Oh they’re absolutely tankies, dessalines website is crystal clear on that. To me this is simply a test of the fediverse. If it works as intended, the devs political orientation shouldn’t matter. We’ll see.

Read for yourself what he writes on his website. It’s pretty grim shit. https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/socialism_faq.md#did-mao-kill-millions-of-people

Conspiracy? One of the devs has a website where he literally openly denies the Uyghur genocide, Tiananmen square massacre, “Mao did nothing wrong”, “Ukrainians are Nazis”, denies every single critique of USSR and China, and a whole lot of other vile shit. Read for yourself: https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/socialism_faq.md#did-mao-kill-millions-of-people

This is the real test of the fediverse. Can software written by a piece of shit like that exist without being influenced by their garbage political views?

I think it’s possible and I like Lemmy to thrive but it’s important to keep an eye out for tankies and to not close your eyes to the reality of who started this.