This is in regard to Lemmy.world blocking piracy communities from other instances. This post is not about whether you agree with the decision. It’s about how the admins informed their users.

A week ago Lemmy.world announced their Discord server. This wasn’t very well received (about 25% downvotes, which is rather bad compared to other announcements). The comments on that post were turned off, presumably to avoid backlash.

Before that, announcements about the instance used to be posted to !lemmyworld@lemmy.world. This time, the information was posted on the Discord server instead.

I don’t agree with this. Having to use a proprietary platform to participate in an open-source one goes against the very purpose for me, especially when the new solution isn’t really an improvement (as before the information about the platform was closer to it).

Edit: Corrected the announcements community name.

Update: Lemmy.world finally released an announcement and promised they would inform about similar actions and gather feedback in advance in future.

  • kadu@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1140·
    1 year ago

    This wasn’t very well received

    Lemmy is overabundant in users concerned about deep data privacy and anonymity, which is why that post got so downvoted. In a less optimistic view, there have been a lot of users that somehow feel special about using lesser known platforms and consider Discord “normie”.

    However, if we want Lemmy to grow and actually have users and communities, this sentiment must be toned down - the privacy focus could still very well exist to some users, but the simple “let’s use a very popular chat platform designed for this kind of interaction” should not be considered the end of the world.

    Every single large subreddit you can name had a Discord channel, sometimes two.

    • bauhaus@lemmy.mlEnglish
      28·
      1 year ago

      Matrix is a federated alternative to Discord that is both open source and highly concerned with user privacy. It’s also very popular here on Lemmy, and a lot of communities here use it. 

    • goddamnpipes@feddit.chEnglish
      161·
      1 year ago

      Sure, for a server as large and accessible as LW, Discord is a super useful, accessible platform. However, the Discord server should not be the only place that such an update is posted.

      Realistically, you can’t expect much of the LW userbase to see and engage with an announcement in a Discord server, compared to a post on lemmyworld@lemmy.world.

      • kadu@lemmy.worldEnglish
        52·
        1 year ago

        That I agree with - updates should be mirrored to the site, for sure.

        But I’m not convinced the internal discussions before the decision is made should happen in a pinned post in the instance itself. Last time I’ve seen one of those, half of the comments weren’t even coming from people using Lemmy.world.

    • YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.worldEnglish
      49·
      1 year ago

      I can tell you Governments are already investigating several federated servers including lemmy instances. I doubt LW wanted to deal with the European Union cracking down on copyright infringement. Users are going to see a lot of instances shut down or blocked in the near future due to legal violations.

      • gabe [he/him]@literature.cafeEnglish
        7·
        1 year ago

        Are they really? Do you have any sources for that? That’s a very lofty claim. I know some mastodon instances are likely to be, but Lemmy? with how new it is feels kind of far fetched

          • gabe [he/him]@literature.cafeEnglish
            8·
            1 year ago

            Okay… then how in the hell do you know this then? I’m sorry, but this has real my dad works at Nintendo right now. Those are extremely serious claims.

            I’m sorry but it feels suspicious given the fact that the dude who is speculated to have started this was a troll.