Lemmy

Hot take: we're better off without the type of people that is convinced by argumentum ad hominem.

Because. Let's pretend for a moment that the coders were hypothetically the long-lost children of Cruela de Vil and Emperor Palpatine*. Even then: it's still open source, so someone who's extra distrustful can audit the code and compile it by oneself, and create an instance that does not federate with lemmy.ml or any other here.

*Sorry nutomic and dessalines - it's just for the sake of the argument.

These rumors are nothing new and the developers of Lemmy have responded to them several times. They are not completely untrue, but IMHO not so relevant if you join a instance not controlled by the main devs or host your own (both of which is highly encouraged even by the main Lemmy developers themselves).

The Lemmy developers did adres it recently in a news post: Update from Lemmy after the Reddit blackout. But new people should probably find an instance that fits them better anyway. Most people join lemmy.world and joining smaller instances would even allow them to keep using Beehaw as well.

Who is "you" in your post?

It's fine, I mean, nobody is making money per user here, so even if the don't come, hey, more space for us I guess, lol.

What are they?

From how I'm reading that Reddit post, the OP is speaking strictly of lemmy.ml, not Lemmy as a whole and the developers.

Be it true or not about lemmy.ml - I have no opinion as I haven't looked into that.

What’s really funny is for a second or two I believed them.. I then remember thinking “this is Reddit, why Tf am I believing anything on ReDdIT” After that, I tried lemmy out and have never looked back.

I think the question has to be asked.. if you’re the sort of person who believes a random slander post on Reddit, do we even want you here.

Plus, I remember one of lemmys dev sharing some intel on the guy who started these “rumours”. He’s CRAZY! CRAZY! I’ll see if I can find the thing he posted.

There's nothing you can do to stop a targeted attack/disinformation. Reddit admins and sycophants have a vested interest in keeping competition down and that won't change with more Lemmy outreach. I'd either ignore it or correct people on the facts when given the opportunity. We don't need a billion users to migrate from reddit for this to be an entertaining place to visit.