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.

Rentlar,

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.

SandbankElephant,

You mean to say you don’t want to spend thousands on avatars?

Rentlar,

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!!!”

AccurateGoose,

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?

asexualchangeling,

So long as a significant portion of users stay and pay, they probably won't tbh

nothacking,

I think they know and don't care. First they make a good platform to attract users, then exploit the users and run away with the money. They know that making moves like this will eventually kill the platform, and don't care; They can always make a new platform under a different name and repeat. This happens to all platforms owned by publicly traded companyes, because they are obliged to make money for the shareholders.

oishiiburger,

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,

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.

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!

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.

BlazingFlames6073,

Anybody know if we had a spike of new users and activitiy here after reddit's announcement?

I joined lemmy like a week before reddit's announcement after checking it every now and then for months. I didn't see so many comments and upvotes on posts last week.

heimchen,

@BlazingFlames6073 @nutomic I at least joint because of reddits announcement, but I think the real wave will come when the technical subreddits go dark.

dessalines,

We definitely did have a spike in registrations here at least. One of the only ways people find out about lemmy is when it gets cross-posted. We could really use more news articles about it tho on open-source / privacy related spaces.

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!

davidgro,

I just wasted a ton of time trying to create an account here and it not working before realizing that I already made one nearly 3 years ago. Fun times. At least I'm here now. I'm also really scared/frustrated with the direction Reddit is going.

Spacebar,

How many people will you actually miss from Reddit once this takes off?

davidgro,

People? A few, but maybe they will come here too.

Communities? A large number. Hopefully some of them will make the switch also if they haven't already

Servais,

Welcome!

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.

anonion,

Thanks, happy to be here!

bec,
@bec@lemmy.ml avatar

Thanks for the welcome! Hopefully Lemmy will grow with the Reddit changes, I wanted to join a while back but the lack of users held me back; since the news I decided to join anyway, and hopefully others will do the same!

One question: I'm browsing via Lemmy app downloaded straight from GitHub, but some posts don't show the comments, even though I see there are several and if I use the browser everything is there. Bug? User error? Thanks in advance!

sexy_peach,

It might have something to do with the language settings introduced with the latest update?? It's unintuitive for me.

bec,
@bec@lemmy.ml avatar

No idea, I'm here since a couple of days lol

Ephera,

If you go to the settings on the webpage ( https://lemmy.ml/settings ), is "Undetermined" enabled in the language menu?

The posts you're seeing might also simply have comments in languages that you don't know (and have rightfully disabled in the settings).

bec,
@bec@lemmy.ml avatar

Thanks for the help! I checked and English is enabled. The comments I was referring to are in English so I don't think it's that. Thanks!

sexy_peach,

You could try to enable english and undetermined, maybe those posts you're missing don't have a language set?

I too find it very confusing.

ybaumy,

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

018118055,

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

elight,

Good idea! Done!

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).

Valmond,

Hello and thanks!

dessalines,

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