did for Mastodon. It’s how we got stuff like Glitch and Pleroma. I favor sticking with what we have for now until there’s a clearer path forward.

  • @mayoaddict
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    61 year ago

    I don’t see why this should be an issue at all, can’t we just use the tech and just defederate lemmy.ml, i see them as two separate things

  • Cas
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    1 year ago

    Perhaps a fork would be a good idea. I feel like it has the best overall experience of any federated Reddit alternative.

    Edit: After re-reading some of the content in the links, I’m ok with moving to Kbin as well. Either a fork or Kbin is ok with me. :)

  • @CarbonIceDragon
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    51 year ago

    I can’t really comment on what alternatives would be best, because I’m not knowledgeable enough about the options and the technical aspects of this, though I have heard nothing but good things on reddit about kbin except for it being a bit early in development.

    I am however incredibly relieved to see this post, I learned about Lemmy the other day, decided to go for it for my reddit alternative as I like the idea of the fediverse in general but tend not to use my Mastodon much as I don’t really like microblogging and heavily prefer a reddit like system more reminiscent of web forums, and came here as it was the only furry instance I could find- but then today have been starting to have some regrets after really starting to look at the largest communies here and realizing that the largest and developer-created instance is full of, well, that… Since there’s not really the same kind of political discussion here to make such things visible, I was kinda anxiously trying to figure out if I had made a mistake coming here/ if this place held the same kind of views.

  • @Syudagye
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    41 year ago

    I would love to help out on this fork if needed !

  • @Laurentide
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    31 year ago

    Very disappointed to hear this about the Lemmy developers. I had already guessed Lemmygrad was tankie based on the logo alone but I didn’t know how deep it went. Defederating from genocide-denialists has my full support. I’d feel more comfortable dropping lemmy.ml also if they’re run by the same people, but I can think of good reasons why that might be impractical at the moment.

    Making a fork that removes references to the original devs sounds good. Maybe there are other instances that feel similarly and would be interested in collaborating on it?

  • ThatOneJackalGuy
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    1 year ago

    “EDIT, Update: We’re going to be setting up a fork to maintain some separation, add additional features, and remove references due to raised concerns.”

    I would be interested to help with the fork of lemmy once everything is forked.

  • @JaxiiRuff
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    6 months ago

    deleted by creator

    • CrashdoomOPMA
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      41 year ago

      We’re not presently planning to defederate from lemmy.ml.

      As for how federation and instances work, sort of. It’s entirely possible that an instance could close down, but typically, the well run instances will give a 3 month warning before that happens to allow archival and moving to a new instance. Pawb.Social also runs under that policy.

      We also announce any defederation decisions and try to avoid full defederation when possible.

  • @ngoomie
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    21 year ago

    I’d looked over Lemmy in the past and was initially turned off from it by the UI feeling too much like new Reddit. That alone has me interested in trying something else, but doubly, even triply so knowing the Lemmy devs are kinda funky in the not good way

  • @noplexa
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    5 months ago

    deleted by creator

  • @SpitfireA
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    11 year ago

    I’m still new to all this, coming from reddit, but I do have some questions. (Still trying to wrap my head around lemmy, kpub, and the whole “fediverse”)

    Would migrating still allow access to other communities (beehaw being one example), or is kpub a completely separated “system” from it? Or is Kpub more of another backend to the same? (Please excuse any mistaken terms, I’m trying my best to articulate)

    What would be lost in migrating, if anything?

    • CrashdoomOPMA
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      51 year ago

      Yes! ActivityPub is the true “backend” behind everything Fediverse, so any ActivityPub software (Mastodon, Lemmy, and Kpub) are all interconnectable.

      Think of ActivityPub as the protocol for transferring data, like Ethernet. Lemmy implements ActivityPub in order to share messages, but is its own software.

      The software we’d be running would change, which would mean we’d most likely lose a lot, if not all current data unless we found a way to port it.

      • Kye Fox
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        111 year ago

        One possibility: set up a private kbin node that federates with pawb so it’s at least collecting all our posts and threads. That way there’s at least an archive if we end up migrating.

      • @SpitfireA
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        31 year ago

        As it seems that pawb on Lemmy is fairly new, it may be the best time before more gets added and it becomes harder to migrate.

        If it can still be “connected”, I don’t see why not to migrate, especially if the creators of Lemmy are supporting those sorts of atrocities.

  • Zorin =^o.o^=
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    11 year ago

    @crashdoom I was just thinking of looking into Lemmy as a Reddit alternative and maybe joining pawb.social, and am sad to see there’s already controversy. :(