Where does this communist/neo-nazi stuff come from? I had somebody go off on me posting on reddit this weekend just for suggesting users try moving to the fediverse and lemmy specifically.

This person asserted that by creating an account on any lemmy instance I was somehow supporting ‘tankies’ and neo-nazism (which is hilarious as looking up what ‘tankie’ means, it’s an old term for militant Stalinists… how is one both a neo-nazi and a Stalinist??).

1. Lemmy instances are self-hosted, so no matter what the platform’s author(s) may or may not have had in authoring it, AFAIK the code is neutral;

2. I see no evidence the owner of the lemmy.ca instance has any such political leanings (not that I’ve looked that hard, nor should I need to) – if they did, I’d simply delete this account and join another instance if it offended me;

3. The ToS on lemmy.ca main page says specifically no racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Seems perfectly reasonable to me;

4. Communities are their own little world; if one doesn’t like a certain topic or community, just don’t subscribe to it.

Finally, 5. If the lemmy devs themselves are problematic, fork the code. It’s the protocol that matters, and the fact it’s open source. Anyone can take up the reigns if need be.

This whole argument to me sounds like a car bumper manufacturer in the year 2023 refusing to make bumpers for Volkswagen Beetles because, once upon a time, they were designed by people affiliated with you-know-who.