The Lemmy platform is just a tool to manage and delivery content. And I think it’s important to differentiate the software from those who manages the software. I can see there’s is a tacit connection and influence there. But unless they start baking inherently bias features into the software and skewing it, I don’t think it’s a big problem.

Also, because it’s an inherently federated platform, if people don’t like the opinions of those who run a specific instance, they can (with the inclination and determination) spin up their own instance and manage that the way they see fit. And that has happened quite a few times over the last couple of years.

So no, I don’t think it requires a fork really. Not unless the people managing the main branch lose interest and the software starts to wither on the vine, or they start corrupting it somehow. But that’s just my opinion.

Once every couple months someone makes a post saying “I just found out the Lemmy devs are TANKIES! Won’t someone do something about it?” No one has expressed real interest in forking Lemmy, though plenty of people have expressed interest in someone else forking Lemmy for them.

Most of the dev interest seems to be on Piefed right now. For some reason Mbin hasn’t seemed to really take off, I don’t see people talking about it as much.

Reactionary forks don’t have a great record of success (or even getting off the ground).

Just don’t give money to the instance they own that is pro russian occupation and pro china human right abuses

What should we do?

There is no “we” and you can start a fork/rewrite if you want to, good luck!

The thought-police strike again.

So far no one who’s able and willing to do the work for a fork has done it so I assume the motivation is low. There’s alternate pieces of software mentioned here that have their pros and cons.

Does the term “freedom of opinion” have any meaning to you?