DESCLAIMER: This will be a little bit of a long and maybe even a personal write up, if you do read it all, thank you in advance!
Hello everyone, not sure if anyone remembers much of what happened with my account u/TheArstaInventor on Reddit, In a nutshell, I was the guy who created initiatives like r/lemmymigration and r/kbinmigration, got banned unfairly for a while to be unbanned later after community backlash, I also created guides to help users move to Kbin, Lemmy or the fediverse in general, the one that took off the most was "The Redditor's guide to how Kbin works".
Later I also entered the r/RedditAlternatives mod team, and helped moderate the community further as its popularity grew a ton at the time and a massive increase in posts required a bigger mod team. I also coordinated with other mods at the time at r/ModCoord when the blackout happen and the whole coordination not only made blackout possible but a ton of communities made another home here on the Fediverse.
Although at first, I supported Lemmy massively, I moved to Kbin later instead after learning about some of the concerns surrounding Lemmy's project developers at the time (them being tankies) but then over the months of using Kbin and investing a ton of my time on the project, I came to the harsh reality and conclusion that when it comes to platform maturity and stability, Kbin is years behind thanks to constant errors across the website sometimes, bugs and other instabilities, this also lead me to reconsider supporting and coming back to Lemmy, this time to Lemmy.world.
I also discussed with other people and came to the conclusion that the devs being tankies or their personal idealogies can't and haven't affected the overal project = Lemmy. Sure, there are some instances that cater to their idealogies such as Lemmygrad or even lemmy.ml but thanks to the project being open source and especially part of the fediverse, there are many other general instances, the best one being lemmy.world, that are moderated by entierly different people. The developers of Lemmy, who just help develop the platform, and their personal idealogies, especially on other instances, don't and probably will never matter or be an issue.
There is also a major advantage of open source - keeping the original project in check with the threat of a fork project taking away users from the OG project, this itself will by fundamental design keep Lemmy from questionable changes in the future by Lemmy's own developers. Apart from all this, the developers themselves following this concern released a statement stating their ideologies won't affect the platform itself and even if it does, it is open source and is open to being forked.
This was more than enough for me to jump ship here now, I am personally a little bit exhausted after so much of work I put into Kbin at first, but there are too many issues and is certainly not ready for prime time which has lead me here, I kind of have to start from scratch here but one thing has made be extremely happy.
I don't know if I was a reason for even single person to come here to Lemmy from Reddit, but what happened to my account earlier on showed that Reddit is actually a flaw, a fundamental design flaw that is closed source and centralized, this was the base to all the issues, not just Reddit's recent API changes that surfaced, over the years. I don't know if even that was a reason for atleast a single person to leave Reddit for Lemmy and the fediverse, but I am just happy that a ton of people are now on this site, leaving Reddit for good and I have immense satisfaction that I did atleast 0.1% contribution to it.
I also hope some of my guides and posts inspired and helped people give open source software a real try this time and it seems like a ton of people have settled in the fediverse, really makes me happy that we finally have a self-sustaining community outside Reddit, but not just outside Reddit, but in a FOSS platform.
Putting an end to my long write up above, I want to mention using this opportunity, that I've created c/ModCoord [email protected], not exactly the same r/ModCoord from Reddit, in-fact my vision is wider and bigger: A place for all moderators to coordinate, help each other. A place to help new users migrate and ask questions about perhaps moderating a new community created. But most importantly, helping Reddit moderators migrate not only themselves but their reddit communities to Lemmy. Apart from the community on Lemmy itself, I also plan on creating a discord server that will be linked to the c/ModCoord here. Right now there is about nothing there, but I will soon start working on it and you will start seeing a lot of progress moving forward there, so do consider subscribing and supporting our vision and future initatives there - especially if you are a moderator, even better if you are a reddit moderator like me moving here. We also plan on working on a wiki-like post on c/ModCoord with tons of resources to help with community discovery who have already moved from Reddit to lemmy and so on.
Today, I left r/RedditAlternatives Mod team, a great bunch of people who shared my vision but it is clear that those who were really committed to seeing Reddit's downfall left already for alternatives, mainly Lemmy and the Fediverse, so did I, little point in staying there.
As a HUGE car enthusiast, I will be working on bringing car communities to Lemmy personally as well (give me a shout out if you are a car enthusiast!:), especially those I already mod on Reddit.
If you read all that, I really appreciate it and i'm terribly sorry if it was too long but hey, I gave you a desclaimer ๐ ๐
Finally, Let's create the next front page of the internet, even better this time.
I disagree in principle. There is a form of communism that works, though I don't know what it is. Sadly, nothing in the way of what Marx predicted has happened yet. The people have never stepped up and taken control of the means of production, for instance. Rather, we get the extremists that you mention who really just substitute one elite for another rather than humanity as a whole deciding to throw off the yoke of capital oppression.
My point? There is a possibility out there of something genuine occurring. Most of humanity is far too selfish for it to happen now.
You've nailed it. I couldn't have said it better.
P.S. If people from lemmy.ml see me say things like that, they become very cross.
That's because communists are literally nuts and they're not worth listening to in the modern day. Marxism has some valuable things to say. Communism does not.
Look, despite the appealing nature of some of the things Communists talk about they're the last people that should be looked to to provide those things.
They haven't even tried to acknowledge the horrors of communist regimes that have existed. There's not even like an attempt to take responsibility and intellectualize it. It's all just hand waved away as not real communism or blah blah blah or it didn't happen or it was justified in truly horrifying cases. What kind of movement is going to be successful that can't even acknowledge its mistakes? Acknowledging our mistakes is how we grow as individuals and it's required to keep movements accountable and on the right track.
You cannot have a movement full of people who refuse to acknowledge the mistakes of the past... in charge. Best case scenario it doesn't work which is what you see in communist circles today: Endless in-fighting, superiority complexes and toxic personalities.
Worst case scenario we have another genocide.
Communism is a joke philosophy and it's not something that should be taken seriously by anybody. It's one thing if it's an entry point into the world of Marxism where there are legitimate things to be accomplished and to think about. But if you try and apply a communist philosophy or worse a Marxist leninist philosophy towards life and politics you're not on the right track in the slightest.
It's a doomed philosophy and a failed approach. Furthermore communism is not even necessary for the workers to seize the means of production. It's just a particularly violent direct way that has been outmoded and is out of date.
When I first joined Lemmy, I went on to lemmy.ml without knowing what it was--I wanted to be on the instance that the devs managed. It took me just a couple months to realize that something was up. I'd make a random comment and the brigade would come out to attack. It is what made me realize that there's little difference between extremists--it's really just something they latch on to as an identity to fill a hole in their hearts. It's no different than PETA, sovereign citizens, incels, and frankly, evangelicals. I learned a hard lesson in those months that finally lead to me moving to another instance after being told for the upteenth time what a horrid racist eco facist I was.
In regards to your comment on intellectualizing things, it became clear to me that this group really is composed of tankies and they really and truly do believe that Stalin and Mao are genuine communists. If you ask about it, they will quote Mao at you where he argues that people who don't fully understand every aspect of a topic have no right to speak. They get angrier if you make allusions to relativism and knowledge and how there are differing viewpoints.
As a former extremist myself, you're absolutely right. It's not even really about changing the world or actual meaningful activism which is why these extremists are also totally useless in any movement they get involved. All they are is cancer. They just serve to alienate hard-working regular people who care about whatever cause it is.
Shockingly, the thing that made me finally realize this was when someone was on the attack and I asked that if they wanted others to think a certain way, why they didn't try to convince them. I suggested that they try to persuade me and a whole new avenue of attack began--that really made people extra angry and I was really surprised. These people, as you say, aren't actually interested in improving the world. They only want to be right so that they can point at others to say how wrong they are instead. Worse? I am actually sympathetic to the ideas that communists speak of but they drove me away in their rage.
And this my friend is exactly why communism is a dead philosophy. This right here above any kind of technical details or doctrinal differences or ideological issues.. It's this right here that you just described which is why communism will never succeed. Because communist themselves, in 2024 are nuts. I came to the same conclusion you did which is why I stopped calling myself one despite sympathizing and being a fellow traveler.
Gosh I just met my online soulmate I think.
DM me and I'll give you my phone number.