As posted about recently in !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works and !fediverselore@lemmy.ca it seems that @nutomic@lemmy.ml's stance on transphobia has not changed and his apology only seems to be that he was sorry he got caught and that someone leaked the DM. This is concerning for an admin of Lemmy.ml and the leader of the project. I don't think this means we should stop using Lemmy, it's open-source and even if they embed donation links, they can be stripped out in our fork. But it does make me wonder if we should consider defederating lemmy.ml on that merit. Since if they hold such views on trans issues, it's very likely they won't have any desire to act on that type of transphobia being expressed on their instance.
I know that Lemmy.ml has and does handle overt transphobia well, but I can't speak to their ability to handle less overt or thinly veiled transphobia, and this incident doesn't inspire much confidence either.
Edit: Since some people haven't seen the original. I decided to include it here. Warning, it contains transphobia, if you don't want to see that, don't open the spoiler.
CW: Transphobic talking points
I'd really like to hear Feedback from Blahaj's local community on this, I'm not as interested in outside opinions here so please try to refrain from top-level commenting if you aren't from lemmy.blahaj.zone (I will ignore them if you comment anyway from a remote instance).
I'm disappointed in nutomic's statements as well. I won't be donating him any money, but it seems hypocritical to say you won't stop using Lemmy, but you want to defed from .ml.
How? It's free and open source software. This sentiment just seems dumb. Where's the implication that using free and open-source software like Lemmy means you need to support the devs or federate with their server? I see no such rule, and it's not like they can stop or disallow you from using it (nature of open-source).
Anyone can host an instance and choose to run it however they like, the devs have no control in how or why people use Lemmy. It seems like a lot of people have trouble grasping this concept.
I'm not talking about rules. How is using software maintained by nutomic fundamentally different from federating with an instance they run?
If you are using the Lemmy software, which is open source, that is just an interface. (plus their are other Lemmy apps and web browser uis that aren't maintained by the original Lemmy team. By not using their server that's you dedicating resources into your own type of community that is govern differently and is clearly not the same as the default Lemmy.ml instance.
Since the software is open source the main simple, straight to the point difference is who is running what servers you are federated with. Using Lemmy also doesn't automatically mean you are supporting the Lemmy devs since they are not profiting from ad revenue. They would ask for donations.
Are there ads on .ml I'm unaware of? I'm using Voyager and don't see any. I can't see how me using nutomic's instance (or federating with it) benefits him any more or less than using his software project. As others have noted in this thread, moderation on .ml is generally excellent, and not tolerant of transphobia.
Ultimately, blahaj isn't my home so I don't expect a say in what you decide. I'm just sceptical of the logic here.
I stated that using Lemmy (the software/app) doesn't / does not automatically mean you are supporting the original Lemmy devs. What I was mainly getting at was, when I said, "Since the software is open source the main simple, straight to the point difference is who is running what servers you are federated with." but that also certainly extends to the the server you are on as well.
No one is saying stop using Lemmy over this, in my opinion, it's because not one person or company owns all of Lemmy servers and communities. So the difference really lies with the specific people running your servers and communities. Can you trust them, can your instance provider trust them. Do you trust them or your instance provider.
That is the difference.