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.
Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.
For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to !meta@lemmy.ml.
I love the whole idea of Lemmy. Great software, and looks good!
Thanks for the registration approval!
Is this the first post to hit over 200 upvotes?
This one looks higher: https://lemmy.ml/post/89740
Nice
Will there be flairs for sub Lemmings?
There is an open issue, contributions welcome!
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1456
Good to see this place. Hope to see it grow.
Thank you for the welcome! I have heard a bit about Lemmy in the past and am exited to give it a try.
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.
You mean to say you don’t want to spend thousands on avatars?
Hey, if it kept the servers running, maybe that wasn’t the absolute worst thing they’ve ever done
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!!!”
Dumb question i can’t find an answer to: You see a post in a different Lemmy server than your own, and if you try to answer it says you’re not logged in, because you’re not in that server. How do i see posts/communities through your server so that i can vote or comment? Don’t see a clear answer to this in the docs, or have missed it completely.
Edit: Partially answering myself: Go to the “search” box of your instance and put the name of the community you want in the format “!linux@lemmy.ml”, it should show you that community through your server. Will update if/when i find an answer for direct posts that does the same.
Its the same for posts or comments, you need to paste the url in the search bar of your instance. For this you should copy the url from the colorful fedilink icon.
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While you are technically correct, some of us have been on Reddit for a long, long time, my main account just celebrated it’s 17th birthday, that account is older than subreddits, and i used the site before it had accounts. Reddit was in many ways a home, i saw many people being essentially rescued from dark places just by the warmth of small communities on the site, it helped me many times too. And we’re now being effectively forced to leave by it’s government. It is NOT a completely inaccurate comparison.
I just joined Lemmy because I was suspended from Reddit. Reddit Admin team is overtly corrupt.
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Let me know how I can help. I brought a lot of traffic to reddit, just to find out reddit admins are more sensitive than the mods that work for free.
I spoke up how poorly their mobile app changed towards modding on mobile, instead of taking the issues at hand they limited my number of subbreddits I could moderate.
I have knowledge in automod if that’s a feature here, also I am pretty fast at finding information.
TLDR - fuck reddit here to help.
It sounds like you might be interested to host a new Lemmy instance. Right now the number of instances is still limited, and most of them cover niche topics. So it would definitely be good to have a Lemmy instance that is more mainstream. Hosting an instance requires some technical knowledge, but you can always ask for help in /c/lemmy_support or find someone else to take care of that aspect.
Appreciate it, there is a lot more to the story. Will make a great read and will make it a lemmy exclusive, because right now reddit admins are trying to keep it hush hush.
Can’t wait to get it all written up, on a more appropriate name.
Is there a way to filter by language?
When you go to your settings there should be a field looking a bit like this:

I imagine that should allow you to filter by language by control-clicking every language you can read, and then when you are finished, clicking outside of that field. I say I imagine, because I don’t use that feature.
You don’t even have to click control, just selecting is enough.
For me that just deselects the one I had previously selected and selects the one I just clicked.
I need to use to either control- or shift- click to select multiple items.
@nutomic@lemmy.ml would you be able to provide any general guidance for potential community/sub-reddit/sub-lemmy creators or admins on the trade-offs involved in starting a new community (on an existing instance) vs starting a new instance?
I figure for those new to free and federated social, the case for starting an instance might not be clear, and could, provided technical abilities are available, be an attractive and useful option for some.
Creating a community on an existing instance is less effort. However it means that the instance admins have full control over your community, and you have to follow their rules. There is also no way to automatically migrate a community to another instance. Having your own instance gives you full control over the rules/moderation, and also lets you apply custom themes or change instance configuration (eg signup mode).
Out of curiosity would it be possible to automatically migrate users on a technical level?
And are there any plans to implement this feature?
It would be possible to implement that (Mastodon has it), but there are no current plans to implement it in Lemmy. After all its easy to create a new account.
@nutomic@lemmy.ml @dessalines@lemmy.ml lemmy
Get off my federated lawn!