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’ve had my account only for about 30 minutes and I can see this fully replacing reddit for me. Here’s to the future!
Do you know how to create new sublemmys? I want to copy my favourite subreddits and tell people to migrate here. Do I need to buy a literal server?
If you’re talking about the equivalent of a subreddit here on lemmy.ml, that’s just called a “community”. Click the “Create Community” link up at the top of the site. If you want to create your own whole Lemmy site with its own communities you can do that too, but you’d have to read the documentation on that.
Also, do you know how to view communities from multiple servers in the Jeboa app?
Just figured it out myself - in the top-left menu, click your username and then +Add Account, then you can enter the URL of the Lemmy server you want to connect to along with your credentials. You can then switch back and forth between your logins on the different servers.(edit) - Or do what @sexy_peach@feddit.de said below. I don’t know what I’m doing. :P
Of note - while logged into any one instance, you can also pick from the various filtering options:
- Subscribed - List posts only from communities you’re subscribed to
- Local - List posts only from communities in this Lemmy instance/server
- All - List posts from all (federated) Lemmy instances/servers
So, selecting “All” at any given time will show you posts from all servers that are federated (share creds) with Lemmy.ml.
you can search for !communityName@serverThatTheCommunityIsOn.domain and your server will look it up and you can join it. No need to have multiple accounts.
Edit: instead of the above you can also search for the link to a community on a foreign server to look it up, both works.
i.e. if you were on a server that didn’t yet know about https://beehaw.org/c/news, you could search for https://beehaw.org/c/news or !news@beehaw.org on a lemmy server so the lemmy server will recognize that community and list it, you’ll then be able to join it, participate, mod it (if you’re given the rights) etc.
How do communities work across instances? Among other things, can a community have a moderator on another server? Would the top mod need to be on the same server?
Mods can be on any server. A community is on a server, i.e. community a !a@server1.tld and !a@server2.tld are two different communities. You could follow one, none or both.
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?
you could post to !entertainment@beehaw.org for example :)
Give it a week and more general communities will work fine
I notice the link you posted. You use !entertainment@beehaw.org 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@beehaw.org ? 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?
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.
Question for everyone, where is lemmy getting linked from? (besides me in that apollo thread yesterday)
I saw it in the PrivacyGuides subreddit, they’re trying out an instance here too from the sounds of it.
yeah they’re at !privacyguides@lemmy.one. Already on their own server (lemmy.one) :)
Definitely. lemmy.ml previously had like one new user per day, now its a few dozen per day.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
yup
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.
Lemmy is fun!
slides £20 over to the reddit enhancement suite team to come over
That would really be awesome. I feel like Lemmy needs some UX improvements. It also needs an iOS mobile app
It also needs an iOS mobile app
There is mlem (only on TestFlight yet).
It has potential. Hopefully the creator of Apollo is able to jump in on that somehow and make it better. Heck, I’d love to help out with it myself.
If Apollo was only open source, one could probably even port it. Heck, if there’s enough momentum from Reddit to Lemmy, it might become attractive for the dev.
