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.

restarossa,

Good to be here. The main content column is really rather narrow, it's sadly more like new reddit than the old I prefer. Perhaps I'm able to change it? Other than that this all looks quite nice.

edit: (e.g front page of old.reddit I see 20 posts while on here it's only 8)

Spacebar,

If you are on Android, the Jerboa for Lemmy app is awesome

bahcodad,

Using it right now. I also found lemmur on f-droid but I haven't tried it yet

GuyDudeman,
@GuyDudeman@lemmy.ml avatar

I'd also love to expand this column. If anyone figures out a way, I'd appreciate a ping or whatever they do here.

sup,

I have a question about communities. Are communities server-specific, i.e, if is the "Gaming" community on lemmy.ml different from the one on, say, beehaw.org?

EDIT: Yes, this was answered here - https://midwest.social/comment/159796

GuyDudeman,
@GuyDudeman@lemmy.ml avatar

I believe so, yes. That's what it looks like to me.

Mordiken, (edited )

Lemmy looks great, I hope it manages to comes out on top on the upcomming battle of the reddit alternatives because due to it's decentralized nature it's pretty much impossible for lemmy to go south like reddit and digg.

thoro,

The biggest issue with this platform for me, as someone who lurks more than posts, is the smaller user base and, consequently, fewer posts and communities. Otherwise, I love the decentralization, open source nature, and general community.

This reddit issue could be what pushes this platform forward. Will be interesting to see.

Pepp3r,

I also lurk a whole lot and thats my biggest issue as well. It looks like a lot of people talk about Lemmy when the topic of migrating from reddit comes up though, im hopeful that it takes off.

EnglishMobster,
@EnglishMobster@lemmy.ml avatar

I've been on Lemmy for years now (before it could even federate!), but never really used it because there was nobody really here (and at the time there weren't any good Android apps - that's changed with Jeroba though).

The biggest competitor I've seen appears to be Tildes. I actually got an invite link to Tildes and have been trying it out.

The main difference is that Tildes is focused on high-quality discussion, trying to replicate old-school Reddit - before it went mainstream. Tildes purposely doesn't have memes or cat pictures, and comments are closer to paragraphs than anything else.

I think that's valuable... but I also know one of the big things that attracted people to Reddit were the memes. Not having memes is going to cause a lot of people to not want to stick around.

Lemmy is a lot more loose, so those people will be right at home. The main complaint I've seen from Reddit is that a lot of people are turned off when they see Lemmygrad as one of the most active instances, and they've been associating Lemmy with hardcore tankies.

Pepp3r,

Yeah I've also been on Lemmy since before federation, just haven't been active because of the lack of engagement in general. I've considered getting an invite for tildes, I will probably check it out, but most of the other alts are mostly filled with the sort of racists that reddit has been banning the last few years, so Lemmy and tildes are I think the only viable options atm.

I like Lemmy more because personally I'm a fan of shitposting and memes and Lemmy seems to support that more. I hope that the popularity of Mastadon in relation to twitter will help redditors understand what Lemmy is, and they can look past the tankie stuff. There are already instances like beehaw that arent tankie but are pretty popular. I guess I just really hope we can move on from reddit but keep the community that made reddit feel special in the early days.

EnglishMobster,

@Pepp3r @EnglishMobster It's also interesting because of how it opens things up beyond other platforms. For example - I found your post on Mastodon, and I'm replying from my Mastodon account.

The interface isn't as nice as Lemmy... but it's certainly extremely interesting that this works! (Or at least... I hope it does!)

Pepp3r,

Yo that is so cool! I didn't even know that Mastadon and Lemmy could interact like this!

EnglishMobster,

And you even showed up as a reply to my comment on Mastodon! Very neat.

I knew it was theoretically possible, but I had never tried it before. The thing is from the Mastodon end I see everything as a feed of comments, as if I followed everyone who posted to a certain community.

That probably works fine for now, but as Lemmy grows and these communities get huge I could see it completely take over my Mastodon feed.

I kind of wish it would just show the top-level posts with some way of hiding the replies by default (kind of like Twitter), but I also know that's not how Mastodon really does things. Still pretty neat!

Pepp3r,

That is so interesting. I'm not actually on Mastadon yet (still on twitter, I know...) but I can click the fediverse icon on Lemmy on your comment and see this thread on Mastadon, it takes me to sunny.garden which I assume is your mastadon instance. This is really cool lol

EnglishMobster,

Theoretically it would also work for other Fediverse stuff, like PeerTube (YouTube replacement). I wonder if once Lemmy takes off we'll see PeerTube start gaining traction next.

Pepp3r,

That would be really cool to see. I use Newpipe for youtube on my phone and subscribe to Nebula, I would love to see an alt take over the market share that youtube has a stranglehold over

nutomic,
@nutomic@lemmy.ml avatar

You should have seen this place a week ago, it was very quiet. With all the new users its its getting a lot more active.

EnglishMobster,
@EnglishMobster@lemmy.ml avatar

Haha, I was here 3 years ago, before Federation even worked. It was very slow, to say the least. ;)

It's been my first time back since 2020, and it's kind of wild to see it taking off. I'd imagine it'll only grow as the enshittification of Reddit continues.

I am very curious what's going to happen to the larger instances like lemmy.ml and Beehaw.org. Lemmy.ml was struggling to load for me a bit earlier; come July 1st when everyone gets their access cut off I'm very curious how slammed this'll be.

XLRV,
@XLRV@lemmy.ml avatar

I'm in the same situation, I've never posted or commented on Reddit, but I loved using it to find information, I searched on Reddit before any other website, there's many great niche communities that exists.

I hope that Lemmy could grow enough to become a serious alternative. I don't like what Reddit has become.

Mordiken,

IMO the one thing that should be possible to do on lemmy is for users from one server to be able to post and comment on another server within the lemmy network.

Posts and comment made by users from a different realm could be published as some variaton of "user@server", that way we could have multiple instances of "user" on the network, just on different servers.

CannotSleep420,

Everything you said is already possible. I’m commenting here from a different instance.

Mordiken,

That's great! :D

EnglishMobster,

Not only is what you say perfectly possible - you can also have people from Mastodon talk to you!

This is my Mastodon account. I've followed a couple Lemmy communities and I'm seeing their comments in my feeds, just like they were "real" Mastodon posts.

It doesn't work the other way around (so you can't follow me in Lemmy, for example), but it's pretty neat that it works as well as it does!

Mordiken,

Oh wow this is great!!

dessalines,

Reddit was once tiny too, with very little activity. Now its frustratingly the opposite.... a lot of bots, karma-farming, thinly-veiled advertising, copaganda, unpleasant and rude interactions.

I'd love to have back the feel of old-school forums, with smaller, tight-knit communities, and good content. While at the same time the fediverse gives us the opportunity to click the All / Global view, so we can see a wider universe of content.

thoro,

Oh yeah. I joined Reddit pretty early by most standards (2007/2008), and it was a much different place, especially before the big Digg migration in 2011. Not sure if I was just younger, but the default experience wasn't quite so intolerable as it is today.

I'm hoping this platform can be similar to those early days. I really like the community here. It's probably better than the early Reddit community. And the federated nature offers so many benefits compared to more traditional sites like Reddit.

There is a critical mass of users needed to drive posting and interactions for any online platform like this. It's a delicate balance. Further large growth is when you may start seeing the culture degrade, the dreaded eternal September. Maybe the federated structure will allow this platform to avoid that.

I do think this Reddit issue is definitely an opportunity to attract that critical mass of users though. I think you're on top of that.

Looking forward to seeing how it goes

BrooklynMan,
@BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml avatar

the big Digg migration in 2011

fyi, that was in fall of 2010. although, I suppose, more people continued migrating into 2011, but the mass exodus was almost immediate in 2010. I remember how reddit had trouble handling all of the new traffic, much like lemmy instances are now, lol

thoro,

Oh yeah guess so. No idea why I always think it was 2011.

BrooklynMan,
@BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml avatar

i moved over to reddit from digg in 2007 during the whole digg v4 fiasco. migrating here feels very much the same. it's new, much smaller, works a bit differently (in a good way), and is still mostly undeveloped. This platform has a ton of potential as a reddit replacement, and, if they really do go through with pricing out the 3rd party apps, you'll likely see this place explode with traffic.

thoro,

That's around the time I first went to Reddit, and I agree. I'm getting very similar feelings.

The growth of users could be what pushes me to open Lemmy more than Reddit. I'm already seeing more and more varied activity than I was seeing in previous visits.

BrooklynMan,
@BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml avatar

yeah, i saw that the Beehaw admin said that the had doubled their userbase in a day, and that their traffic had gone through the roof. Their server got the reddit hug of death for a few hours last night.

baronvonj,
@baronvonj@lemmy.ml avatar

I went from Slashdot to Fark to Digg to Reddit. Already found the Fediverse as @baronvonj after recent changes over on Twitter.

As my user bio says I dabble in guitar and watch rugby (US MLR, go SaberCats) and hockey (NHL). For reading it’s mostly fantasy, with The Witcher and Discworld being my most recent books, but I also enjoy scifi. I tend to be more visual (ie TV and movies) due to ADHD though. Video games with a strong narrative are great. Games like the Horizon series (Zero Dawn, Forbidden West), Uncharted, Assassin’s Creed, Witcher, and Zelda Breath of the Wild.

NeonBlue,

Someone point me to the nsfw instance that allows porn. I just don't see lemmy being a viable alternative to reddit at this point.

the_protagonist,

Is there any?

NeonBlue,

don't think there is

GuyDudeman,
@GuyDudeman@lemmy.ml avatar

Good. We don't need it.

bilb,
@bilb@lemmy.ml avatar

I do think it would be interesting to try to run a general-purpose instance that operates with the same global rules (more or less) as Reddit. The reason I can't imagine doing it myself is that admin duties on such an instance is rather daunting.

zekiz,

I think thats against the rules for some reason. Probably because they don't want to moderate all that

dessalines,

Yep, we don't have time to moderate that. This is a mostly dev-run instance, which means time spent moderating, is time not spent coding.

monkeydog453,

This is the first thing I tried to find, tbh. I agree it won't be a viable alt without.

potato_salad,

Been exploring Lemmy for the past hour or so... actually pretty impressed with what I see. Hope it manages to take off!

Oka,

I have a pretty good feeling that lemmy.ml is going to be the next reddit.com. Sure, there's different instances of the federation, but this one seems more developed than most of the others.

you can mention or message anyone on any website using their address.

So someone on a Mastadon community of servers could ping me in their server/website and I'd get a notification?

And can posts on one Lemmy server also show up in another Lemmy server? Like could a post be made here, braodcast into the lemmy-verse, and appear on another Lemmy website?

dessalines,

Correct, they just have to @ you.

GuyDudeman,
@GuyDudeman@lemmy.ml avatar

Yeah, it looks like it. I saw a message yesterday from someone posting a toot on Mastodon that showed up here, and I replied and they confirmed they got it. So I think they're all connected somehow.

reliving,

Yup, posting this from Mastodon. I love this integration. Curious to see what's possible with this.

GuyDudeman,
@GuyDudeman@lemmy.ml avatar

So are you able to read the Lemmy posts and comment threads using a mastodon app? Or through a mastodon implementation?

reliving,

I'm using the official Mastodon app. Browsing Lemmy communities is a bit awkward this way since they're essentially just another account retooting every user's comments and replies in threads. But I can search for individual comments through permalinks. Your response also triggered a regular notification in Mastodon.

GuyDudeman,
@GuyDudeman@lemmy.ml avatar

That's interesting. I'll have to login to one of my mastodon accounts and follow some lemmy instances I guess, to see what you're talking about?

Informapirata,
@Informapirata@lemmy.ml avatar

This morning we had as many new subscriptions to feddit.it as we usually have in a week! Have you also noticed the same peak on lemmy.ml?

Who knows... maybe after the Dunkirk of Twitter users landed on Mastodon, we would have a small migration of Reddit users...

nutomic,
@nutomic@lemmy.ml avatar

Definitely. lemmy.ml previously had like one new user per day, now its a few dozen per day.

GuyDudeman,
@GuyDudeman@lemmy.ml avatar

It's going to grow exponentially once people find out how cool Lemmy is.

Curious - What led you to choose ".ml" (Mali) as the domain?

sexy_peach,

For the lemmy devs and the main server lemmy.ml they probably chose .ml because it's free and also because they're marxist-socialists maybe?

GuyDudeman,
@GuyDudeman@lemmy.ml avatar

Ahh, Marxist-Leninists, you mean? That's possible. As long as they keep the tankies over in LemmyGrad and they don't start making the entire platform "tankie-only" then I'm good with that.

sexy_peach,

Oops, yeah. They have been okay with moderation etc, but for some time a lot of the few active posters were from lemmygrad.ml, which was annoying at times imo.

GuyDudeman,
@GuyDudeman@lemmy.ml avatar

LOL yeah. Tankies are frustrating. As a communist myself, I don't understand why they are so combative to newcomers or other branches of leftist thought. It's like, very cultish and doesn't do anyone any service, let alone the cause of socialism. I'm much more in favor of left-unity than most, it seems. Because I think I actually care about it, rather than just larping as a revolutionary.

sexy_peach,

yup

Link,
@Link@lemmy.ml avatar

What is a 'tankie'?

Edit: Apparently a Stalinist or someone who defends the USSR sending tanks to Hungary to smash the 1956 Hungarian uprising.

GuyDudeman,
@GuyDudeman@lemmy.ml avatar

Yeah, that's a simplified way to explain it. Basically it's communists who are perfectly ok with genocide, as long as it's against a certain class of people rather than a certain race or religion. And it's also an attitude thing. It's like - they know they're in the wrong, so instead of being willing to have a discussion about the ethics of murder, they would rather just kick you out of the forum (and it's always just a forum - you'll never find these people in real life - in real life they're normal, regular people who are reasonable - it's just online when they Role Play as Lenninist/Stalinist/Maoist Revolutionaries). They delude themselves into thinking that they're the ones who are the "realistic/pragmatic" ones, and that those of us who think we can achieve communism through peaceful means or achieve a non-hierarchial/non-authoritarian social system are naive children (hence them calling us "anarkiddies" etc.). When in reality, they are the childish ones who insist on calling people names and wallowing in their cynicism and not allowing those of us with "cooties" into their little online treehouses.

It's like they've completely absorbed and fallen into the CIA PsyOp effort to divide the left - to silo out those who are willing to commit murder to achieve their goals (or at least pretend they do online), and separate them from the rest of the left, in their own little enclaves online, where they can be monitored and tracked.

It's funny how they've done this to themselves, honestly. They could have so many friends, if only they were friendly.

_JB, 
A long, long time ago
I can still remember how upvotes used to make me smile
And I knew if I just got rollin'
That I could help keep users scrollin'
And maybe there'd be content for a while

But July 1st makes me shiver
With far less content to deliver
Bad news on the frontpage
I can no longer engage

I can't remember if I erupted
When I read apps would be disrupted
But disappointment interrupted
The day that Reddit died

So bye, bye, old Reddit API
Stuck with Huffman through some updates but the updates were shite
And them good ole boys were snortin' gonewild 'n smite
Postin' this'll be the day that it dies
This'll be the day Reddit dies

Did you read the TOS?
And do you have faith in mods success
If users still engage with subs?
Now do you believe in open access?
Can ads save your failing assets?
And could you be less avarice heedless schlubs?

Well, I know that you're in need of clicks
'Cause I see you suckin' Newhouse dicks
You both killed third party apps
Man, I thought that you might give a crap

I was a lonely teenage software dev
With a git repository and a shit to give
But I knew those apps wouldn't live
The day that Reddit died

I started singing bye, bye, old Reddit API
Stuck with Huffman through some updates but the updates were shite
And them good ole boys were snortin' gonewild 'n smite
Postin' this'll be the day that it dies
This'll be the day Reddit dies

Now for ten years we'd moved on from Digg
And greed grows fast for a ventured pig
But that's not how it used to be
When the users came for the cats and memes
From apps made by the community
And content that came from you and me

Oh, and while those cats were growing old
The number crunchers grew too bold 
The communities dismissed
Now everyone is pissed

And while Lemmy federates with Marx
The concept knocks it from the park
It's time to migrate to an ark
The day that Reddit died

So bye, bye, old Reddit API
Stuck with Huffman through some updates but the updates were shite
And them good ole boys were snortin' gonewild 'n smite
Postin' this'll be the day that it dies
This'll be the day Reddit dies
AF0105,

Lmao. I cannot believe that you wrote a whole song for that.

BrooklynMan,
@BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml avatar

This makes me sad. man, it was fun while it lasted...

RolandTheJabberwocky,

Pleasure to be here, honestly will probably keep using this too even if they backpedal the third party apps.

BrooklynMan,
@BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml avatar

I've already started to wean myself off reddit, ad I just know they're going to go through with pricing out the 3rd-party apps. There's a lot of communities here, and people keep creating new ones. It's like how reddit was in the early days.

i like it here.

dessalines,

Glad you like it so far.

One thing that would really be helpful, is to take a lot of those existing hobby communities on reddit, that are kind of the only reason to use the site, and ask their moderators if they'd be interested in making communities here or on another instance, or running their own lemmy servers. We'd be glad to help out with either.

BrooklynMan,
@BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml avatar

if we build it, they will come

dessalines,

Glad to have you!

Even if reddit does backpedal on API access, there are so many other terrible things about it, that we should just be contributing our time elsewhere.

RoundSparrow,

It would seem nice to have an instance of Lemmy that focus on TV shows, films, music, bands, comics, etc

I'm watching the SIlo TV series currently (new episode today), etc.

Anyone working on this?

sexy_peach,

you could post to !entertainment for example :)

Give it a week and more general communities will work fine

SkyNTP,

I notice the link you posted. You use !entertainment but the URI is different, looks like a traditional webpage link: https://beehaw.org/c/entertainment. When I click on it in Jerboa, it opens the browser and it looks like beehaw.org is down (hug of death?).

What software currently recognizes !entertainment ? I guess Jerboa doesn't handle this type of link yet or is jumping to another instance beyond the scope of federation of an app like Jerboa?

sexy_peach,

It's linked to https://beehaw.org/c/entertainment, like you said. I don't think there is a way to link in a way where every server links it to their local view of that community.

Cromutorium,

Just joined because of all the reddit shenanigans. Quick question: I'm posting from the beehaw instance and am wondering what happens to my account if the instance goes down? Does it just disappear?

sexy_peach,

yes. Your account is tied to the server that it lives on. You could make another account called myUsernameBackup on another server, or even with the same name. Just as with e-mail.

Cromutorium,

Ah okay sounds good. Guess I won't get too attached to this account just yet!

sexy_peach,

I think beehaw will last, don't worry. They have been very well managed for the last year.

TacoThrash3r,

Here is my only question. I'm in browser right now, is there a pwa I can install or do I need a mobile app?

EnglishMobster,
@EnglishMobster@lemmy.ml avatar

There is mlem for IOS and Jerboa for Android.

LostRedditor,

I couldn’t find Mlem in the App Store. How can I download it?

Never mind.. I found the test flight invite in their github page

usernamesAreTricky,

Few different questions/comments

When creating my username, it seemed to spin endlessly if I had any minuses in my name? Is that a known issue or maybe it was just having issues with demand and coincidentally worked when I removed any minuses?

Are upvotes/downvotes federated like posts are or are you only able to see the upvotes from your instance?

Also for looking for communities are you supposed to be able to change how it sorts them? Because it looks like you should be able to click on the columns, however, clicking on those (at least in Firefox) doesn't seem to do anything

nutomic,
@nutomic@lemmy.ml avatar

Minus is not allowed, only underscore. But it should show an error, can you open an issue for that in lemmy-ui repo?

Votes are federated.

And community sort options are probably not implemented, I think theres an issue for that in lemmy-ui.

usernamesAreTricky,

Looks like there's already a similar issue for the endless spinning thing when errors occur https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/988

CannotSleep420,

I think your username was invalid. Unfortunately, the web UI currently doesn't have client side validation for that to make the issue more transparent.

Maxcactus,

Wherever you go, there you are.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • DreamBathrooms
  • thenastyranch
  • mdbf
  • khanakhh
  • Youngstown
  • slotface
  • hgfsjryuu7
  • ngwrru68w68
  • rosin
  • kavyap
  • Durango
  • PowerRangers
  • InstantRegret
  • magazineikmin
  • anitta
  • modclub
  • tacticalgear
  • osvaldo12
  • GTA5RPClips
  • everett
  • ethstaker
  • vwfavf
  • tester
  • normalnudes
  • cisconetworking
  • cubers
  • Leos
  • provamag3
  • All magazines
    •