There's nothing wrong with having good third-party tools, that was not my point. db0 in particular has done some amazing, amazing work.
What's fucked, however, is having a project:
- whose core infrastructure only offers the most threadbare tools
- there's zero consideration from development on privacy, user safety, or basic controls to handle when shit hits the bed
- the devs are stone silent when waves of CSAM crash through instances
- they openly mock people or say they're "too busy to do this" when it comes to meeting the most basic expectations of how a social platform ought to work.
Like, this is not an attack on Lemmy itself, I think the platform can be a real force for good in the Fediverse. But let's be honest, this project is not going to live very long if nothing changes.
Basic things like having the ability to easily remove images from storage should be part of the core platform. The fact that this still isn't a thing even four years into the project is insane.
He is a bit bombastic, and has a habit of biting off more than he can chew sometimes. I think these side-projects are ultimately useful, though, and probably help fend off boredom or burnout. Maybe he gets better at coding and design through doing that, I dunno.
Regardless, he's continues to do a lot of great development work.