Adding about page

src/shared/components/about.tsx

@@ -0,0 +1,115 @@
+import { Component } from "inferno";
+import { Helmet } from "inferno-helmet";
+import { i18n } from "../i18next";
+
+const title = i18n.t("about_title");
+
+export class About extends Component<any, any> {
+  constructor(props: any, context: any) {
+    super(props, context);
+  }
+  render() {
+    return (
+      <div>
+        <Helmet title={title}>
+          <meta property={"title"} content={title} />
+        </Helmet>
+        <div class="container">
+          <h1>{i18n.t("about_title")}</h1>
+          <p>The idea to make Lemmy was a combination of factors.</p>
+          <p>
+            Open source developers like myself have long watched the rise of the
+            “Big Five”, the US tech giants that have managed to capture nearly
+            all the world’s everyday communication into their hands. We’ve been
+            asking ourselves why people have moved away from content-focused
+            sites, and what we can do to subvert this trend, in a way that is
+            easily accessible to a non-tech focused audience.
+          </p>
+          <p>
+            The barriers to entry on the web, are much lower than say in the
+            physical world: all it takes is a computer and some coding knowhow…
+            yet the predominating social media firms have been able to stave off
+            competition for at least two reasons: their sites are easy to use,
+            and they have huge numbers of users already (the “first mover”
+            advantage). The latter is more important; if you’ve ever tried to
+            get someone to use a different chat app, you’ll know what I mean.
+          </p>
+          <p>
+            Now I loved early reddit, not just for the way that it managed to
+            put all the news for the communities and topics I wanted to see in a
+            single place, but for the discussion trees behind every link posted.
+            I still have many of these saved, and have gained so much more from
+            the discussion behind the links, than I have from the links
+            themselves. In my view, its the community-focused, tree-like
+            discussions, as well as the ability to make, grow, and curate
+            communities, that has made reddit the 5th most popular site in the
+            US, and where so many people around the world get their news.
+          </p>
+          <p>
+            But that ship sailed years ago; the early innovative spirit of
+            reddit left with Aaron Schwartz: its libertarian founders have
+            allowed some of the most racist and sexist online communities to
+            fester on reddit for years, only occasionally removing them only
+            when community outcry reaches a fever pitch. Reddit closed its
+            source code years ago, and the reddit redesign has become a bloated
+            anti-privacy mess.
+          </p>
+          <p>
+            Its become absorbed into that silicon valley surveillance-capitalist
+            machine that commidifies users to sell ads and paid flairs, and
+            propagandizes pro-US interests above all. Software technology being
+            one of the last monopoly exports the US has, it would be naive to
+            think that one of the top 5 most popular social media sites, where
+            so many people around the world get their news, would be anything
+            other than a mouthpiece for the interests of those same US coastal
+            tech firms.
+          </p>
+          <p>
+            Despite the conservative talking point that big tech is dominated by
+            “leftist propaganda”, it is liberal, and pro-US, not left (leftism
+            referring to the broad category of anti-capitalism). Reddit has
+            banned its share of leftist users and communities, and the reddit
+            admins via announcement posts repeatedly villify the US’s primary
+            foreign-policy enemies as having “bot campaigns”, and “manipulating
+            reddit”, yet the default reddit communities (/r/news, /r/pics, etc),
+            who share a small number of moderators, push a line consistent with
+            US foreign-policy interests. The aptly named /r/copaganda subreddit
+            has exposed the pro-police propaganda that always seems to hit
+            reddit’s front page in the wake of every tragedy involving US police
+            killing the innocent (or showing police kissing puppies, even though
+            US police kill ~ 30 dogs every day, which researchers have called a
+            “noted statistical phenomenon”).
+          </p>
+          <p>
+            We’ve also seen a rise in anti-China posts that have hit reddit
+            lately, and along with that comes anti-chinese racism, which reddit
+            tacitly encourages. That western countries are seeing a rise in
+            attacks against Asian-Americans, just as some of the perpetrators of
+            several hate-crimes against women were found to be redditors active
+            in mens-rights reddit communities, is not lost on us, and we know
+            where these tech companies really stand when it comes to violence
+            and hate speech. Leftists know that our position on these platforms
+            is tenable at best; we’re currently tolerated, but that will not
+            always be the case.
+          </p>
+          <p>
+            The idea for making a reddit alternative seemed pointless, until
+            Mastodon (a federated twitter alternative), started becoming
+            popular. Using activitypub (a protocol / common language that social
+            media services can use to speak to each other), we finally have a
+            solution to the “first mover” advantage: now someone can build or
+            run a small site, but still be connected to a wider universe of
+            users.
+          </p>
+          <p>
+            Nutomic and I originally made Lemmy to fill the role as a federated
+            alternative to reddit, but as it grows, it has the potential become
+            a main source of news and discussion, existing outside of the US’s
+            jurisdictional domain and control.
+          </p>
+          <i class="is-right">Written by Dessalines, December 2020.</i>
+        </div>
+      </div>
+    );
+  }
+}

src/shared/components/link-line.tsx

@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ export class LinkLine extends Component<any, any> {
     return (
       <>
         <Link to="/instances">{i18n.t("join")}</Link>
+        <Link to="/about">{i18n.t("about")}</Link>
         <Link to="/apps">{i18n.t("apps")}</Link>
         <Link to="/support">{i18n.t("support")}</Link>
         <a href={`/docs/${getDocsLanguage(i18n.language)}/index.html`}>

src/shared/routes.ts

@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@ import { Apps } from "./components/apps";
 import { Instances } from "./components/instances";
 import { Contact } from "./components/contact";
 import { Support } from "./components/support";
+import { About } from "./components/about";
 
 export const routes: IRouteProps[] = [
   {
@@ -16,6 +17,11 @@ export const routes: IRouteProps[] = [
     exact: true,
     component: Apps,
   },
+  {
+    path: `/about`,
+    exact: true,
+    component: About,
+  },
   {
     path: `/instances`,
     exact: true,