Welcome to even more new users! There’s real hype behind Lemmygrad due to the Reddit API thing, which drives further hype for people to recommend Lemmygrad to their friends.

This post should contain everything to get you started using Lemmygrad, so please read it entirely. Then, at the end, why not make your first comment in this thread and tell us about yourself?

What is Federation

Lemmygrad works similarly to Reddit for users. You can make posts, subscribe to communities, comment on posts, etc.

The major part where we differ from Reddit (aside from the fact we’re not corporate-owned and don’t run ads) is that Lemmy allows federation to other instances. If you click on the “All” button at the top of your home page, you’ll see posts from Lemmygrad as well as other instances (two big ones we federate with is lemmy.ml and lemmy.world). You can act on those instances the same way you would act on Lemmygrad, except they have their own rules and moderation team. They’re completely independent from us, you can just interact with them. And they can interact with us too.

You can also subscribe to federated communities by the way, and they will show up on your “Subscribed” view (on the same group of buttons as All).

We also federate with Mastodon and other ActivityPub projects by the way. You access all federation from lemmygrad.ml, by using the All button or typing the URL you want to reach in the search bar.

Speaking of, please read our rules

Lemmygrad-wide rules are on the homepage. I’ll copy them here too:

Rules
  1. No capitalist apologia / anti-communism.
  2. No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
  3. Be respectful. This is a safe space where all comrades >should feel welcome, this includes a warning against >uncritical sectarianism.
  4. No porn or sexually explicit content (even if marked >NSFW).
  5. No right-deviationists (patsocs, nazbols, strasserists, >duginists, etc).

Since January 2023, the creation of new “Shit X Say” type communities is not allowed. Please post anything of that nature to Shit Reactionaries Say or Shit Ultras Say.

We take these rules seriously and you will be warned or even banned (temporarily or permanently) for breaking them. We’ve cultivated a very laid-back and welcoming atmosphere here over the years though, so don’t be scared to participate haha

If you participate on Lemmygrad from another instance, we also expect you will respect our rules.

Creating communities

Unlike other Lemmy instances, we allow users to create communities here. You’re free to create a community (subreddits on the aforementioned inferior competitor), but please look around to make sure it doesn’t already exist. Community bloat is a real problem on such a small site, which is why we merged the Shit X Say communities into just 2 earlier this year.

You’re free to run a community you create however you want for the most part, but you have to respect and enforce the instance rules. For our part we try not to step on your toes as a mod unless we have to make a sitewide ban. Essentially it helps spread the load of moderation from our small team of 5 people.

As a moderator, you can’t ban people from the lemmygrad as a whole, just from your community. Generally, we find that someone who gets banned from a community should be banned from the whole instance, so in that case feel free to contact us or make a report and we’ll look at it.

How to make reports

We’re a small team managing a growing forum, and as such we rely on reports to see what we can’t see ourselves. Please see this post: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/727768

What else?

We try to submit big decisions to the community for input as much as possible, for example the merger of SXS communities was first put to a vote, and then further discussed to see how we should go about it.

We hope you enjoy Lemmygrad, now it’s your turn ;) tell us a bit about yourself!

  • Ratboy
    36·
    1 year ago

    Yoooo, I just joined lemmy.ml a couple of days ago as part of the reddit exodus. I expect to be spending a ton of time here though, you all seem rad. I don’t adhere to a particular political ideology beyond leftist simply because I don’t feel knowledgeable enough in any flavor of communism or anarchism to brandish the label. I haven’t read any theory but have tried to do some independent research on Cuba and North Korea specifically. I feel like I’ve done just enough to kill my brain worms and recognize that they aren’t these evil superpowers that American propaganda paints them to be. Also Michael Parenti is daddy.

    Definitely will be here lurking and learning and expanding my understanding of Marxism. And shitposts of course lol. Stoked to be here!

    • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
      22·
      1 year ago

      I don’t feel knowledgeable enough in any flavor of communism or anarchism to brandish the label

      We’re all still learning, comrade. It took me a long while to call myself a Marxist. There’s a tipping point where you can’t go back and have to embrace what you’ve become haha.

      • Ratboy
        2·
        1 year ago

        Lol true. I guess I’m still kind of an idealist, like anarchism the concept of decentralized mutual aid networks resonate with me. But I also recognize that ultimately, violence is necessary in order to otherthrow capitalism, and in practice, consensus and true collective decision making is extremely, extremely difficult to achieve. There needs to be a deep level of trust and commitment to navigating healthy conflict, compromise, and just a motivated spirit to participate as fully as someone is able. Maybe if we weren’t ground down by capitalism and taught not to stand up for ourselves then it may be easier to achieve but that’s just not the reality we live in right now. So that’s a direction that I’m pulled towards. I still need to read theory I suppose, especially Mao and Sankara and other non white communists and anarchists and then maybe I can figure out where I truly align myself. But for now I’m stuck in a demoralized rut that I can’t pull myself out of

    • purahna@lemmygrad.ml
      18·
      1 year ago

      happy to have you comrade, if you like Parenti you’re a friend of mine ✊

      what are your favorite works of his?

      • Ratboy
        6·
        1 year ago

        Thank you! I’ve only dabbled a bit but he is an absolutely phenomenal orator. I read Against Empire when I was a bit younger and want to read it again (my memory is awful). More recently watched this amazing lecture. Sounds like Blackshirts & Reds would be a good read and I would love any recommendations.

        The first time I’d ever heard Parenti was through this punk band Choking Victim (yes punk played part in my radicalization). The intro to the song is an excerpt of him. Though I didn’t understand the context,this song really stuck with me for years so it was cool to discover his work a bit later in life

    • Makan@lemmygrad.ml
      4·
      1 year ago

      Did you come with the Reddit post that I posted back on /r/InformedTankie (and subsequently cross-posted to a lot of places)?

      If anyone has, please tell me.

      • Ratboy
        1·
        1 year ago

        No, lemmy.ca was recommended to me at first and I think just through exploring lemmy in general I came upon lemmygrad

    • IntoDaLagoon@lemmygrad.ml
      3·
      1 year ago

      I don’t feel knowledgeable enough in any flavor of communism or anarchism to brandish the label

      Well you’ll be happy to know you’ve already started reverse-engineering Mao

      For real though, welcome, I’m new here myself from the hexagonal bear site and while it’s a nice active place, we don’t get the same amount of newcomers over there that this place does, and seeing so many new comrades warms my heart.

      • Ratboy
        1·
        1 year ago

        Aw thanks for the welcome! I’m excited for more actual leftists to join here but almost bummed that the merge is happening because of all of the libs that came with the reddit exodus. My first day there was a ton of screeching about ML genocide deniers and FREEDOM OF SPEECH IM GONNA DEBATE TRANS HEALTHCARE in the same thread. It has calmed down a bit though, thank God.

        Also can you elaborate on reverse engineering Mao? I’m not super familiar with his politics (yet) so I’m a lil lost lol

  • DONTxISNTxCANT@lemmygrad.ml
    34·
    1 year ago

    Former redditor ready to finally burn that bridge. Sick of the libs always finding excuses to justify making deals with fascists or saying “we should do X” when it’s obvious the machine will never allow their fantasy reforms. I’m a fan of dissecting rhetoric and propaganda, with an interest in mental wellness, comparative religion, and consciously examining how we make meaning.

    I do my best to live a life without illusions while not becoming disillusioned and try to focus on bringing change over the long term.

  • WhatWouldKarlDo@lemmygrad.ml
    321·
    1 year ago

    Thanks for having me! This is my first time being openly communist online. I’m a long time lurker, and I love the vibe here. In light of the recent radlib uprising though, I really wanted to openly show my support for my comrades here.

  • pax27@lemmygrad.ml
    31·
    1 year ago

    Ahoy hoy! I’m one of the Redd-fugees, pretty active in r/LateStageCapitalism up until recently, and I hope to get to know some more like-minded people up in this place (as the kids say these days).

    I’m also that type of middle aged person that gets more chill about everything as I pile up the years. Well, apart from how much I hate this ever intensifying capitalistic hellscape we find ourselves in.

    I use the same username here as I did on Reddit, we’ll see if that’s a smart move or not. I like the look of things, especially after I found the dark setting for the UI and I can definitely see myself hang out with all you nice people even if, or when, Reddit change their tone. Yeah, as if…

  • Che's Motorcycle@lemmygrad.ml
    20·
    1 year ago

    I’m a longtime Reddit lurker, and joined lemmegrad last week. I’m just happy to see there’s an actual commie space online and to be able to participate in it!

  • Hexahedra@lemmygrad.ml
    18·
    1 year ago

    sup! we heard about lemmy when we first joined mastodon 3 years ago but just now exploring it. weve barely used our reddit account when we had one but this instance seemed pretty cool so we decided to check this out :::)

  • Soviet Pigeon@lemmygrad.ml
    14·
    1 year ago

    For me, it was particularly important to be able to create a filter list of subreddits that should not be shown to me. I was able to filter out all the US-related stuff in particular. I do not live there.

    I don’t know if the official app can do that. Even if it does, I don’t feel like patching it so I don’t have to see ads.

    The only Android clients I don’t really like are the ones I found on F-Droid.

    I’m just not that familiar with it yet. I had commented on something once, it was there and then gone after a while without me knowing why.

    • purahna@lemmygrad.ml
      34·
      1 year ago

      hi friend! I’m from hexbear and I hang out here as of recently. I’ll give you the brief.

      Hexbear was once another Lemmy instance just like all the others. At some point a while back, we decided we wanted some other features that lemmy didn’t support, like custom emoji and pronoun flair. So we forked lemmy and did our own thing. We kinda started to regret it because lemmy started making performance improvements that we wanted, so our lovely development team is in the process of implementing the hexbear-unique features in mainline lemmy and migrating us back to mainline lemmy. We’re actually set to migrate to mainline lemmy on the 17th without federation yet, and we’re set to turn on federation, starting with lemmygrad, some undefined but soon date after that when we work out all the migration bugs.

      looking forward to shitposting with you comrade 🫡

      oh, also, some more notes:

      • hexbear is pan-leftist with a definitive bias towards Marxism (but we do have anarchist comms and we do have lots of good faith and rewarding interactions with the anarchists there)
      • hexbear is l a r g e by fediverse standards (600 users online at time of writing)
    • Bloops@lemmygrad.ml
      24·
      1 year ago

      Hexbear, originally known as chapo dot chat, was created three (?) years ago by members of /r/chapotraphouse after the subreddit got banned. Its software was based off of lemmy, but so many changes were made that they no longer worked together. Now, they finally added all the features they contributed to lemmy, so hexbear will become a lemmy instance in a few days. The admins said they will only be federating with lemmygrad for the moment. It’s basically been its own forum for a couple years now so federation with the rest of the instances would chance the vibe a lot.

      sh.itjust.works, sopuli.xyz, feddit.de, beehaw.org, lemmy.one, lemmy.ca, and midwest.social, and probably some other moderately sized instances all have lemmygrad blocked, so their users won’t see any of your replies. There is now an nsfw lemmy instance so if you don’t want to see porn, make sure to block that. I forget the exact name and I don’t want to look it up, sorry. The 196 blahaj zone community is anticommunist and maybe also anti-anarchist?? so I’d recommend just blocking that cause you’ll get banned immediately anyway.

  • alex_steelman@lemmygrad.ml
    10·
    1 year ago

    Hello! I was never that active on Reddit, but it’s good to find a federated alternative, anyways. I try to make socialist infographics in my spare time.

  • Scientific Utopian@lemmygrad.ml
    7·
    1 year ago

    Saw this posted on r/socialism, so I came. Happy to be here. Will mostly be lurking. Heavy RevLeftRadio Red_Menace listener. Can’t quite quit Reddit because I need my doses of tradespeople talking about plumbing, home maintenance, and permaculture.

  • WithoutFurtherDelay@lemmygrad.ml
    71·
    1 year ago

    Hi! I came here because I was curious about Lemmy after Hexbear swapped back over to it.

    So far I’m just concerned that I’m too much of an anti-secular softie to fit here, I get the impression a lot of people here came from genzdong and other subreddits during the recent Dark Ages when self described “anarchists” started calling anyone who wanted anything more extreme than liberal policies a “tankie”, so they’re understandably pretty disillusioned with anarchists in general.