Wow, there's too much to cover here.

I know the authors are tankies. It's widely known. But:

1. Lemmy is open source, code can be audited for backdoors.
2. The instances can an often do apply patches server side, do even if the original source is clean, the instance can be tampered with. This also apply to ml.
3. Even without backdoors, Lemmy has no encryption whatsoever. Any instance admin can see everything you do and your "private messages". You can create your instance, federate and watch. It's actually very possible that LLMs are training with Lemmy because of this.
4. The fact that a tankie designed a social network without encryption is a very telling thing.

In the end, I don't do PMs and I assume everything I do is never private here or in reddit, so I'll mitigate what I can.

BTW, I didn't say they are state sponsored, only that they are pro state sponsored backdoors, meaning backdoors for the government.