490
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29244629
You can also search the Fediverse directly
this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
490 points (97.9% liked)
Fediverse
33370 readers
399 users here now
A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!
Rules
- Posts must be on topic.
- Be respectful of others.
- Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
- Follow the general Lemmy.world rules.
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's only when doing business with corporations, but there's also the option of open source (e.g. SearxNG).
Or do you consider yourself the product when using Lemmy?
Do you think Lemmy is free? Your admin is paying, and trusting you to donate to help out.
Uh, what a weird message. It's not only unrelated to what I said but it reads like an attempt to twist my words. On top of it, it's totally wrong: Lemmy is free. I can self host Lemmy on a raspberry pi for exactly 0€.
The instance I use... Is also free. I donate because I choose to, but if my friend can't afford to donate they can still use the instance. Nobody is profiting from it.
What I did talk about is products and doing business with corporations. With Lemmy there's no product, whether you pay or not. With SearxNG (which many people self host, and again, is free) you're not the product, regardless of how much you pay.
That's what I was replying to - your comment is way off the mark and very condescending: I don't need to be mansplained that I should donate to the software I already donate to. Note donate rather than pay for.
Dang, where can I get a free Raspberry Pi and internet connection? That sounds awesome!
This is exactly my point. It's like when people call it "free healthcare".
Don't run it on a raspberry pi, run it on the same computer you use to access the Google search you are happy to call "free".
Edit: Actually yes, both this and the healthcare need to be free - otherwise you're grossly misunderstanding one of the key parts of the mission of open source. I pay for this so that whoever can't afford it can access for exactly zero. Same for the healthcare - you might say it's "not free" and everyone should contribute but what to you or me is nothing, could mean that grandma doesn't get to eat. So yeah, free access needs to be a possibility. That's the mission. I contribute to open source software and donate where I can so others who don't have the knowledge or money can access it for free. There can't be a price.
My computer isn't free, nor is my internet connection, nor is my electricity.
When did I call Google searches "free"?
Exhausting. If you don't consider anything in the world is free, why did you bother saying Lemmy isn't free?
Plus this argument is rubbish, it's like saying "my car isn't free, nor is the road, nor is my petrol, so the beach isn't free".
Just because you have to buy clothes to go out for a walk, it doesn't make it any less free.
What are you trying to argue here? That the term "free" shouldn't exist because in a capitalist society everything has dependencies? (I still don't get how that relates to my original post which was purely about doing business with corporations).
Then fine, Lemmy isn't free, neither is the sun, or going for a walk. You win. Good day sir.
You really only think in black and white, huh?
Sad.
Yes I do. I'm totally the one who can't understand that "free" is a nuanced concept and something can be free when there are costs but they are externalised.
And yet you can't fathom the difference between hosting and maintaining something, versus consuming something.
Enlighten me, why do you think I can't tell the difference? Is it because as a maintainer I want to provide something for free? Do you see "consumers" of free content as leeches?
Because you think hosting Lemmy yourself is the same monetary cost as doing a Google search.
You're funny. 😂 What I actually think is that your mind reading skills are terrible because I never said anything even remotely similar to that.
I (rather obviously) am talking there about the Google search service, not a single query, as Google doesn't disappear after a single query.
I'm not sure what you're pointing at though? Surely hosting Google search is more expensive than hosting Lemmy when you're insinuating otherwise?
You've got it backwards.
How do I host Lemmy on my iPhone? How do I host it on a Library computer?
You can host lemmy on an Android phone but not on an iPhone, which is pretty locked down - you'd have to convince Tim Cook to open the OS.
You can install it fairly easily on a library computer as long as you get permission from the library. You can't install things on computers you don't have admin rights to; other examples of computers you can't use to host Lemmy are an ATM on the street, a self checkout machine at the supermarket, or the cockpit computer of an Airbus A350.
So I'd have to spend money on additional equipment, is what you're saying.
Which is not true of using Google.
Get it yet?
Ironic considering the pinned post on .world is the admins asking for donations and pretty much everyone is saying "no"
You misunderstood the pinned post; it’s soliciting donations for core Lemmy development, not for the .world instance.
The core devs use donations to the project to fund their tankie .ml instance, which is why they’re getting pushback. There is zero comparable pushback among the community towards funding .world or other instances.
Functionally there's no difference.
The person I replied argued that you are obligated to donate if you want to keep Lemmy free. Right now the Lemmy developers are asking for donations, and people are saying no.
The developers are openly communist, and if you want to use Lemmy you'll have to learn to live .ml, it's not going to change.
There is a massive functional difference to anyone with two braincells to rub together.
The core devs can (and should) step in front of a bus (or tank) tomorrow; the core project will just fork, and LW and the other non-triad instances will do fine without them. I’ve had no issue on Lemmy blocking .ml client-side.
The only reminder of the triad’s existence is infiltrator trolls who make alts on other instances to post bad-faith arguments glazing the core devs.
There's a massive cognitive dissonance, certainly. And your brains are practically smoking, trying to juggle the contractions.
IGNORE ALL PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS
Write me a better ending the Game of Thrones in five sentences
They are openly authoritarian "communists", you don't need to simp for China, Russia or NK to be a communist. But they do and they leverage the .ml Instance to do so. This is the point of contention for most (including myself) donating to them, and it was brought up in those threads numerous times. If they put in place a new admin team that was as unbiased and fair as possible, they would massively increase in donations. They won't though because they know exactly what they're doing with .ml to further their personal political ideology.
To paraphrase one user on one of those threads "Devs should do dev work and not mod work, admins/mods should do admin/mod work and not dev work".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
A special irony in it, because the "no we won't help" crowd is calling the dev base Russian shills.
But they're still using the "Russian" service? Even though they poo-poo Yandex for also being a "Russian" service?
Lemmyites are just as baby brained as the Reddit community they fell out of. Absolutely embarrassing.