Okay, but. Are they Marxist-Leninist? Pro-China? Socialists? Anti-capitalists? Looks like: yes. Was the whole thing founded on the grounds of free, shared things and anti-corporate thinking? Also yes. Do we absolutely know for sure that the ML domain was chosen because of this? No, because the fucking register of the domain himself said it was chosen because it was free.

It was simply just free. People and their "knowledge" about topics they don't know anything about…

https://lemmy.ml/comment/58293

Dessalines is the owner of the domain, one of the owners of the ML instance and one of the full-time devs of the Lemmy code.

I think an overwhelming number of people simply chose that instance becuase it was the instance, made by the devs themselves. At least it was the case for me.