The politics of the authors matters. The politics of the authors sets the project priorities, determines which features are essential and which features will never be implemented. Running a social media site is a commitment. It requires maintenance. It requires interaction with the developers to troubleshoot problems, fix bugs, add features, etc. I absolutely would not run a social media platform developed by fascists. That would put me in a position where I rely on fascists for technical support, where the fascists understand my own infrastructure better than I do. It would also mean that no features which undermine fascist ideology would likely be developed.

In addition to being a piece of tech, Lemmy takes on the form of its authors’ politics. Despite them being Communists, this form is a vaguely anarcho-syndicalist one. A federation of autonomous communities. It is a form which allows each community to set their own standards and operate as they see fit. If one believes them to be the stereotypical censorious authoritarians, this should introduce some cognitive dissonance. If a person like this can look at the tech and appreciate the form, but then reject it because “tankies,” it demonstrates a lack of understanding about the underlying problems. They can try to replicate the project in a “non-tankie” form, but they won’t succeed unless they deeply analyze the landscape they are operating in. And if they did deeply analyze the landscape they are operating in, they would more-or-less arrive at the same conclusions as the Lemmy devs vis-à-vis the political economy of social media.