This post is going to be a long one, to spare you some reading I'll do a TL;DR, but I really would appreciate you reading the whole thing.
TL;DR: Burggit (The Lemmy Instance) will be shutting down July 14th 2024. Due to lack of funding, grievances with the Lemmy software and lack of resources, energy and interest on our part. We'll be giving one month for everyone to move their local posts somewhere else and download their images. shota.nu will not be shutting down, so images/video hosted there will be fine, but they will not be viewable on the Lemmy Burggit since we'll be shutting the webpage down after July 14th 2024.
Now for the whole post.
Back when we started Burggit I was in great health, I was managing multiple sites at a time and constantly adding things to my plate, which were managable while I was in that state. Burggit was an excited project that I asked Burger to set up, because I didn't (and still don't) have the knowledge to maintain. At worst, I thought it could be a fun little place for us and a few friends to mess around and kinda use as a link archive. I even offered to pay for it, since burger is in a difficult financial situation.
Things went well shortly after it was up, we didn't have hardly any users, just a few friends like I originally intended. Then the Reddit API stuff started going in full swing and suddenly people started wanting to join. This was a very exciting time for us as the site grew. It got to the point where my wife even had to help us with managing everything, since she was usually up when Burger and I were asleep. Everything was going rather well.
Then I got sick, I got so sick that I almost died twice, I lost half of my lunge and 2 of my ribs, and I was in and out of the hospital for almost a year. During this time, I could not participate in Burggit, and honestly, I was barely able to fund it. Though I eventually did come back, but it was never like how it was before I got sick.
My financial and physical resources decreased significantly as a result of my health, I can't manage or juggle as much as I could and I will probably forever have a slower paced life because of the events that transpired.
Then there's the Lemmy software. The amount of hoops that burger has to go to in order to bring you this site is ridiculous. To give you an idea of how bad this software is, there's no easy way to check all the images uploaded to the site (such as through private messages). When the obvious concern of potential illegal imagery is brought up to lemmy devs, they shrug and say to plug in an expensive AI image checker to scan for illegal imagery. That response genuinely has me thinking that this is by design, and they want it to be like this. We can't even easily look at the list of registered users without looking through the DB, absolute insanity.
The other thing is there's no real way to manage storage properly in Lemmy, the storage caches every image ever uploaded to any instance forever.
Also the software is constantly breaking.
This site has become more of a burden for us, for me financially as I have been the sole person funding it (aside from like 2 or 3 individuals who donated a bit ago, thank you to those people.) It's just not worth our time anymore and it's not something I want to fund anymore. People seem to like this instance, so much so that it feels like the second it goes down we're made aware of it. But, aside from that we're on our own.
We're only federated with a few instances due to the way the threadiverse is, we've been literally locked into our own bubble and have been funding this project and been allocating time (sometimes a lot of time) into making it operational. We just don't have the ability to do that anymore, not unless something big changes, but I don't see that coming.
Now you might be wondering, "What about the Sharkey?" The Sharkey is easy to manage, is widely federated and is easy to manage storage and much cheaper to fund. It doesn't cause even a third of the hassle Lemmy does.
I'm very sorry to make this announcement. Both Burger and I were trying as much as we could to keep this up as long as possible, but it has officially reached a point where we just can't do it anymore.
Honestly? Good riddance. If your opinion on which software we use is what makes you not want to use our instance and the fact that MAPs are allowed on our instance, which is just me feeling like I owe RQD2 a favor for having our backs when we got widely defederated on here makes you not want to join up, then fine. Don't use it.
I spent weeks going over which fork of Misskey we'd like to use since they're all similar but have their own set of issues. Those being, some aren't maintained (Firefish), others (Iceshrimp) are moving completely to C#, or some are in the beginning stages of their fork (Catodon.) I had my reservations about choosing Sharkey because of the transfem stuff, but the thing is, that:
So me being the pragmatic person that I am chose Sharkey for the reasons outlined above. Again, this was me taking a couple of weeks of my free time trying out the various forks of Misskey to see which ones that I like and will make sure we aren't screwed somewhere down the line if the project ends up dying or if the maintainers have a falling out which kills the project.
Now for the MAP thing. I have been outspoken about 100% being opposed to MAPs on our Matrix and RQD2's Matrix. They haven't banned me because of this and they have chosen to remain federated with us despite us being more of a free expression-y instance that a lot of the peeps on there would find distasteful, I feel that I owe RQD2 a thanks for having our backs when we have been widely defederated, and that's why I went with the compromise rule that I came up with.
This post came across as you pissing and moaning about how we run things despite the fact that we are self-funded and don't ask for donations. We do this in our free time, so this honestly came across as a slap in the face as well as exceedingly ungrateful.
First off, respectfully,
you can assume it comes off that way. But we both know that's not the point, the case, or the intention.
Lolicons and MAPs are not to be confused as similar or allied. And I will forever hold the statement that one who openly claims to be one in public is not to be given respect. Because it is a form of sneakily solliciting.
RQD2 is not a thing I entirely trust to begin with, have heard bad things, and on rqd2 itself i see a bunch of Pro MAP shit, yet they ALSO allow people starting at age 13 there. Ridiculous.
We can spin what I said long and wide. But I didn't say that. Slap in the face? absolutely not and you know that.
You don't need to keep bringing up it's self-funded, I'm well aware. I actually heavily supported this place for a good while, and taught countless people about using Matrix/Element after learning about it from this place, and did my research on this site to make sure it was a great place to be for the literal 50.000 lolicons I lead that are being oppressed all the damn time...
I don't think allowing people publicly attracted to real children is a great way to "thank someone" for having been helpful.
And I'm sorry if you think differently, but if you're actually against it, I don't think it makes sense to allow it. I am pretty sure rqd2 should understand not allowing it, but alas.. No amount of "we self fund" will be a decent excuse for such a moderation decision in my eyes. And also not sure how that applies to it in the first place.
The thing is. Someone can "be" a MAP in silence for as long as they want, right?. But being one PUBLICLY. Online? Sorry, as a psychologist I see this as only being done for 1 purpose, and 1 purpose only.
I respected the thing yall had going here with Burggit. And I wish you the best on Sharkey. (It looked nice over there. But I don't like to risk dealing with a platform run with a very gendercentric agenda as their main thing, that type of stuff is why so many platforms are dying. Everything is censored because of that "agenda pushing" culture because everything is too offensive now, that's why we want to move away from Reddit.)
But I'm not supporting no MAP type stuff mate.
Cunny is Cunny. Those who like real kids should not be accepted like it's some fucking gender identity.
Again, respectfully,
I completely disagree with this MAP decision.
If it was just the Sharkey thing I'd be okay, but wary.
But outright openly stating "Hey, MAPs are welcome" is not a notification I wanted to see when opening Sharkey yesterday.
I know you're replying to Burger, but I had some things I wanted to share about my views on this topic and why I personally think the way I do.
First, before I add anything, I must clarify I do not support/endorse/encourage any activity involving sexualizing a real life minor.
Now for my opinions on MAPs.
You mention that you view MAPs as a way to publicly signal a sort of "Hey contact me for you know what. ;3" And I'm not saying there aren't people like that, I'm positive there are. How I view it though is being a pedophile is literally the worst thing in the world anyone could be. Like actually a terrible curse. While i'm sure some pedophiles have no issues with this affliction they are given. I feel like the most unfortunate thing is that those who do feel bad about it have 2 options.
If a pedophile was to try and get therapy, they're going to get arrested, they're not going to get help (with a few exceptions depending on the country.)
I always felt that was the difference between "pro-contact" and "no-contact" MAPs, the "pro-contact" maps being more likely to be ones who are fine with their affliction and find absolutely asinine ways to justify it and indulge in it. Where as the "no-contact" MAPs are more likely to be people who admit "I have a problem." And I know this isn't the case for everyone. I just think excluding these people just serves to further radicalize them.
This is basically my opinion on other groups as well. I believe that blocking these people off just serves to further radicalize them as they find their own little echo-chambers which do nothing but encourage ever-growing dangerous urges and behavior. This isn't saying that this will prevent people from finding those places and going into those echo-chambers, but it's giving them the option not to.
To be clear I'm not asking you to change your opinion. You seem to be rather reasonable as to why you think what you do, I actually appreciated the clarification in your post. Wanted to kind of do a little clarifying of my own.