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 [email protected]. 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.
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Discord denied an account to me without providing a phone number. As soon as I created an account (using a valid self-hosted email verification - same used here on lemmy) my account was immediately marked as “suspicious” and required phone verification. I emailed Discord support and talked to a human, “nothing we can do about it”. Discord is a private, for-profit company with their own motives which does not align with the intended spirit of Lemmy - other solutions exist which are open (Mattermost for example, but there are many) - it was the lemmy.world admin who willingly chose to engage with a closed, private platform. There is an incongruity here which cannot be ignored.
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. 
I have not heard of matrix till now. How does one join?
God I feel like an old person always asking the younguns how to fediverse…
get started here by choosing a matrix client: https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/
Thank you!
Same idea as lemmy, you pick a server and join chatrooms on any federated server
Ruud decided matrix was too
hardunreliable to use for this purpose and bailed a few weeks agoETA: wrong adjective
It’s not hard to use but definitely doesn’t work well, in my experience.
it’s… different and takes some getting used to. it also depends on which client you choose to use.
I prefer not to “get used to” a super slow service.
I haven’t experienced it being slow. that might depend on the client you’re using. fortunately, there are a few to choose from.
Conduit is a great Matrix home server. So quick and easy to get up and running with very little fiddling around. It’s a no-brainer to deploy.
too hard?? lmao
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 [email protected].
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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.
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
Govt investigations rarely publish their finding until the parties in question are charged.
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.