Xiaomeme. How the leaders of the Federation have failed the community, they were meant to protect. AGAIN!

Xiaomeme! Daylight Attempt to Scam the Community, and how they nearly got away with it. A perspective from Raphiel.

mmm tax crime

Xiaomeme ... again.
Well, here we go again, it is again that time of the year where we the community are talking about Xiaomeme, keeping the torch alive.

After the Alek Dev fiasco, that still rings deep within our ears, we now come to the second fiasco that I, unfortunately, have the pleasure to write about. Xiaomeme is silencing me again (this has now become a norm for me and I don't care).

Disclosure: I'm a former Federation Administrator of Xiaomeme that rebelled against the Federation and all of the Sub-Federations that are related or connected to Xiaomeme (The Federation) in any way or form.

The fiasco at hand this time i.e. the developer crowd-funding for alioth aka POCO F3/Redmi K40/Mi 11X (in typical Xiaomi fashion, a single device with different names for different markets around the world). Alioth will be called "the device" moving ahead.

For full disclosure, you (the reader) can click on the caption to view the conversations that we have quoted as the screenshot from the chat itself, if you see Pink Text simply tap or click on it.

My goal is to provide all the facts, would the Federation promise to do the same? Not trying to divert too much from the irregularities at hand, but I'm into deep. Here goes nothing.

A nonsensical crowdfunding

Crowdfunding for the device started on the 23rd of May, 2021.

Today, most of the chats regarding crowd-funding are purged down, making it more than suspicious to us and the community at large.

Ah yes, the good old "Pinned Deleted Message"

It all started with a plan of crowd-funding a developer that works with the device and lives in India, after preparing a list of developers, the device was to go to someone named Vasi, who had no recent record or a resume that shined above others as a Dev. Moreover, based on his recent statement, "he refused it", but Xiaomeme pushed him to accept it.

Had we agreed to give the device to whom so ever, without a poll?

As the crowd-funding happened behind the scenes, in total secrecy, there were some questionable things happening. For one, no one knew where the money, that wasn’t recorded, really went to.

"Updated timely"

Members and donors started to question the crowd-funding, as it was shady at best. But because the crowd-funding project wasn't done with good intentions from the get go, the Federation went on ahead regardless.

They even called me "jobless" over questioning that crowdfunding

https://t.me/PocoF3GlobalOfficial/95836 — Translation: "<mentioning Trishit> mute her bc, she's a very big chu" [Source] [Archival from Jack]

Members even complained against this but it fell on deaf ears (referring to the mute threat made by Iron)

Some members who were defending the crowd-funding called me out and said 'I'm spreading hate' (???)

Where is the excel file that had to be maintained for all the donors?

In the end, after the crowd-funding was done, they published a measly PDF rather than an Excel sheet or a Google Sheet form, why?

Xiaomeme and "Accountability" shouldn't be in the same sentence.

Give them some breathing room to take your money for nothing.

Remember, if someone sends you an accounting report in PDF, question it.

An interstitial.

Just a little side story. Iron, attempted to manipulate the vote for Mi 11X Pro crowd-funding.

"So not all the people here are trustworthy"

Aye Gevalt, what works have you done for the community?

Before we continue, let's go back a little to the work Vasi has done with his TWRP build as he himself has said that "TWRP is harder to work with than a full ROM".

Firstly, the initial TWRP commit was developed by Nebrassy (who has TWRPs official status now for the device). Vasi took Nebrassy's work and tweaked it a little. All he has done is what we call "forking" and dwelling even deeper, all he did was "fix the vibrator" in the TWRP, as can be seen in this commit.

This was pretty much possible with the changes Sebastiano Barezzi (SebaUbuntu) made to TWRP, as he's the one who implemented Vibrator AIDL Support in TWRP, which he then sent to Nebrassy, which was then taken by Vasi and he called it "his work". Plagiarism much?

The changes required for Vibrator AIDL Support don't really translate well into his statement that "TWRP is harder than developing a full ROM, is it?" He already had most of his work cut out for him as other devs at that time, and Nebrassy applied the changes and gave credits to Seba for his work and support.

Starting the time machine.

We move forward and 8 months after the initial case, on the 9th of January, 2022 a pinned message that sparked a 'bruh moment' was posted onto the device's main channel

After being ghosted for almost a year, this message definitely did not sit well with anyone who invested their hard earned money into the crowd-funding project

'Especially since most of the work on TWRP had already been done by Nebrassy and there are also some other custom recoveries developed for the device like OrangeFox that is why Vasi was dormant, is pretty much a disappointing statement to say the least.

Four (4) days before this, on the 4th of January, 2022, Xiaomi India was also caught committing Tax Evasion by not paying royalties and licensing fees to Xiaomi Beijing and Qualcomm.

Back to the pinned message, Xiaomeme, as their typical "defence mechanism" tried to defend Vasi's statements.

"He's a gentleman and will surely return the device to us that doesn't even get used" Why would you give it to him then if it was known that he doesn't have the time to work on development?

"TWRP harder than developing a full ROM" Omegalul

*"You're impatient, it's just been 8 months"*

And of course, comments started flowing in from members as well

"The unrecognized backer"

As the chat flowed and the complaints kept coming in, there was one case that was definitely quite disturbing. It started when Alex (one of the backers) demanded the phone to be sent to Utsav (well-known developer for the device) instead.

"How much you contributed?" were the remarks he received from the Federations admins.

It isn't something that should be said to a donor by someone who simply managed the money, to begin with.

Later it was revealed that Trishit (Fed leader) thought Alex wasn't even one of the backers, yet his name is clearly on the PDF report that the Federation prepared and shared themselves. Irony?

How? (updated to reflect changes that are needed in the screenshot?)

The transaction receipt from Alex (Censored, if you want the uncensored one, ask Alex)

This makes everything feel very odd and irregular, that the ones' who managed the campaign didn't even recognise one of their donors.

Are there some other "Unknown backers" that aren't on the list?

If in doubt, do a federation ban or mute anyone who questions you ... the modus operandi the Federation adopted.

Still, in Alex's timeline, I took some of the regularity that happened to him just because he went against Xiaomeme and their ill-intentioned plans.

"This is too much man", then consequently banning Alex, because the donor/backer is "toxic"

Apparently saying something real will result in a mute.

The state of officiality of Xiaomeme

Questioning even the minutest of things is punishable by the Federation who call themselves "Official". Does this show professionalism by an official channel or chat?

The duality of the device contents provided to users

As you know, we discourage the use of DFE (Disable Force Encryption), and the use of it is generally discouraged all around the android community by and large, but in the alioth official channel, you can still shoot yourself in the foot, if you like.

Yet you can use the same weapon on the official channel, against which they warn you???

The DFE Developer called someone a "Nazi" over their concern regarding the DFE note

"Won't disagree = Friend = INSTANT ADMINSHIP"

As we know, the Xiaomeme administration has never been one to look out for the good of the community, and the requirements to become an admin are only to be a ”yes man/woman" with the chat owner for whatever reason, whether it is good or bad.

"Never gonna disagree with you at least", note that Cyk in this case was muted before due to "Harassment", the message was purged, this has become a common sight on the channel.

And they tend to promote anyone who doesn't really have any idea on what to do, to begin with, nor are they experienced in managing a community this large in scale.