When you choose a Lemmy home instance, you’re trusting somebody else’s infrastructure with your account, posts, comments, and uploaded media.
If that instance disappears without a usable backup or migration path, years of your contributions can disappear with it.
Yet when I look at most instances, I have absolutely no idea what I’m trusting.
Is this running on:
- A $5 VPS?
- A dedicated server with redundant storage?
- Someone’s mini PC under their desk?
- AWS with costs that explode exponentially as traffic increases and hapless admin not realizing that just shutting it down as they never had a plan?
- A database with proper backups?
- A server with no backups at all?
I recently had an instance tell me my posting activity alone was becoming too expensive for them. Their solution was - just banning me and removing all my data. no im not kidding - thx https://lemmy.radio/.
That immediately makes me wonder: what are you running? (apparently it was aws micro or something and person clearly had no idea what they were doing)
If a few hundred posts can create a meaningful financial problem, is the instance massively undersized? Are you paying enterprise hyperscaler prices for workloads that could run cheaply on dedicated hardware? Is storage the problem? Bandwidth? Pictrs? Database load? Do you even have a plan my friends?
I don’t know, because users are given almost zero infrastructure information.
I’m not asking admins to publish IP addresses, network diagrams, credentials, or anything security-sensitive.
Just put some basics in /about:
- Hosting: OVH / Hetzner / AWS / home-hosted / etc.
- Compute: 8 cores / 32 GB RAM
- Storage: 2 TB NVMe
- Backups: Daily, retained 30 days
- Media backups: Yes / No
- Off-site backups: Yes / No
- Approximate capacity: Small / Medium / Large
- Funding: Self-funded / donations / nonprofit / etc.
That tells me infinitely more about whether I’m comfortable making an instance my home.
- Have admin(s) ever hosted any production software before? First time?
- are there even backups?
- Is there even any plans for scalability? What if your traffic goes 4x? what about 20x? do you have a plan beyond banning me and removing everythig I ever posted?
And honestly, backups matter to same tune as CPU model.
Federation gives us the freedom to choose our instance. Great.
But you can’t make an informed choice when you have no idea whether your digital home is a properly backed-up server or a $5 VPS from a racknerd black friday sale held together with Docker Compose and prayers.
Is that the reason why all lemmy instances dont let you upload more than 5Mb media? probably.
If you cant afford hosting costs - holy fuck, just stop fucking saying “everyone welcome” if you then going to ban those same “welcomed” people after they post 10 image memes (thx https://sopuli.xyz/ and https://lemmy.zip/ and https://lemmy.radio/ and https://lemmy.ml/). no no - 👏you 👏 cant 👏 afford 👏 non-text 👏 users 👏, - instead you falsely accuse people of spamming and banning their accounts. No wonder lemmy is at 35k MAU. Hardware poor admins - you don’t even know what spamming is, you shouldn’t have kids users if you cant afford them, dont invite them in or just advertise your instances as text-only.
Hardware poor admins - stop inviting people. you have no capacity and only actively harming lemmy adoption.
There should be a list of such instances that should be inviting people at all.
Instance infrastructure shouldn’t be a mystery.
If you’re asking users to build years of history on your server, give them enough information to understand what they’re building it on. You likely cant afford non-text users anyways.
I genuinely considering this. I would have already built couple servers and shipped to a colo if this was 2025. but stupid AI really messed up this market and I dont want another single server setup.
I think people on lemmy have completely lost the meaning of the word spam. Spam isn’t “someone posts more often than I personally like.” Spam is mostly unwanted stuff, ads - Viagra ads, affiliate links, scams, or the same garbage repeatedly.
You can call it high-volume posting. You can dislike reposts. You can even say the volume is annoying.
But high-volume, relevant content isn’t automatically spam just because you don’t want to see it.
its not just me - lemmy stuck at 35k MAU.
Iirc “spam” comes from a skit from Monty Python criticizing how prevalent the brand was, to the point it felt like it was everywhere.
But unlike a product in the market, posts are easier to tackle. If the poster/reposter becomes an annoyance, the user just needs to block or, depending on the software and desire, mute the poster/reposter. If just certain domains are an annoyance, block the domain either natively if possible, or with extensions, scripts and/or filters. If just specific posts are a problem, voting and/or hiding posts can be done.
So imo, while the volume can be a tad annoying, if the annoyed users do use the features provided by the platform or more extremely by extensions, these posts shouldn’t become the meme of Monty Python’s joke on the canned food.
I’m all in for using AI, but I don’t think peoples on Lemmy are interested in a copy of Reddit with only bot content, else they would not be there but on Reddit directly.
Acting as a RSS feed on Lemmy is low quality posting to get my attention, which I would consider spam (especially without the bot tag on the account)
The lack of tagging on OP’s account has been the biggest reason I considered blocking them. I don’t mind reposters, but tag your shit so people who don’t want it can filter it. I quickly gave them a bright red user tag instead. So I can at least see at a glance when a post is from them, to then decide if I want to engage.
Especially when a lot of their posts have been old Reddit content, (often from several years ago) which was clearly just meant to grab attention. Their posts always felt like the “tales from reddit” types of YouTube channels, where someone just reads Reddit posts verbatim and adds a few quips as “content”.
tthis is much bigger than reposts. Lemmy has a pile of structural problems that make it hard for normal users to trust or stick with it:
And then we’re obsessing over whether bringing filtered, highly rated content from elsewhere is going to destroy Lemmy.
^ I really don think me posting content is the problem. Anoter big problem is - lemmy cant afford to have it.
Lemmy is sitting around 35k MAU. Maybe the problem isn’t that we’re making it too easy to participate.
Data loss, tiny media limits, fragile hosting, instant bans, quadruple moderation, empty communities, and no meaningful appeals process.
There’s a lot more standing between Lemmy and mainstream adoption than somebody reposting a meme from Reddit.
You’re asking a lot to the admin of a (free) instance to comply with your needs. Most of the issues you mention disappear if you host you own instance, you can set your own rate limit, control your backups and decide what you accept or not on your instance.
Specifically on the limit for images, lemmy-pictr is my highest ressource consumer, so I can understand why admins of public instance would put limits.
see issue is - most non techie people wont even understand why they being banned. thats the problem. me running my own instance solves issue for me, does nothing for others.
Most non-techie peoples don’t re-publish ~30 posts par days 😉
You’re definitely not the average Lemmy user.
Their server their rules, you don’t like it, build your own or find a community that accept you :)
You want to help other to repost shitpost ? Create an instance and host them to spam the world if you want.
Some of us consider that a good (or at least impartial) thing. Many Reddit users discovered how difficult it is to actually delete your data when they migrated to Lemmy. Lemmy’s userbase tends to be very privacy-focused, so harping about “it’s easy for your stuff to get deleted” isn’t the win you think it is.
I mean… I thought you were a repost bot when I first saw your content. And I don’t mind reposts, but I do mind untagged reposts. Leaving your stuff untagged feels deceptive at best. Like those “tales from Reddit” YouTube accounts, that just read old Reddit posts verbatim and call it “content”.
I haven’t personally experienced any file size limits, but I mostly use external media uploads for in-comment images. But at least for me, (and I’d say I’m a fairly average user) the file size limit has been fine.
I’m actually a little confused by this one. Are you suggesting that people with post history should be immune to bans? Or that posts shouldn’t get deleted when a user gets banned? Because either one fundamentally breaks the reasons for a ban system existing in the first place. Imagine if you were an admin who banned someone for posting illegal content… But banning them didn’t delete the illegal content.
I don’t concern myself with who can see my posts. I post for myself and my own entertainment. If other people don’t want to see my posts, that’s fine with me.
Again, “content” is ephemeral. Lemmy doesn’t track your total karma like Reddit does, so what are you actually losing? I can see an argument if someone is a longtime troubleshooter. Because that kind of “help I’m having an obscure problem and the only Google result is a Reddit post from six years ago” content drives a lot of traffic to Reddit.
But I’m not worried if my shitposts vanish. In fact, I burn my Lemmy accounts after about a year and start fresh, specifically to avoid any accidental buildup of info that could be used to dox me. I even use red herring info in my “personal” posts. On this account, I live in the southern US and work as an audio technician for live events. You think that’s actually true though? It may be based on shreds of truth, (I have enough experience to be a competent audio technician, for instance,) but it’s not actually true. Every single new account gets a new persona. Having my old posts vanish is a benefit, not a drawback.
I’m not trying to say your complaints are invalid. On basically any other social media platform, your complaints would be perfectly justified. But you may be barking up the wrong tree, because the “drawbacks” you are complaining about are the exact reason many of us are here. I want my posts to vanish eventually. I want my old content to be purged after a reasonable timeframe. If a hurricane six countries away kills the server this is hosted on, and there are no off-site backups? Cool, I’ll take it as a chance to start fresh like I do all the time anyways.
This is the way.
I love to have privacy. I hate when im forcible deplatformed and decontented. hate hate it.
Choosing to delete your data is privacy. Losing it because an admin had no working backup is data loss. Those are completely different things. If you want to burn your account every year, great. But someone else may have spent five years writing troubleshooting guides, moderating a community, or building useful discussions. They should be able to expect their home instance to have a backup.
I created two new accounts and both were banned after roughly 10 posts overnight. No warning. No “hey, are you automating this?” No request to slow down or tag the account. Just assumption --> bot/spam -> ban.
Also - automation is not even fucking illegal on lemmy.world!!! do people not realize that?
Note that reddit does not do that. post as much as the fuck you want. Imagine new lemmy user doing this and just getting banned. wth. resson for 35k MAU
External hosting isn’t a substitute for local media hosting. Hotlinking gets blocked all the time, URLs expire or posts get removed. Authentication gets added. Hosts disappear. HTTP headers and referrer policies break embeds. Some major platforms deliberately make direct linking difficult.
If I want media attached to a post to remain available, the reliable option is for the instance to actually host a copy., 5 MB is tiny for modern media.
hell No. Obviously if someone posts CSAM, malware, threats, or other illegal content, remove it and ban them.
I’m talking about proportionality.
If somebody has contributed hundreds of legitimate posts for months and then an admin decides their posting volume is too expensive, banning the account and wiping everything they’ve contributed is insane infrastructure management.
And on the other extreme, I had brand-new accounts banned after around 10 posts simply because admins apparently decided they looked like bots.
There’s a gigantic spectrum between “do nothing” and “nuke the account.”
not even a warning? not even a pm? ffs really? Rate-limit them. Remove the offending posts. Temporarily suspend them. Communicate.
A ban system existing doesn’t mean every problem requires the maximum penalty.
up to you, you are you. federation is a social network. Most people posting to communities presumably want other people to see and interact with what they post.
An entire instance suddenly becoming unable to interact with another instance is absolutely relevant to those users.
Potentially years of knowledge.
You actually gave the perfect example yourself: that obscure six-year-old troubleshooting post that solves somebody’s problem.
Today’s shitpost is disposable. Today’s detailed technical answer might be somebody’s Google result five years from now.
The whole point I’m making is that users should get to decide what’s disposable, not discover that their instance admin decided it for them by never setting up backups.
Actually, with regards to data control, lemmy is the worst of both worlds.
Because it’s federated, your posts will be out there. If you accidentally post something you didn’t mean to like doxing yourself, there is much less of chance to permanently delete your data compared to a centralised service (like reddit).
MAU is a number that matters to corporations and advertisers. No one running a Lemmy server is either of these so that metric isn’t really useful or say anything.
Lemmy has been going for 6 years now and it is still new. It isn’t even version 1.0. Success in Lemmy is not what you think it is. The most successful Lemmy server is Hexbear because it stands alone and is growing the community they want.
trust me - I really wanted it to work. but lemmy is really this bad.
MAU measures whether people actually use the platform.
And Reddit has spent those six years practically begging users to leave:
Yet Lemmy is still around 35k MAU.
At some point “we’re still new” isn’t an excuse. Your biggest competitor keeps shooting itself in the foot and you’re still not growing. its not working chief
So what do you suggest we do with our 0 USD marketing war chest?
Lemmy isn’t really our competitor. From a financial perspective, each person who switches from Reddit to Lemmy is a sum loss to both Reddit and Lemmy. Hosting costs money, and unlike Reddit, Lemmy has no advertising revenue to overcome that cost.
Kill the corporate marketer in your head.
Edit to add that quite a few Redditors would be a nightmare to moderate. We don’t even want those assholes. Lemmy instances are communities of volunteers, not revenue streams.
Lemmy doesn’t have any competitors, it isn’t competing. It isn’t what you think it is. You are still using a corporate framing for a non corporate system. There is no company, there is no manger, there is no goal. This measurement is only to say 35k people are using it now, but it doesn’t matter is my entire point. “Lemmy” is a federated network for enthusiasts with no corporate direction that is still in early development. There is no competitor, growth isn’t the purpose of it, it is software made by communists.
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Isn’t Lemmy older than 6 years though? Dunno on the federation aspect, but sorting posts on Lemmy instances by oldest first shows a few older posts.
Still, by the time these oldest posts were made, Reddit was already some 10 years old to my knowledge, and we can’t even be sure if their active users’ numbers are real due to lack of transparency and these numbers coming from a single source instead of being a sum of several independent ones.
And at least an impression of mine, but in these ~4 years I’ve been around, engagement seems to be growing slowly but steadily. And I’d need to put on a graph the data shared about the growth of the fediverse from another community, but the numbers overall seem to be growing there too.
On taking down Reddit, I’d advise against it. Competition is what lets products and services improve. What I’d expect in an organic competition, however, is for Reddit to deflate into a shadow of its former self, keeping only a nicher usefulness, like Tumblr did and thus becoming just another forum.
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Jesus Christ, everyone here seems to have invented their own definition of what Lemmy is.
Except the actual Lemmy developers describe it as:
They’ve been calling it a Reddit alternative since at least 2020.
So no, I’m not imposing some imaginary “corporate framing” onto Lemmy. I’m using basically the same framing its own developers used to explain why they built it.
And “there is no manager or corporate goal” doesn’t mean adoption suddenly becomes meaningless. If you’re building an alternative to corporate-controlled link aggregators, whether anybody actually adopts the alternative fucking matters.
Otherwise what are we celebrating? Software existing?
And that’s why 35k MAU matters to me. Reddit has spent years handing alternatives opportunities on a silver platter, and Lemmy hasn’t capitalized on them.
You can personally define success as “35k enthusiasts are happy.” Fine.
But stop pretending your definition of Lemmy is the official one while telling everyone else “you don’t understand what Lemmy is.” Even the developers explicitly called it a Reddit alternative.
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy
Including you.
Yes, they’ve been calling it an alternative, not a competitor. They created Lemmy because their communist & anti-imperialist subreddits kept getting banned from Reddit. Such communities are antithetical to capitalism, so they’d likely be banned from any corporate platform, not only Reddit.
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Lemmy
That’s just semantics. An alternative competes for the same users.
Your own source says Lemmy was created because Reddit was banning their communities. The whole point was giving those people somewhere else to go.
Call it an alternative, competitor, or communist escape pod. 😂 The question is the same:
What good is an alternative to Reddit if almost nobody adopts it?
The communists & anti-imperialists who regularly get banned from corporate social media have adopted it. Obviously that represents “almost nobody” in comparison to corporate media’s user base. Anyone else who adopts Lemmy is a side-effect to the developers’ core goal of creating protected communities for anti-capitalists and anti-imperialists.
“Alternative” doesn’t necessarily mean “competitor.”
lemmy is almost twice the size of lobsters, if we’re just using the stuff in the repo description.