So all the discourse around lemmy.ml has made it clear to me that Lemmy's primary org has fallen prey to a key problem I've experienced running multiple social media sites and seen in my professional life as well.

And it boils down to this:

The tech guys are trying to be moderators. These are two entirely separate jobs that need completely different types of people to successfully execute the role.

Tech folk are brilliant in their subject, but often terrible at understanding people, social dynamics, and the limits of acceptable discourse. Their profession requires them to spend enormous amounts of time alone, which limits their real world experience, often to a crippling degree.

Good moderators (what used to be publishers and editors in the days of print) are those who understand people like tech folk understand SQL. They understand the multiple layers of subcontext that can be derived from an innocent sounding statement, and they have an innate sense of social dynamics and what is of interest to their audience. They also know how to speak to their audience and promote good content.

Most importantly, they understand that they are the gatekeepers of the publication's reputation, and safeguard it by being as impartial and fair as possible... a lesson the moderators of lemmy.ml have clearly failed to learn.

The only way to solve this dilemma in Lemmy.org's case is this:

1. Separate the mod and dev teams. Devs should not mod, and mods should not dev

2. Abandon or spin off lemmy.ml to folks not on the dev team - the fact that the instance is run by members of the dev team taints the reputation of the entire project and infrastructure. I do believe in free speech, but in this case, the reputational damage lemmy.ml has caused to the financial state of the dev team is too great to ignore.

3. Lemmy.org needs to clearly state this delineation and prevent the official dev team from running instances officially attached to lemmy.org.

If this doesn't happen, I think that donations will continue to decrease until the project starves. There is great value in what the dev team has done, but unless they abandon lemmy.ml and focus entirely on development, I think this project will fail financially unless another dev team with a better rep takes their place.

Comments are a hilarious minefield and a painful reminder of exactly how online leftists can never get shit done. We want FOSS defederated social media platforms to escape the tech giants that would happily facilitate a fascist wave if it meant they can serve more targeted ads. But when that platform actually exists in a totally functional and apolitical way, we don't want to support its development because the people willing to work full time on the project for poverty wages have bad political opinions. It's so bad that we'd rather support Steve Huffman's bot farm which is 1,000 times as politically influential as Lemmy will ever be at this rate.

I donated a few bucks.

I see the controversy in the comments section, but none of us would be here if it wasn't for the work of the devs.

I remember internet forums in the 90s and early 2000s and I've played MMO civilization roleplaying Minecraft servers with IRL nazis, takies, fascists, etc. Some of those communities made 4Chan look like Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. From my own experience ml has "character" and so do beehaw and dbzer0. These cultural differences are enabled by decentralized social media. There's validity to the idea that the sign-up process should capture more of these nuances. You don't have to look any further than your own instance to find bad takes and imperfect admins and moderators, but they're still the best of the best because they actually did it and the people talking about them didn't. Maybe I'm uneducated on this and I'll change my mind, but as it stands I'm cool until they force tank emojis on .world users.

I do think it's good that this type of talk happens, as it allows instances to develop a reputation.

I used to put up $50/mo to Hexbear, until they banned me for defending the DSA.

So far, the politics on this community have been dogshit. But the moderation has been generally fair, friendly, and functional. To you, I say, Shut Up and Take My Money. Thanks for letting me continue my shitposting habits, even if we've agreed to disagree.

The comments are a full microcosm showcasing why Lemmy will stay underground and it will never overtake reddit

These money will go to two people who created and actively maintain and promote an instance pretending the brutal murder of Ukranians is not happening but also necessary, and deleting and banning contrary opinions.

No.

Im okay, was gonna donate. But not if it supports lemmy.ml

Being Ukrainian it's not possible for me to donate to supporters of russian genocidal imperialism.

I donated! Great job, and I really appreciate your work.

Is it possible donate to Lemmy development without contributing to Lemmy.ml?

Done, sponsor level on Patreon.

I was thinking long and hard about this to form an opinion, but my answer is no.

The final decission point was: I'm from Slovakia, it's no secret that Russia would love to take us under their sphere of influence. You and your instance is not only supporting this, you're actively propagating this. In fact, I'm pretty sure if Russian soldiers would be at my doorstep, threatening my family, you and your instance would be cheering. And when I would realize, that I actively supported this, that would break me.

If you're about to publish your work for free, I gladly use it as long as it's run by good people like lemmy.world. This way you get no support from me. If I'd pay you, I don't know what part of my support would end up in .ml instance which I see as a propaganda machine against countries like mine. And even if you say that none of my money would end up there, I kind of don't want to support you as a human being. I won't pay your salary so you have energy to do what you do on .ml instance.

If Lemmy as a project dies, so be it. Foss world can always spark successful forks (see OpenElec vs LibreElec) and alternatives like PieFed already exist

While I understand the moral objections people have to supporting the developers, I do think its fair to highlight how they do not treat us.

We are not a product here to be exploited and advertised to. They also respect your choice to block ml and not to interact with them at all for the rest. I am sure I would be absolutely abhorred by the depth of depravity of your average silicon valley CEO's hot takes, but they dont share it for this exact reason. Instead they just design their entire product and business around it, which is the enshittification we all know and hate.

People you dont agree with having a place of their own on the fediverse is a logical consequence of the idea behind it, and while uncomfortable, is a greater good in the end.

But to maintain that it means putting your money where your mouth. If not to them, to your own instance.

Lotta no's based on people who can't stand being in a room with other people just because of different political beliefs. I don't follow .ml's philosophy, and I don't care. Take em, leave em. Whatever.

They aren't why I'm not on Reddit.

Remember why you're here. If you can't handle discourse with people who see the world differently then go back to Mastodon and save us your intolerance. Discourse is the lifeblood of a site like this, different opinions are part of being human. Grow up.

but t-they support such and such genocide!!

Then protest them louder. Don't bring the rest of us down over it, not that it isn't mostly sensationalist to begin with.

Am I wrong or is the same person making fun of the ridiculous censorship rules on Reddit while enforcing similar ridiculous censorship rules on their own .ml instance?