Please convince me that I should continue my support or advice what I can do. I’m prepared to do my part, but I can only do so if I can be sure that my support is not going to people who think arbitrary Censorship is alright (needs to be based on objective community rules and not on the political agenda of mods).
I mean, there’s always other places in the fediverse to put ur money
ik this isn’t what ur asking, but i wanted to put it out there for you to consider
I would answer but I feel like this post is more about you trying to convince others to retire their economical support that any other thing. Or at least it feels like that.
Decision is yours, same as our decisions are ours.
Decision is yours, same as our decisions are ours.
Honestly, I think that is not really helpful.
This really just seems like “I want to complain about .ml” with extra steps.
I don’t care for them, so I don’t go there.
Open source projects will be used for things of which you approve and of which you do not, that is life.
My question simply relates to whether I can support the software development without supporting lemmy.ml.
No. You can’t support Lemmy without supporting lemmy.ml because the developers use lemmy.ml for testing. They have not created a means for users to separate out their donations from one or the other.
That’s why others are suggesting you should just support a different but similar fediverse project like PieFed or Mbin instead.
That’s not what your question says though. Your question asks for reasons why you should support the development of Lemmy because you don’t like the moderation decisions that the developers make on their instance. That’s a different question than “how can I support the software without supporting the people making it.” The answer to that is you can’t.
As others have said, you can fund your instance if you so choose. You can also try to fund a fork/replacement.
Because they are ok with other instances operating without censorship. Or with different ideological bias. Some people want their safe space. I do consider it generally harmful, but that’s how humans are - we want to discuss with like-minded people even if it limits the range of discussion.
On the balance, Lemmy existing is a benefit to humanity. You don’t have to talk to developers themselves.
Why should I convince you for free?
If they had developed a centralised bit of software such as Twitter or Reddit you’d have a point. In that case you can’t support one without the other.
On a decentralised bit of software you can support the developers and spend your time on an instance they have no control over. So supporting the developers for development is not the same as supporting any particular instance - thats why a lot of instances accept donations too.
Except there is no separation in where the money goes
Not the point. The issue OP has is with the instance .ml - if they are donating to the developers then they’re contributing towards development costs which affect both .ml and every other instance. If that’s too much of a hurdle for them, maybe they could switch to donating to their instance admin.