I get you. But they’re the flagship instance. At least they used to be. They shape the brand identity of whole Lemmy. And that’s being tankie and having a culture that could be nice, but regularly isn’t. So everyone on the internet knows Lemmy isn’t really something I want to subject myself to. And if we’re being honest, alsmost nobody knows the fine nuances of power abuse on specific instances. It’s just “Lemmy” that this gets attributed to.
Every interaction here represents Lemmy. Some disproportionately so.
And we’ve established, me leaving (which I’ve done) is not gonna change anything about it. The communities are still amongst the largest and where most of the users are, and also attracting the new users.
Your argumantation would be perfectly valid if lemmy.ml were some small instance that’s unheard of by most users. Or blocked by the rest of the network. We could ignore them then, let them do their own thing like the Fediverse does with a few nazi and conspiracy instances. But this isn’t the case here.
Regarding money and doing it “for the fun of it”: That’s not correct. They get money for two or three full-time jobs from the NLNet fund and the EU. They could be having fun, too. But they definitely also get a substancial amount of money for it.
Concerning the 4chan example: That’s on point. 4chan is the epitome of echo chamber and incel culture. That’s mainly because there’s no one else. They left. And now, why would anyone else visit a place like that in the first place? I’d rather not Lemmy become like that. Do you?
It’s lemmy.ml . During the API wars on Reddit lots of people came here and lots of new instances were founded. lemmy.world was part of that and quickly grew into -I think- the now largest instance by far. But lemmy.ml is at least 2 years older and hosted by the actual developers. And due to history hosts to this point some of the large communities.
Yeah. And “Lemmy self-corrects” is kind of what this post is about (in my opinion.) I’d like to see lemmy.world and a few other instances now do it and defederate. That’s how it should be, call out bullshit, be vocal and then do something about it. My point is, we’re at phase 1 or 2. Now we’re going to see if Lemmy self-corrects. As of now it didn’t.
I think just hoping for a bright future isn’t cutting it. And if you ask me, all the infighting and defederating each other also isn’t healthy.