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.
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.