Welcome Reddit refugees!

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 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.

arne,

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.

oishiiburger,

Thanks for all you are doing! Very impressed with this and sorry I hadn't seen it before. But super happy it's here for the refugees!

anonion,

Thanks, happy to be here!

ybaumy,

@nutomic @caos is this the year of the linux desktop (lemmy)? ^^

elight,

From an adoption standpoint: is there anything resembling a mapping of Reddit "subreddits" to Lemmy "communities"? It would sure help the migration process for users seeking to stay with their communities!

Though I suppose, perversely, such a directory could also be a target for Reddit. But then having such problems would be interesting (for Reddit).

ClumsyHacker,

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?

bobpaul,

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,

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!

elight,

Figured it out. Literally @ as a user search. Not sure how the content will look. Or comments.

bobpaul,

I did what I said... I put the "URL of the community" (https://lemmy.ml/c/lemmy) into the search on my mastodon server.

It sounds like you found a shorthand.

elouboub,
elouboub avatar

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!

clemthecat,

Thanks for having us here! I hope we can make Lemmy into a wonderful place as Reddit once was.

RoboticChicken,

Thanks! Looking forward to seeing Lemmy grow :)

kernelyoda,

Thanks for the welcome. :-)

Is there a guide on how to get started here? Searching for posts and communities, posting and commenting etiquette, etc.?

For example, when searching for communities focusing on movies, I found 3 communities named “movies”. How are these different?Which one should I be browsing?

If there isn’t such a guide, I can spend some time exploring and write one.

Tatar_Nobility,
Aragorn,

I'm so tired of Reddit, so here I am trying this out!

Mir,

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

Barbarian,

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

AineLasagna,

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, (edited )

Yes, that can absolutely happen. In fact, that exact situation is happening right now with !gaming and !gaming

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,

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.

unix_joe,

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,

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

Senokir,

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

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/d1e85b16-c384-4599-827d-5d98ba342b1b.png

techgearwhips, (edited )

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.

AineLasagna,

There is a text box just under the post with a "Post" button, at least for me.

techgearwhips,

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.

CheshireSnake,

Thank you for the warm and informative welcome! I really hope this community grows.

sorrowstouch,

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

dessalines,

Glad to have you!

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