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.
I’m going to use e-mail as an analogy.
“Lemmy” is analogous to “e-mail”.
Each lemmy “server” or “instance” is the analogy of an email server. E.g. “lemmy.ml” or “beehaw.org” is equivalent to “gmail.com” or “hotmail.com” or “us.gov” or whatever email server.
You can use any email server to look at any email, the same way you can use any lemmy server to look at any lemmy post or community. You can use any email app to access any of your email accounts and view any email, the same way you can use any lemmy app to access any of your lemmy accounts to browse any lemmy post/commu ity.
If you currently use Gmail, and Google becomes evil, you can switch to Yahoo or Hotmail and still use email like usual. In the same way, if Lemmy.ml becomes evil you can switch to Beehaw.org and keep reading lemmy posts.
*** note that “lemmy” (the platform) and “lemmy.ml” (the instance) are not the same thing. It’s kinda confusing, like if there’s an “email” server called “email.com”
Your explanation is much clearer than mine, thanks!