Hey folks!
I’m writing this because funding for the Lemmy project has dropped to critical levels, which could seriously impact its future development.
Thanks to the generous support of our lemm.ee community, our server infrastructure costs are covered, and we even have a few months of runway. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who has contributed - lemm.ee wouldn’t exist without your help.
However, infrastructure alone isn’t enough. Our servers run Lemmy software, and without ongoing development, the platform cannot grow or even be maintained.
Lemmy is an open-source project with many contributors, but the vast majority of development work has been carried out by a small group of core maintainers. A few maintainers work full-time on the project, relying solely on donations and occasional grants to support themselves.
I’ve seen Lemmy development up close, and the maintainers have consistently gone above and beyond what I consider the standard for small open-source teams - they are constantly writing code, mentoring contributors, and keeping everything running. Their work is essential, and without continued support, it cannot be sustained.
If you value Lemmy, please consider supporting its maintainers directly. Every bit helps.
Please check out this post for more details about how to support the maintainers: https://lemm.ee/post/63034576
Thank you for reading, I hope you have a great weekend!
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.
That’s a perfectly sensible position, but the money doesn’t go just to you.
It also goes to lemmy.ml costs.
Only donations via Opencollective pay for lemmy.ml hosting. All other donation options are exclusively for developer salaries.
This seems pretty political. Have you apologised for it?
What would be the correct way to voice opposing views about these issues?
Genuinely asking as to my ignorant eyes this looks like a reasonable way of discussing the issues, so I must have some kind of wrongthink here and would love to be guided back to a place where people can discuss opposing views safely.
Speaking from a place of explicit respect for minorities’ lived experiences, and using appropriate terminology that is both scientifically accurate and minimises harm.
This comment fails on all three counts:
“Biological men” is not a scientific term, because biologists don’t study men and women, they study males and females. Man and woman are genders, which are studied by psychologists and sociologists.
“Biological men” is not a term that minimises harm. Calling trans women men is a form of misgendering, which has been well documented to cause psychological distress and worsen mental health.
The comment denies the statement from lived experience by trans people, that trans people are being targeted by the owning class. Members of a privileged majority telling the minority that they’re wrong about their daily experiences isn’t respectful.
Drag will be happy to provide sources for any of the claims in this comment which you have doubts about. In return, drag asks that you keep an open scientific mind, seek to minimise harm, and listen to minorities about our lived experiences.
Thank you. No sources required, and I already try to do those things…hence my questions! I hope that my questions don’t cause harm, if they do I would like to find a way to learn without harming.
If they had said “biological male” then this would be okay? Sounds equally as hurtful to me…what is the correct term use? Trans woman?
The only thing I see them denying is that the same group of people spreading trans rights are also the ones spreading transphobia…which sounds logical to me?
I appreciate that this sounds like I’m defending them but I’m really not, I suspect from what’s said in this thread that they have a storied history of being hurtful on this topic which i think is indefensible. But I am out the loop and have very little idea who this person is.
Drag sees the effort you’re making and is grateful. You aren’t causing offense.
Yes, “biological male” would be scientifically valid language - in part - but it would not minimise harm. Trans women is much better, you’re right. Drag says it would be scientifically valid in part, because the trans women competing in the Olympics are required to no longer be entirely male. They must be on estrogen and testosterone blockers. That means regardless of what happened in the past, their body is currently performing many of the biological processes of a female, and not many of a male. In the parts of sex relevant to athletic performance, trans women are entirely non-male. Drag would say they’re females, except that trans women actually tend to be weaker than cis women due to lower testosterone. All bodies, male or female, produce testosterone. With testosterone blockers, trans women are at lower testosterone levels than a cis woman.
We, the trans community, spread trans rights. We pressured them into putting LGBT flags on buildings. The Olympic Committee are not the government, they’re a private organisation, and they weren’t pressured to allow trans women by governments, they were pressured by a group of scientists employed by the IOC Medical Commission (initially, in 2003. There have been developments since then).
We have been saying the owning class is attacking us for years. It should be obvious from Trump’s attacks on transgender people that billionaires hate us. And Rupert Murdoch owned media has been spreading transphobia all over the world for a lot longer than that.
If you’ll permit drag to speculate as to why: Capitalism and patriarchy are very closely linked. Trans people’s existence is a radical threat to the patriarchy at a basic level. If anyone can be any gender, if the “objective reality” of gender is destroyed, then gender oppression becomes nonsense. Rich white men want to preserve the social system that keeps them at the top, and trans people’s existence makes it obvious to everyone that they shouldn’t be.
Thank you for the insight. I’m glad to have the opportunity to have this discussion and gain some new understanding of the world outside my usual.
Removed by mod
Drag doesn’t think Nutomic is smart enough to make the point you just did without saying a slur.
That meme literally says ‘We should improve society somewhat’ and lemmy is a perfect example of something that is ‘improved somewhat’ when you compare it to literally any other social media driven solely by profit and algorithms that reward whatever content the owners want.
But the keyboard warriors now prefer lemmy die because comments of a dev who isn’t in control of the software said… Anyways I’m donating monthly now
Lemmy won’t die. They’ll have enough money to develop the software if they just take lemmy.ml offline, and then they’d get more donation money overnight.