We are happy to see that many of you are exploring Lemmy after Reddit announced changes to its API policy. I maintain this project alongside @dessalines@lemmy.ml.

Lemmy is similar to Reddit in many ways, but there is also a major difference: Its not only a single website, but consists of many different websites which are interconnected through federation. This is achieved with the ActivityPub protocol which is also used by Mastodon. It means that you can sign up on any Lemmy instance to interact with users and communities on other instances. The project website has a list of instances which all have their own rules and administrators. We recommend that you sign up on one of them, to avoid overt centralization on lemmy.ml.

Another difference compared to Reddit is that Lemmy is open source, and not funded by any company. For this reason it relies on volunteer work to make the project better, whether it’s programming, design, documentation, translating, reporting issues or others. See the contributing guide to get started. You can also donate to support development.

We also recommend that you read the documentation. It explains how Lemmy works and how to setup your own Lemmy instance. Running an instance gives you full control over the rules and moderation, and prevents us developers from having any influence. Especially large communities that want to use Lemmy should host their own instance, because existing Lemmy instances would easily be overwhelmed by a large number of new users.

Enjoy your time here! If you have any questions, feel free to ask below or in the Matrix chat.

  • elouboub@kbin.social
    11·
    2 years ago

    I still think the fediverse is using language that most people don’t understand. My cousins, let alone my parents, won’t understand half of what’s written there. Federation? ActivityPub? Instance?

    The best comparison I’ve heard that everyone I’ve explained it to seems to comprehend is that the fediverse is basically email 2.0. You can send emails with only pictures, text, video, or all the aforementioned together. In order to do so, you need to pick a server, just like you do with email, but in the fediverse they aren’t “google”, “aol”, “yahoomail”, but “lemmy.ml”, “feddit.it”, “mastodon.social”, “chaos.social”, “kbin.social”, “kbin.pub”, and others.

    You will notice that “lemmy.ml” and “feddit.it” look very similar, but have different names - that’s because they run the same software called lemmy. “mastodon.social” and “lemmy.ml” look very different and have different features, and that’s because (you guessed it!) they run different software (mastodon vs lemmy). It’s just like GoogleMail runs different software than YahooMail, has very different features, but can communicate with each other.
    The fediverse is the same, just with 2 major differences: it uses email 2.0 (aka activitypub) and the software is opensource. That means developers (or anybody who wants to for that matter) can see the source code of the software. This is unlike Google, Yahoo, Yandex, AOL, who keep their source closed.

    In the fediverse, the different software focuses on different things. Lemmy presents the fediverse to you like reddit, mastodon like twitter, peertube like youtube, diaspora like facebook, and so on and so forth. The great thing is, they can all talk to each other using email 2.0 (aka activitypub)! Therefore somebody on a server using mastodon can view post made on a server running lemmy with a video hosted on a server running peertube and comment on that video, right from their server that runs mastodon!

    So please, pick a server with the software and conditions you like and have fun on the fediverse!

  • Rentlar@lemmy.caEnglish
    8·
    2 years ago

    Interestingly, Reddit was open-source between 2008-2017. I’m hoping we can kind of re-capture the feeling of old Reddit without botspam, adspam, and more focus on community and improving experience than on “premium features” and monetization.

      • Rentlar@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        Hahaha that’s one of those things. “Look at me, I spent a bunch of money to get a bored looking monkey face, it’s exclusive!!!”

      • twelve12@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        Hey, if it kept the servers running, maybe that wasn’t the absolute worst thing they’ve ever done

  • Mir@lemmy.mlEnglish
    7·
    2 years ago

    I don’t quite get it. How do you see posts from communities residing on other instances?

    • Barbarian@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      2 years ago

      Swap from “Local” view to “All”. It’s on the top of the web page and in a menu top-left on Jerboa.

      • AineLasagna@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3·
        2 years ago

        Are communities unique? e.g. could you have a !gaming community on Lemmy.ml but have another !gaming community with different content on another server?

        • Barbarian@lemmy.mlEnglish
          5·
          2 years ago

          Yes, that can absolutely happen. In fact, that exact situation is happening right now with !gaming@beehaw.org and !gaming@lemmy.ml

          Not really an issue if you subscribe to both though.

          In the longer term, I fully expect duplicate communities like that to resolve themselves with people predominantly using one over the other. EDIT: Or another possibility is that they might end up different due to moderation and rules (i.e: one is the memey gaming community and the other is the more serious one)

    • AineLasagna@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      I would like to know this as well. In Mastodon, I’m pretty sure you could access all Toots regardless of server, but communities seem to be locked to the server.

  • ArkoSammy12@kbin.social
    7·
    2 years ago

    Just recently made an account with kbin.social. It’s crazy how all of this works right? But yeah, I’m really looking forward to this new style of doing social media. Can’t wait to see how this evolves.

  • smallerdemon@lemmy.mlEnglish
    7·
    2 years ago

    I had heard of Lemmy before the Reddit API debacle, same as I’d heard of Mastadon before the Twitter Elon debacle. Just as the Twitter debacle really pushed me toward using my existing Mastadon account, the Reddit debacle is pushed me toward actually finding a Lemmy server to join and signing up.

    I’m 57 (58 next month), so I was in my mid-20s when the Internet of the 90s really started to form. What was crazy was being in college and wandering over to labs on campus that had access to the latest protocol, https, and seeing Mosaic for the first time and kind of fantasizing about that being the future of the internet. …and it was. But not always for the better or for the benefit of people. By the time I moved to San Francisco (not for dot com myself, but my spouse was in grad school) in 1999 the dot com boom was in full peak force about the crest the edge of the wave and completely bust in a couple of years (and hoo boy did it). The commercialization of the internet was utterly and completely underway during that early 2000s period, but I was still sort of shuffling around telnet based BBSes and still pulling a lot of my files with FTP. GOPHER was long gone by then, though, and usenet was always more of a hardcore user area in my personal circles (mainly due to the the fact of how overwhelming and disorganized it could be to me, which is so incredibly laughable now).

    The promise of those early telnet and early web days almost completely disappeared and a lot of those people who saw the internet as a democratizing force either did find a way to make money from it or they just found jobs and turned into Makers during the 2000s. Now it feels like a lot of those Maker folks have started to find ways to come back to the internet in ways that bypass commercialization in order to have methods of having communities that aren’t targets for bigots and fascists to intrude on safe spaces that a lot of people felt like they had found initially.

    And it DEFINITELY feels like a lot of tech nerdy Millennials and Gen-Z have completely tired of the commercialized internet entirely and are inventing and finding ways to control their own communities. And friends… I fucking love it.

    • TerrorBite :veripawed3:@meow.social
      1·
      2 years ago

      I would say “If you’re posting here, aren’t you signed up by definition?”, but I’m posting from Mastodon, so I am literally my own counter-example. I don’t actually have an account on any Lemmy instance.

  • AccurateGoose@lemmy.mlEnglish
    6·
    2 years ago

    Twitter makes a series of bad and user-unfriendly decisions, causing many of it’s users to flee to Mastodon. Now Reddit makes a series of bad and user-unfriendly decisions, causing many of it’s users to flee to Lemmy. When will the big suits learn?

    • oishiiburger@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      2 years ago

      I think the elephant in the room is that endless year-over-year growth is unteneble and mathematically impossible. So as the suits get their hands on more and more, they are actually kind of stuck. That means e.g. reddit is unable to operate as normal, not necessarily because they lose money, but because they can’t hit unrealistic targets.

  • unix_joe@lemmy.mlEnglish
    5·
    2 years ago

    I guess I’m here now. I tried to leave Reddit before, went to Voat, went to some other sites, they all descended into fringe conspiracy websites.

    I’m just around for the technical discussion so I ended up back on Reddit.

    So hopefully this doesn’t end up the same way.

    • techgearwhips@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      2 years ago

      How are you guys responding to the OP? I am only able to to reply to comments on here. I’m confused lol

        • techgearwhips@lemmy.mlEnglish
          2·
          2 years ago

          I was using Jerboa and it was buggy as hell. Just using the mobile web at the moment. Hopefully the infinity (or Apollo Dev) will get things going over here.

      • Senokir@lemmy.mlEnglish
        11·
        2 years ago

        If you’re on Jerboa there should be a text box with three dots in it on the right side below the main post.

        • techgearwhips@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          I was on Jerboa and I didn’t see that. On the mobile web now. I heard there’s an alpha for Jerboa so I may try that one instead.

          Edit - I am on the alpha and I can see it now.

  • sorrowstouch@lemmy.mlEnglish
    5·
    2 years ago

    Thanks for the welcome! I look forward to seeing this website grow into the thing Reddit should have been!

  • creek@lemmy.mlEnglish
    4·
    2 years ago

    Thanks for the warm welcome. This is my first time exploring anything fediverse related, and I’m still trying to wrap my head around how all this works. All I know is that I’m really dissatisfied with the decision making that is going on at Reddit, and if there comes a day where I can no longer use my beloved Apollo to access their service, that will most likely be where I officially dip out.

  • Arne@posta.noEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    Thank you so much for this! We just set up an instance as well, and we’re going to play around with it more the next couple of days.

  • caffinz@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    Thanks for the welcome! I was a little standoffish about signing up but then found an app for it and it honestly feels like reddit should at this point. (For those curious, it’s Jerboa for Lemmy on the play store)

  • 018118055@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    Cancelled my Reddit premium renewal (it’s 10 months away but still…) and donated with the link above.

  • ClumsyHacker@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    I’m a bit confused as to how federation works.

    I have an account here, and see a community I want to join in another instance… but I the login option only lets me log in with an account on that instance.

    Is participating in communities cross-instance not possible yet?

    • Bob/Paul@fosstodon.org
      3·
      2 years ago

      One way is put the URL of the community you want to follow in the search box; that’s how I’m able to follow /c/lemmy from lemmy.ml on the mastedon server I’m using.

      Since you’re on a lemmy server, you can also switch between Subscribed, Local, and All at the top of the main feed. “All” is all communities from all federated instances that _someone_ on your home instance already subscribes to. If you see something in the All feed you like, you can join that community from there.

      • elight@lemmy.ml
        1·
        2 years ago

        Ok, so it’s all ActivityPub. But you did precisely what to follow a lemmy community from Mastodon? Examples would be hugely helpful for those of us who are also using Mastodon!