Ngl, us r/efugees are not happy with things over there.
As much as I'm coming to enjoy this, it still isn't what reddit was, nor is the app experience anything close to as feature rich. But, I'm finding other benefits here that are, and never were, possible at reddit, so it's still a good thing :)
Reddit is proof that no publicly traded company, nor any that intends to be, can be trusted with anything. Not use that was ever in doubt, but reddit has shown it in such a glaring, grotesque way that it's the poster child for how shitty corporate thought is.
I dunno. I was enjoying things. I had started moderating two subs I deeply cared about, with one having a strong sense of community building. There's an emotional response to the loss of that. But I'll be damned if I'm going to put in the work, put in the passion, when it's shit on by the very company that profits from my free labor. fuck spez, fuck reddit
I mean it seems so obvious in retrospect I suppose. I hope we're looking a the start of a real renascence for the internet, away from corporate overlords.
God dam right friend.
The best parts of reddit were the communities of people dedicated to the topics under each sub.
Reddit CEOs didn't create that. It was and has always been regular users and hardworking Mods that brought us what we loved about reddit. If reddit isn't going to protect those people, fuck em.
I'm signing off of reddit with the black out. There will probably be a long time before something replaces it. But I'm a long for the ride.
The whole lemmy concept mixed with the current situation feels far more like you are part of a real community. Kinda like in old internet days. I will even break out of my reddit lurker days and try to contribute here.
Yeah it feels a lot more like an old school forum.
Exactly. The days when people would run little community servers for IRC or shoutcast or whatever on spare laptops hooked up to cable modems, and would mess around doing stuff for their friends or whatever online community they were part of. When websites didn't all look the same because they're hosted on the same big tech platform, and if you wanted to publish something you'd put creativity into web design rather than just signing up for a Twitter account. When you didn't have the constant Faustian deal of selling your activity data in exchange for free platforms. When talking to your gaming clan meant typing in the IP of whoever hosted the TeamSpeak/Ventrilo/Wilco server, rather than everybody all using Discord. When you didn't have content policies for millions of people being made by one guy in California (IE Tumblr). When most websites were hosted on little $20/mo shared hosting accounts so nobody gave a shit about pandering to advertisers. When a 'big forum' was 10s of thousands of users, and forums had their own communities with their own culture.
I miss those days. But this feels a lot closer to that than anything else I've encountered in the last several years.
Thanks, where's the coffee machine, please?
Seems sluggish, rough, and low population, but fuck spez so I'll give this an honest chance.
Loving it - federation is great, hardly ever even know which instance I'm interacting with from kbin, which is a good thing as it means the federation is working and mostly seamless. Can't wait for some apps to come out and streamline the experience, hopefully some more people will start coming here to populate a lot of the communities that I'd like to participate or lurk in. Right now there's a lot of... uh... shouting into the void trying to fill the space. I'm posting way more than I ever did on reddit just because like... somebody has to do it, right?
So glad to leave that dumpster fire of a website
looking good, already feels better
I just spent a little time today creating my Lemmy.world account and trying to find equivalents of my favorite subs from Reddit. I really question whether Reddit will survive the uprising that has spawned. I think the IPO is going to go very poorly, then Reddit will turn into some commercial mess. This is my first Lemmy post, BTW!
I’ve lamented the loss of what I called “old internet energy” — the feeling of a largely-nerdy community forming around something new. I felt it on early Digg and on Reddit for a good while, until the last 7-10 years or so after mainstream users started pouring in. I feel that here again. ‘Tis nice.
Hey! I'm keeping this as it's targeted at new users from Reddit. However, in future please find another community to post this on, because it is not related to the lemmy.world instance specifically.
I'm a slashdot refugee who just had a 16 year stopover on reddit :)
OMG! Slashdot… now that is a name I haven’t heard in a long time.
Hello, fellow /. refugee. I made a stopover on Digg before jumping to Reddit. nice to meet you here.
That was my path... /. -> Digg -> Reddit -> Lemmy.
I should see if I can recover my 5-digit account.
I've still got my 4 digit account.😏
We've had to go backwards to go forward and I'm all for it.
It's like we've just escaped an abusive partner and now starting from zero!
That "first night in the new apartment without most of the furniture, sleeping by yourself for the first time in a while" feeling.
I actually love that feeling except that one time I spent my first night in this prison-like dorm room with dirty walls and no hot water in Japan, dirty sheets and a paper thin futon with nothing to eat and nobody to talk to/no way to call anyone.
This feels a lot better than that.
Honestly I don't see it as going backwards but unfamiliar. I was reluctant to switch to this style because I didn't understand it and ended up on mastodon a few years ago into some terrifyingly hostile racist/bogoted/sexist communities. Maybe I did something wrong and ended up in a bad part of town but I ended up deleting the app I was using. So far the experience on lemmy is so much more pleasant lol...
A bit confusing, but I'm really excited about this. I hope the 'choose server' part when you sign up gets streamlined a bit. It's very confusing for new people.
My first post on Lemmy by the way!
So far it’s been good. There is a bit of a learning curve, setting up on mobile devices was a little challenging. Seems to be working well now. This thread has been really helpful for me.
I'm finding it hard to get rid of the "Open Reddit"'s muscle memory
That was easy for me. Apollo was Reddit for me. I deleted my account, removed that app, and now the barrier to entry of reaching Reddit would be going to the mobile site, so… I’d rather have all my teeth pulled with a rusty pair of pliers. Addition cured.
A scripblocker/adblocker might help you there.
Just joined a bit, too. Looks great so far. It reminds me of that wild west frontier feeling like when a bunch of us migrated from Digg to Reddit. We're building another new community.
... With blackjack! And hookers!
Are you Decoy Bender or just Bender?
Just a decoy, I'm afraid. Shut up baby, I know it!
Hell yeah take my money!
Happy to be here, also sad to be here.
It seems intuitive coming from Reddit. I’m excited to explore all the communities and see what’s going on
I kinda like it actually. A cross between discord and reddit or smth. I'm only 1 hr old so I'm gonna withhold judgment for when I get more accustomed to the ui.
This is a very different experience! I'm currently posting from a Mastodon server to a Lemmy server. I'm excited to see how a federated web can serve creators and users alike.
Excited about the possibilities of the fediverse!
I like it so far but it's strange and feels like I'm exploring the web with no experience.
That's the fun part. I haven't felt like this exploring a new website since I was a kid.
Honestly I'm glad that reddit is going down the tubes. It's time for a change.
I feel kinda dumb.. I truly did not get the whole fediverse thing and panicked trying to guess where most of us refugees would go, I made an account on mastadon, kbin.social, karab.in, lemmy.world and maybe a few more I now cannot recall, all same username as my Reddit account.. I assume now that was overkill? I hope there is a way I can merge them all together at some point.. and Oddly enough, this was my last instance(? That's what lemmy.world is right?) that feels less confusing than all the previous ones I tried..
Growing pains but in time I think this whole fediverse thing will grow on me!
I think creating too many accounts as you try to find a home and figure out what instances are is a normal thing. I certainly did it as well 😂
You can think of each instance as a separate reddit website. The magic of the fediverse is all these separate full on websites are still the same thing and can interact with each other!
I am here on mobile using Mlem. Mlem has an interface superficially like Apollo, but it doesn't have nearly the polish and features, like swiping posts to the side to up/downvote. I didn't realize (until I lost it) how much that single capability improved QoL. Until an app comes along with better UX and QoL, I probably won't stay.
(I don't doomscroll on my computer either).
I just tried out mobile browser. It works great on iOS Firefox. It’s good enough as a stopgap until someone makes a better mobile app.
memmy is another ios (x-platform?) app to try that is apollo'esq, is more stable, and seems to default to using swipe as the primary method of up/down vote and commenting.
Thanks. So far, I'm really enjoying Lemmy. What I really miss is a good iOS client. But I guess it's hard to build something like Apollo...
Depending on the amount of traction Lemmy gets, I'm hoping new apps start popping up over the next coming months/years.
It's ugly, not intuitive, feels way more complicated than necessary for a social site and the name is kind of dumb.
I'm 100% on board because screw Reddit and fuck u/spez.
I hope I can learn the ropes and help this place grow into something better.
Honestly when i started with reddit it was very confusing. Specially the concept of karma. Now it is time to learn something fresh and new!
If you're on Android get Jerboa for Lemmy. It's still in alpha but its still much better than browsing with the website imo, at least in terms of ugliness
I just discovered Jerboa. It's at least serviceable.
It seems like a cool idea. The idea of picking a server to sign up for didn't throw me for a loop like it does some folks; just like email, right? I think it needs a better way to interact on other instances though. Like for this one, I found lemmy.world from a link on Reddit, then opened this post. But I couldn't vote or comment because my account was on midwest.social. So I had to copy the !lemmyworld@lemmy.world community spec from the sidebar, go over to midwest.social in another tab, click the search button, paste the community spec there, re-find the same post, and now I can comment. Ideally I'd instead just be able to comment directly on lemmy.world using my already-logged-in account on midwest.social, or at least go directly to viewing the post via my own server with one click. Functionality like this would probably require a browser extension but that's better than nothing. I actually found one for Mastodon that's supposed to allow something like this for that service but so far I can't figure out how to get it to do its thing, and I don't think it supports Lemmy at all so far.
I went through the same process you did. Created this account a long time ago. Revisiting because reddit is being weird. And, the cross instance functionality and UX really needs an upgrade.
It's all new, if a bit confusing, but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it like I did with Aim, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and now Lemmy.
How is the federation supposed to work regarding logins? I made my initial account on lemmy.world but I'm unable to login and subscribe to communities on other federated servers. I presumed the primary server I setup on would allow me to subscribe and comment on communities on other servers?
Hoping it's a success but I find it hard to see it becoming one. Purely due to the confusion with how it actually works with different instances. Many casual users are going to be confused and not bother
Is very comfortable here, I will not go back on reddit for sure!
Thanks for having me, lemmy.world!
These instances feel quite cosy. Homely, even. I think they're called instances? I don't know. Anyway, I'm here.
If anyone has any super-noob friendly tips for being a good Lemmy citizen then I'm all ears - I'm an iPhone user so any app recommendations would be greatly appreciated too!
Hello fellow newbies!
Yo what up, fam?
Been a wild six months losing Tweetbot, moving to Ivory, and now Reddit has decided to trip over itself. I’m eager to see how this site (and the general federated versions of the reddit idea) end up.
Really happy to be here - would love it if this place worked out. What's the best way to ensure that we get folks moving over?
I think u/spez on reddit has done a phenomenal job helping to increase Lemmy's appeal as of late. Maybe someone should give him a job?
It's almost as if he doesn't realize that it's the truly few people who are power-users that make up the majority of what gives that company value. It would be great if this place could be like what it used to be.
But for real - I would love it if the community found its way over here. But like with Mastodon, I feel as if there is a knowledge gap for federated places - I don't really even understand it myself!
You're telling me. Lol.
Fortunately for everyone, though, the most complicated part is getting started. It may be a barrier of entry for some, but just googling "join Lemmy" will get you where you need to be without much fuss. And as this community grows naturally, features and QoL improvements will come with it.
I wish I had more tech knowledge to contribute with, but maybe I'll eventually get a poetry community rolling.
Really hope this thing takes off.
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@immadeofgold
I'm pretty excited despite it being daunting. It reminds me of the 90s internet days. Looking forward to learning something new and fun.
Feels a bit similar to moving to Mastodon from Twitter. easier to browse here than finding people to follow on Mastodon though
When I add this site to my Home Screen it afterwards loads as a PWA. Is there a way to add the site without it loading as PWA? I just want it to open as a tab in safari.
I’m excited for a new experience. I only commented about 5 times my entire time on Reddit and I hoping to interact more here.
doesn't hurt my eyes, looks just as good as old.reddit, now just hopefully reddit can hurry up kick the bucket.
I really like the UI. The sign up process was a little rough though. The idea of the different servers and signing up via those servers was a little jarring at first.
Couldn't agree more. I actually signed up on a difference instance a couple days ago, but never got a confirmation email or anything and thought I just had to wait for a manual process. (the instance had me answer questions they said were needed to be answered to join) I got tired of waiting and didn't know how to message anyone about it, so I just signed up here. It was super quick and easy, but the overall process is confusing for sure. Excited for the platform though, I think once you get past the learning curve it's very promising.
Yeah, Lemmy does have a rather steep learning curve, but once you are past it the platform does seem very promising as a reddit replacement.
Reddit was known to have a steep learning curve as well. We’ll get there.
First post, liking what I'm seeing so far! Appreciate that signup here was quick/easy, had some issues on other instances.
I am happy whenever there is a fresh start. Brings out the flaws of my old ways.
Hello! Looks nice, I realize it will probably take some time to get used to, but I hope the community will grow.
I mod a sub on Reddit and we are thinking about a blackout in protest, in any case it would be cool to set up shop here in the fediverse :)
The Jerboa app though could use with some improvements to navigate the different communities.
Test
I'm a big fan of it. The website is great and I'm thankful that I can interact with posts and comments on other servers. I think for most people's adoption the picking of a server to join is intimidating because there are so many options.
To draw more users it needs to be made abundantly clear that you can interact across servers.
I’m liking it a lot, so far!
Thanks! It looks more like a Discourse forum than Reddit. I'll reserve judgment for now but after so many companies took their own platform usage we need something like this more than ever.
I dunno
i'm just excited that i was able to make an account... lemmy.ml didn't want me. anyway, i'm just here to browse and see what i find.
I feel like I'm back in the best part of the early-mid 00s, when the entire internet was running on phpbb or some random local social networks with 500 users. I missed those, glad to be back in the new, hopefully better, interpretation of those times. Overall, it's quite nostalgic here. ❤️
Just deleted all past activity from my reddit account, deactivated it and joined you marry bunch. Glad to be here.
Reddit ran me off with a permaban 2 months ago because I wrote about the 3 boxes of liberty metaphor in a comment. 2 million+ imaginary Internet points down the drain. Glad to see the site shoot itself in the foot and looking forward to finding an alternative.
And the obligatory: fuck Spez.
I got permbanned a few months ago because reasons? This is more gooder.
This is my first comment here, hope I'm doing it right!
Digging it so far. The only thing that I have noticed, and this may just be due to the large influx of people coming to the site, it's been taking literal minutes for me to submit a post or edit my profile
Pretty cool to see. I'm excited to see it grow. I'm pretty adamant about Mastodon being a great platform and seeing other decentralized platforms grow is awesome. I wanted to know how I can see a list of instances, or if anyone has any recommendations? I know myself and a lot of others likely joined the largest instances first, but I don't want to add onto an already stressed server.
I've stumbled upon this Github repo listing Lemmy instances and their differences
Thanks! This is exactly what I was looking for.
On Reddit you have your home page or start page that shows combined content from all of your subscribed subreddits and nothing else... how do I get to something like that here, or isn't there anything like that here?
On the main page you can toggle the Subscribed | Local | All thing to get different feeds. You can set the default in your settings.
Awesome, thank you, somehow I missed it
How do instances decide to defederate other instances popping up in the future? E.g. an NSFW instance is created but I don't want to see any of it when I browse "All".
Simply block it.
I didn't mean for individual users, but for the whole instance. Like Lemmygrad is blocked by other instances.
I'm sure it's possible, maybe ask on support?
Probably possible, sorry I didn't phrase my question correctly. I was more interested in how an instance decides to block another instance.
Like for example: if I'm a user signed up at Lemmy.world and for some reason Lemmy.world decides not to federate with Beehaw.org, does that mean I will also no longer be able to interact with Beehaw using this account?
Hi there! I'm having trouble uploading pictures, but other than that, it's nice
It's good so far; a few UX/UI issues need polishing, some more display options would be nice too.
The whole issue of community@instance is going to take some getting used to for people, and it's not clear how that's going to shake out in the long run. I'm not yet certain whether this will become my default space, but I'm willing to give it a go.
There should be a way to make meta-communities. I.e. I could group FOO@lemmy.world and FOO@lemmy.ml and so forth so it shows as one large community when reading it.
It seems like the intended use-case for federated stuff like this is that all of FOO would be in one instance, even though it's accessible from any instance it still shows which instance it originates in. Which feels a little weird, some topics don't really have a overarching supertopic that it makes sense for them to belong to.
Honestly struggling a bit. Finding the communities for my interests was very easy on Reddit, kinda having a hard time here.
Hey! You should totally create those communities by yourself, takes less than 5 seconds!! (Via the website though -- sadly the apps don't yet have that functionality...but will soon)
For example, I created beatles@sopuli.xyz, since there's no Beatles community here. Never modded any subreddit in my life, so it's a first for me.
I'm soon gonna make a list of maybe 8-10 communities I like and create them over here. Then I'll post links to them on the corresponding subreddits.
I don't plan to actually mod them actively, so I'll pass the modding powers to others if/when the communities get a good number of followers.
You could do the same, it's like being Johnny Appleseed!
I thought about creating them but I figured someone already did and I don't want to fracture the community. Someone already created a boardgames community in a German server (content seems to be English), is it best to jump in there and add some content or create a new English community? No clue.
I'd say just go post in English there, if you're not supposed to, someone will probs drop you a ping.
I also sense that people here are keen on having multilingual communities, so English posts may even be welcome. Either way, it's the wild west here, so just go for it.
I’m loving Beehaw! And it’s super cool that we can all interact across servers and communities.
I think this has a lot of potential, I mean I’m already using it a ton. The only thing missing imo is more niche communities, but those will come along as the user base grows.
Go make them! :)
I know lol it just seems really daunting. And idk if the userbase is even large enough to support what I'd personally want. It'd probably be just me.
But regardless, I'd love a community like the NatureIsLit subreddit, or even AIDKE (animals I didn't know existed).
I just made !awwducational@lemmy.ml to combine a couple animal subs. AIDKE is always low key awwducational in my mind
Digging it so far. Some technical issues but I think they may just be due to the mobile app I am using (sometimes when I open a post, the comments displayed are the ones from the last post I looked at). But it feels much more.. Democratic? Than reddit did.
Which app are you using?
Jerboa for Lemmy from F-Droid. You may have to install F-Droid for it, my phone has not the google play store so i dont know. I think i did something wrong because Lemmur was too confusing for me.
Nope it's in play store too (at least in US)
got into reddit fully just a few years ago. it was my go-to for silly frog pictures to cheer me up. any other instances (i hope i'm saying that right, something similar to a subreddit) that are frog related? i'd love to contribute some :)
You could try starting your own community?
It's strange. I feel lost.
It’s strange. I feel lost.
Give yourself a day or two, and it will be a second nature to you. Speaking from my two-day experience :)
Question: is the "lag" from hitting the post button to seeing the post intentional or is that just a sign of stressed servers?
Yeah, I've noticed that. I'll probably notice it again once I hit reply for this post. ;-)
Sometimes it's lightning fast and sometimes it's sloooow. I just don't know if that's a feature/consequence of federation tech, or if the servers are just stressing under the mass-reddit exodus. :)
New thing to learn, I saw your reply in my inbox and had to hunt you down to say thank you, so, thank you!
You're welcome!
Glad to see an alternative is gaining traction! The inversed colours for up and downvotes will take some getting used to!
To double-check that I understand Lemmy correctly: the equivalent to a subreddit is a server, right? So within lemmy.world there aren’t necessarily subforums/topics/subreddits.
I'm waiting for some new communities to pop up, but the layout is good.
Both my links are doing weird things, if anyone knows how to do this please tell me!
I am still trying to wrap my head around how it all works, but I feel like I am slowly getting the hang of it. One thing I was wondering, and forgive me if I get the terminologies wrong, since instances are their own little ecosystems, wouldn't there be multiple versions of the identical communities i.e. gaming, videos etc., or is that the beauty of it all?
Another minor concern I have is that since instances are run by individuals, wouldn't there be a risk of losing massive amounts of content if said owner no longer wishes to maintain their instance or "goes rogue" for a lack of a better word and shuts down access to all communities located on that particular instance/server.
I think those are all fair points. Reddit did duplicate communities too, sometimes because some communities wanted to focus on specific elements of the topic they were covering, sometimes because of splits and disagreements, and sometimes just because it happened over time. People tend to find their niche, as do communities, but there will usually be a main one with the most members and activity.
Regarding individual instances, the way Mastodon has tried to manage that is by asking the people running instances to commit to a set of rules, one of which is giving appropriate notice should they wish to shut it down. This has been adhered to for the most part, and instances that don't voluntarily subscribe to those rules can get degenerated, or more likely just not promoted through the various explorer tools. So long as there's notice, there's opportunity to migrate to another instance and copy over data. It would be good to see something similar on Lemmy, if it's not already there (this is my first day!).
Maybe lemmy can already do this, but maybe we need to reintroduce the concept of ‘mirrors’ — being able to create a community on one server that can mirror a copy of all posts from a community on another server, so if the original disappears then the mirror can be promoted into its place.
…or maybe this is already a thing, or isn’t necessary? I’m new here and still learning the ropes.
It feels quite right. We need to set up lots of niche communities, but what I miss the most is the user base. It was diverse, and lemmy is known to have an specific user profile. Would be nice to reach out, wear a former redditors badge, and wear it with pride!
I'm surprised at how many Linux instances there are here. Very few Normie's instances so far.
I'm trying to understand it still. I understand you can visit communities from any other instance, but are communities shared between them? I mean, if there's an r/NFL in lemmy.world, can lemmy.ml also contain an r/NFL and would those two be two different things?
First of all the r/ doesn’t apply here (okay, I’m being pedantic, sorry), but if I understood correctly what you’re asking, you can see any community from all instances. Each instance can also create a community of the same name (so in that case they wouldn’t be shared) but you can access !community@instance everywhere and it’s the same for all
Yes this would be two different communities on two different servers. Right now everything here is still wild west but overtime you will get something like a "default" NFL community where most people visit and several smaller sub-communites on different servers.
We have a gaming on lemmy.ml and we have a gaming on beehaw.org. The later is already bigger and way more active than the former.
First time here for me, and I’m confused as well.
Say there’s a ‘movies’ community on this server, and one on lemmy.ml, and over time the one on ml becomes the definitive one, do I need to have an account on the ml server as well or is there a way to be able to see multiple communities on different servers in my stream?
Thanks for taking the time to help us newcomers out.
You only need one account to access the entire Lemmy network. So you can still access the movies community on lemmy.ml if it does become the definitive one and considering that it's the "main" instance right now, that shouldn't be hard either.
I mean, I'm commenting here in lemmy.world from lemmy.ml
Your account (and every account) has a home instance. Both you and I have our accounts on lemmy.world.
And every community (aka subreddit) also has a home instance. The home instance for this community happens to be also be lemmy.world, same as our accounts.
But through federation, the posts from each community gets copied from the communities home server onto each subscribed user's home server. So you can subscribe to any community on any server that lemmy.world federates with.
So while it's possible for multiple instances to have an nfl community, it's not necessary since you can sub to the NFL community on another instance and that's totally normal and expected. Think of it as the subreddits name includes its instance name, so !nfl@lemmy.ml is just a different subreddit than !nfl@lemmy.world, just like on Reddit you could have competing subs named /r/nfl and /r/nflfootball. And just like reddit, when things start to calm down, I think you will see that in cases where a bunch of dupe subs exist... one or two with active mods start to dominate on user count and those end up being the most interesting. It will be a bit wild west for a while though. Lemmy is a lot smaller than reddit, though, when I find dupes of a topic I care about, my strategy had been to subscribe to them all and I'll cancel the ones that flopped a few months from now when it's clear what is active and what's dead.
So my account's home instance is lemmy.world. Do I need to make a new account to access another instance, or can I use this one across every instance?
Is there an easier way to find communities on other instances? I wish I could browse another instance as if it were "local" to organically find more communities.
There is!
Click Communities, and from there you can sort Local (Communities that originate from your instance, for you it's lemmy.world!), or All, which includes most communities every public instance (like how I'm commenting to you from beehaw.org!)
From there, simply subscribe to what communities you like, even if they come from a different instance.
I like it. Bringing over some No Man's Sky people. Is there a shorthand way to link communities? Like typing /r/NoMansSky would link to the subreddit on reddit, but /c/NoMansSky doesn't link to the community here. Would be a cool future feature if it's not one now!
However it won't work if your instance doesn't know the community exists. In those cases it needs to be searched for in the usual cumbersome way, but after that the relative links should work.
Thank you!
I'm having trouble navigating through lemmy. The Frontpage was different before I created an account. Could someone explain the instances? I logged in to lemmy.world does that mean the content on the rest of lemmy is off limits? I have to create an account for each instance?
I see there is lemmy.ml and others
Edit: I get it now. Thanks for the explanation
I have to create an account for each instance?
No, that's actually the beauty of it all.
Could someone explain the instances?
Imagine if now every subreddit would be located on its own server, not somewhere in a Reddit headquarters. So r/funny is now running on server with address my-server123.com and thus have address my-server123.com/r/funny. r/europe is now running on eu.gov and thus have address eu.gov/r/europe. etc. Good, but lets say I want to create a subreddit r/myFavoriteYoutuber but I don't have a server. No problem, I contact people at r/funny and they allow my subreddit to run on their server, so its address will be my-server123.com/r/myFavoriteYoutuber. The "my-server123.com" and "eu.gov" is what we'd call an instance.
I write some extended explanation after lunch :)
This has some pros and cons:
You might say - ok but I don't care about instances, servers and whatnot. Also now instead of one Reddit website, we have thousands of them! Do I need to register everywhere? I don't want this, I just want to to come to Reddit and browse stuff from everywhere!
... and this is possible! Instances can communicate with eachother so with account on one instance you can connect (not login) to all the instances you want. Basically your browser or smartphone app just now needs to download posts from different servers instead of one giant Reddit server. But it needs your help, you need to specify the address of the instance otherwise it doesn't know where to connect. This is the same as email, if you want to send an email to John Smith, you don't just write recipient as john.smith, you need to write the server also so john.smith@gmail.com
So if I take the example from previous comment, you cannot just write that you want subscribe to r/funny because your app or browser doesn't know where the r/funny is. You'd need to write funny@my-server123.com or europe@eu.gov. And voila, that's basically Lemmy
I lost my job the day I found out about the issues with third party apps for Reddit. I found Lemmy and Mastodon searching for alternatives. So far this community is a lot more wholesome and I'm enjoying being a part of it
Lets work to keep it that way! While the ethos of individual communities is up to the community, I love the vibe they're propagating over on Beehaw. We can work to make sure Lemmy doesn't become another 4chan lite.
I'm trying out Jerboa but it keeps telling me I'm not logged in every time I try to do something.
Anyone else having this issue?
I can't get it to work but I'm very new.
This is my first visit so I'm still trying to figure things out. I'm on the mobile website right now because I haven't been able to figure out how to log in on the Jerboa app. Can anyone tell me what "instance" means on Jerboa when you're logging in? I tried a couple different ones from the dropdown menu but they all said " incorrect login."
Instance is basically a server. All of the servers talk to each other, so you can post and comment on any one of them. But your physical account resides on only one server. Currently, you can't migrate your account from one server to another, but it's planned as a feature in future releases of Lemmy.
Your instance (server) is lemmy.world, so you need to type that in the instance field. Thus, your username on Lemmy (and in the fediverse) is Violet@lemmy.world.
Thanks for this explanation. Where are "subreddits" and how do I find them? Are they on different instances?
"subreddits" are communities. You can find them with the search field from your instance, or using the community browser.
It's quite laggy (understandably) and I'm having trouble navigating myself, finding communities/topics, finding people to interact with etc. Naturally there will be teething problems early on, and different problems will arise as the reddit exodus increases. Still, I think Lemmy has huge potential.
Check out https://browse.feddit.de/ for finding communities, it's not 100% perfect but it's a good start :)
I tried to do that and it logged me out :-/
Sorry, what exactly did you try to do and what happened? Happy to help I just don't want to go off on a tech support ramble and have it turn out I completely misunderstood the problem :D
I clicked on the link to communities, and it said "you must log in". I stupidly didn't write my (auto-generated) password down and Opera isn't letting me view or c&p my saved passwords. So I had to go back to the home page and refresh to be logged in again.
You gotta copy the link to the community then paste it into your instance's (lemmy.world) search bar.
is there any advantage of using one instance vs another? I made accounts on both kbin and lemmy.world, is it all the same except whatever UI i prefer?
When i visit some communities in kbin, it tells it the posts might not all be up to date
You can join communities hosted on another server than the one you registered with. Some posts might take time to update because I am guessing the two servers need to communicate the changes.
I'm liking it but if there's a search function I'm not finding it? Like, I want to go looking for communities by topic.
Thanks for having us! I'm excited to try this out. I am only just trying to figure out how all of this works.
I have subscribed to several communities now, but when I go to the main page, I still see the generic content that was there before I logged in. How do I view a feed of just the communities I have subscribed to (analogous to the front page on reddit)
There should be a button to view subscribed communities at the top along with local instance communities and all known communities. You can change the default in the settings.
Oh, I got it. Thank you!
I have finally managed to create an account, so do we have CSS like original reddit? Other then that lemmy seems pretty cool
It doesn't look like we have the same css feature yet, but you can start your own lemmy instance just to host your community and customize the hell out of it.
Fuck /u/spez, innit?
Fuck u/spez
fuck spez
Fuck that dick head named spez
That is correct
Sir yes sir!
Ngl, us r/efugees are not happy with things over there.
As much as I'm coming to enjoy this, it still isn't what reddit was, nor is the app experience anything close to as feature rich. But, I'm finding other benefits here that are, and never were, possible at reddit, so it's still a good thing :)
Reddit is proof that no publicly traded company, nor any that intends to be, can be trusted with anything. Not use that was ever in doubt, but reddit has shown it in such a glaring, grotesque way that it's the poster child for how shitty corporate thought is.
I dunno. I was enjoying things. I had started moderating two subs I deeply cared about, with one having a strong sense of community building. There's an emotional response to the loss of that. But I'll be damned if I'm going to put in the work, put in the passion, when it's shit on by the very company that profits from my free labor. fuck spez, fuck reddit
I mean it seems so obvious in retrospect I suppose. I hope we're looking a the start of a real renascence for the internet, away from corporate overlords.
God dam right friend.
The best parts of reddit were the communities of people dedicated to the topics under each sub.
Reddit CEOs didn't create that. It was and has always been regular users and hardworking Mods that brought us what we loved about reddit. If reddit isn't going to protect those people, fuck em.
I'm signing off of reddit with the black out. There will probably be a long time before something replaces it. But I'm a long for the ride.
The whole lemmy concept mixed with the current situation feels far more like you are part of a real community. Kinda like in old internet days. I will even break out of my reddit lurker days and try to contribute here.
Yeah it feels a lot more like an old school forum.
Exactly. The days when people would run little community servers for IRC or shoutcast or whatever on spare laptops hooked up to cable modems, and would mess around doing stuff for their friends or whatever online community they were part of. When websites didn't all look the same because they're hosted on the same big tech platform, and if you wanted to publish something you'd put creativity into web design rather than just signing up for a Twitter account. When you didn't have the constant Faustian deal of selling your activity data in exchange for free platforms. When talking to your gaming clan meant typing in the IP of whoever hosted the TeamSpeak/Ventrilo/Wilco server, rather than everybody all using Discord. When you didn't have content policies for millions of people being made by one guy in California (IE Tumblr). When most websites were hosted on little $20/mo shared hosting accounts so nobody gave a shit about pandering to advertisers. When a 'big forum' was 10s of thousands of users, and forums had their own communities with their own culture.
I miss those days. But this feels a lot closer to that than anything else I've encountered in the last several years.
Thanks, where's the coffee machine, please?
Seems sluggish, rough, and low population, but fuck spez so I'll give this an honest chance.
Loving it - federation is great, hardly ever even know which instance I'm interacting with from kbin, which is a good thing as it means the federation is working and mostly seamless. Can't wait for some apps to come out and streamline the experience, hopefully some more people will start coming here to populate a lot of the communities that I'd like to participate or lurk in. Right now there's a lot of... uh... shouting into the void trying to fill the space. I'm posting way more than I ever did on reddit just because like... somebody has to do it, right?
So glad to leave that dumpster fire of a website
looking good, already feels better
I just spent a little time today creating my Lemmy.world account and trying to find equivalents of my favorite subs from Reddit. I really question whether Reddit will survive the uprising that has spawned. I think the IPO is going to go very poorly, then Reddit will turn into some commercial mess. This is my first Lemmy post, BTW!
I’ve lamented the loss of what I called “old internet energy” — the feeling of a largely-nerdy community forming around something new. I felt it on early Digg and on Reddit for a good while, until the last 7-10 years or so after mainstream users started pouring in. I feel that here again. ‘Tis nice.
Hey! I'm keeping this as it's targeted at new users from Reddit. However, in future please find another community to post this on, because it is not related to the lemmy.world instance specifically.
I'm excited to be a part of something new
Well lets see, my self promo spam to begin :o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OHEFg9GbBA
edit: also fuck spez
I'm a slashdot refugee who just had a 16 year stopover on reddit :)
OMG! Slashdot… now that is a name I haven’t heard in a long time.
Hello, fellow /. refugee. I made a stopover on Digg before jumping to Reddit. nice to meet you here.
That was my path... /. -> Digg -> Reddit -> Lemmy.
I should see if I can recover my 5-digit account.
I've still got my 4 digit account.😏
We've had to go backwards to go forward and I'm all for it.
It's like we've just escaped an abusive partner and now starting from zero!
That "first night in the new apartment without most of the furniture, sleeping by yourself for the first time in a while" feeling.
I actually love that feeling except that one time I spent my first night in this prison-like dorm room with dirty walls and no hot water in Japan, dirty sheets and a paper thin futon with nothing to eat and nobody to talk to/no way to call anyone. This feels a lot better than that.
Honestly I don't see it as going backwards but unfamiliar. I was reluctant to switch to this style because I didn't understand it and ended up on mastodon a few years ago into some terrifyingly hostile racist/bogoted/sexist communities. Maybe I did something wrong and ended up in a bad part of town but I ended up deleting the app I was using. So far the experience on lemmy is so much more pleasant lol...
A bit confusing, but I'm really excited about this. I hope the 'choose server' part when you sign up gets streamlined a bit. It's very confusing for new people. My first post on Lemmy by the way!
So far it’s been good. There is a bit of a learning curve, setting up on mobile devices was a little challenging. Seems to be working well now. This thread has been really helpful for me.
I'm finding it hard to get rid of the "Open Reddit"'s muscle memory
That was easy for me. Apollo was Reddit for me. I deleted my account, removed that app, and now the barrier to entry of reaching Reddit would be going to the mobile site, so… I’d rather have all my teeth pulled with a rusty pair of pliers. Addition cured.
A scripblocker/adblocker might help you there.
Just joined a bit, too. Looks great so far. It reminds me of that wild west frontier feeling like when a bunch of us migrated from Digg to Reddit. We're building another new community.
... With blackjack! And hookers!
Are you Decoy Bender or just Bender?
Just a decoy, I'm afraid. Shut up baby, I know it!
Hell yeah take my money!
Happy to be here, also sad to be here.
It seems intuitive coming from Reddit. I’m excited to explore all the communities and see what’s going on
I kinda like it actually. A cross between discord and reddit or smth. I'm only 1 hr old so I'm gonna withhold judgment for when I get more accustomed to the ui.
@immadeofgold
This is a very different experience! I'm currently posting from a Mastodon server to a Lemmy server. I'm excited to see how a federated web can serve creators and users alike.
Excited about the possibilities of the fediverse!
I like it so far but it's strange and feels like I'm exploring the web with no experience.
That's the fun part. I haven't felt like this exploring a new website since I was a kid.
Honestly I'm glad that reddit is going down the tubes. It's time for a change.
I feel kinda dumb.. I truly did not get the whole fediverse thing and panicked trying to guess where most of us refugees would go, I made an account on mastadon, kbin.social, karab.in, lemmy.world and maybe a few more I now cannot recall, all same username as my Reddit account.. I assume now that was overkill? I hope there is a way I can merge them all together at some point.. and Oddly enough, this was my last instance(? That's what lemmy.world is right?) that feels less confusing than all the previous ones I tried..
Growing pains but in time I think this whole fediverse thing will grow on me!
I think creating too many accounts as you try to find a home and figure out what instances are is a normal thing. I certainly did it as well 😂
You can think of each instance as a separate reddit website. The magic of the fediverse is all these separate full on websites are still the same thing and can interact with each other!
I am here on mobile using Mlem. Mlem has an interface superficially like Apollo, but it doesn't have nearly the polish and features, like swiping posts to the side to up/downvote. I didn't realize (until I lost it) how much that single capability improved QoL. Until an app comes along with better UX and QoL, I probably won't stay. (I don't doomscroll on my computer either).
I just tried out mobile browser. It works great on iOS Firefox. It’s good enough as a stopgap until someone makes a better mobile app.
memmy is another ios (x-platform?) app to try that is apollo'esq, is more stable, and seems to default to using swipe as the primary method of up/down vote and commenting.
Thanks. So far, I'm really enjoying Lemmy. What I really miss is a good iOS client. But I guess it's hard to build something like Apollo...
Depending on the amount of traction Lemmy gets, I'm hoping new apps start popping up over the next coming months/years.
It's ugly, not intuitive, feels way more complicated than necessary for a social site and the name is kind of dumb.
I'm 100% on board because screw Reddit and fuck u/spez.
I hope I can learn the ropes and help this place grow into something better.
Honestly when i started with reddit it was very confusing. Specially the concept of karma. Now it is time to learn something fresh and new!
If you're on Android get Jerboa for Lemmy. It's still in alpha but its still much better than browsing with the website imo, at least in terms of ugliness
I just discovered Jerboa. It's at least serviceable.
It seems like a cool idea. The idea of picking a server to sign up for didn't throw me for a loop like it does some folks; just like email, right? I think it needs a better way to interact on other instances though. Like for this one, I found lemmy.world from a link on Reddit, then opened this post. But I couldn't vote or comment because my account was on midwest.social. So I had to copy the !lemmyworld@lemmy.world community spec from the sidebar, go over to midwest.social in another tab, click the search button, paste the community spec there, re-find the same post, and now I can comment. Ideally I'd instead just be able to comment directly on lemmy.world using my already-logged-in account on midwest.social, or at least go directly to viewing the post via my own server with one click. Functionality like this would probably require a browser extension but that's better than nothing. I actually found one for Mastodon that's supposed to allow something like this for that service but so far I can't figure out how to get it to do its thing, and I don't think it supports Lemmy at all so far.
I went through the same process you did. Created this account a long time ago. Revisiting because reddit is being weird. And, the cross instance functionality and UX really needs an upgrade.
It's all new, if a bit confusing, but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it like I did with Aim, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and now Lemmy.
So far, so confused 😕
Still a young community, hopefully this’ll be able to take on Reddit someday in terms of user growth and usability
Still a bit confused.
come join us at !formula1@lemmy.world and !photography@lemmy.world
How is the federation supposed to work regarding logins? I made my initial account on lemmy.world but I'm unable to login and subscribe to communities on other federated servers. I presumed the primary server I setup on would allow me to subscribe and comment on communities on other servers?
Hoping it's a success but I find it hard to see it becoming one. Purely due to the confusion with how it actually works with different instances. Many casual users are going to be confused and not bother
Is very comfortable here, I will not go back on reddit for sure!
Thanks for having me, lemmy.world!
These instances feel quite cosy. Homely, even. I think they're called instances? I don't know. Anyway, I'm here.
If anyone has any super-noob friendly tips for being a good Lemmy citizen then I'm all ears - I'm an iPhone user so any app recommendations would be greatly appreciated too!
Hello fellow newbies!
Yo what up, fam?
Been a wild six months losing Tweetbot, moving to Ivory, and now Reddit has decided to trip over itself. I’m eager to see how this site (and the general federated versions of the reddit idea) end up.
Really happy to be here - would love it if this place worked out. What's the best way to ensure that we get folks moving over?
I think u/spez on reddit has done a phenomenal job helping to increase Lemmy's appeal as of late. Maybe someone should give him a job?
It's almost as if he doesn't realize that it's the truly few people who are power-users that make up the majority of what gives that company value. It would be great if this place could be like what it used to be.
But for real - I would love it if the community found its way over here. But like with Mastodon, I feel as if there is a knowledge gap for federated places - I don't really even understand it myself!
You're telling me. Lol.
Fortunately for everyone, though, the most complicated part is getting started. It may be a barrier of entry for some, but just googling "join Lemmy" will get you where you need to be without much fuss. And as this community grows naturally, features and QoL improvements will come with it.
I wish I had more tech knowledge to contribute with, but maybe I'll eventually get a poetry community rolling.
Really hope this thing takes off.
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@immadeofgold I'm pretty excited despite it being daunting. It reminds me of the 90s internet days. Looking forward to learning something new and fun.
Feels a bit similar to moving to Mastodon from Twitter. easier to browse here than finding people to follow on Mastodon though
When I add this site to my Home Screen it afterwards loads as a PWA. Is there a way to add the site without it loading as PWA? I just want it to open as a tab in safari.
I’m excited for a new experience. I only commented about 5 times my entire time on Reddit and I hoping to interact more here.
doesn't hurt my eyes, looks just as good as old.reddit, now just hopefully reddit can hurry up kick the bucket.
I really like the UI. The sign up process was a little rough though. The idea of the different servers and signing up via those servers was a little jarring at first.
Couldn't agree more. I actually signed up on a difference instance a couple days ago, but never got a confirmation email or anything and thought I just had to wait for a manual process. (the instance had me answer questions they said were needed to be answered to join) I got tired of waiting and didn't know how to message anyone about it, so I just signed up here. It was super quick and easy, but the overall process is confusing for sure. Excited for the platform though, I think once you get past the learning curve it's very promising.
Yeah, Lemmy does have a rather steep learning curve, but once you are past it the platform does seem very promising as a reddit replacement.
Reddit was known to have a steep learning curve as well. We’ll get there.
First post, liking what I'm seeing so far! Appreciate that signup here was quick/easy, had some issues on other instances.
I am happy whenever there is a fresh start. Brings out the flaws of my old ways.
Hello! Looks nice, I realize it will probably take some time to get used to, but I hope the community will grow. I mod a sub on Reddit and we are thinking about a blackout in protest, in any case it would be cool to set up shop here in the fediverse :)
The Jerboa app though could use with some improvements to navigate the different communities.
Test
I'm a big fan of it. The website is great and I'm thankful that I can interact with posts and comments on other servers. I think for most people's adoption the picking of a server to join is intimidating because there are so many options.
To draw more users it needs to be made abundantly clear that you can interact across servers.
I’m liking it a lot, so far!
Thanks! It looks more like a Discourse forum than Reddit. I'll reserve judgment for now but after so many companies took their own platform usage we need something like this more than ever.
I dunno
i'm just excited that i was able to make an account... lemmy.ml didn't want me. anyway, i'm just here to browse and see what i find.
I feel like I'm back in the best part of the early-mid 00s, when the entire internet was running on phpbb or some random local social networks with 500 users. I missed those, glad to be back in the new, hopefully better, interpretation of those times. Overall, it's quite nostalgic here. ❤️
Just deleted all past activity from my reddit account, deactivated it and joined you marry bunch. Glad to be here.
Reddit ran me off with a permaban 2 months ago because I wrote about the 3 boxes of liberty metaphor in a comment. 2 million+ imaginary Internet points down the drain. Glad to see the site shoot itself in the foot and looking forward to finding an alternative.
And the obligatory: fuck Spez.
I got permbanned a few months ago because reasons? This is more gooder.
This is my first comment here, hope I'm doing it right!
Digging it so far. The only thing that I have noticed, and this may just be due to the large influx of people coming to the site, it's been taking literal minutes for me to submit a post or edit my profile
Pretty cool to see. I'm excited to see it grow. I'm pretty adamant about Mastodon being a great platform and seeing other decentralized platforms grow is awesome. I wanted to know how I can see a list of instances, or if anyone has any recommendations? I know myself and a lot of others likely joined the largest instances first, but I don't want to add onto an already stressed server.
I've stumbled upon this Github repo listing Lemmy instances and their differences
Thanks! This is exactly what I was looking for.
On Reddit you have your home page or start page that shows combined content from all of your subscribed subreddits and nothing else... how do I get to something like that here, or isn't there anything like that here?
On the main page you can toggle the Subscribed | Local | All thing to get different feeds. You can set the default in your settings.
Awesome, thank you, somehow I missed it
How do instances decide to defederate other instances popping up in the future? E.g. an NSFW instance is created but I don't want to see any of it when I browse "All".
Simply block it.
I didn't mean for individual users, but for the whole instance. Like Lemmygrad is blocked by other instances.
I'm sure it's possible, maybe ask on support?
Probably possible, sorry I didn't phrase my question correctly. I was more interested in how an instance decides to block another instance. Like for example: if I'm a user signed up at Lemmy.world and for some reason Lemmy.world decides not to federate with Beehaw.org, does that mean I will also no longer be able to interact with Beehaw using this account?
Hi there! I'm having trouble uploading pictures, but other than that, it's nice
It's good so far; a few UX/UI issues need polishing, some more display options would be nice too.
The whole issue of community@instance is going to take some getting used to for people, and it's not clear how that's going to shake out in the long run. I'm not yet certain whether this will become my default space, but I'm willing to give it a go.
There should be a way to make meta-communities. I.e. I could group FOO@lemmy.world and FOO@lemmy.ml and so forth so it shows as one large community when reading it.
It seems like the intended use-case for federated stuff like this is that all of FOO would be in one instance, even though it's accessible from any instance it still shows which instance it originates in. Which feels a little weird, some topics don't really have a overarching supertopic that it makes sense for them to belong to.
Honestly struggling a bit. Finding the communities for my interests was very easy on Reddit, kinda having a hard time here.
Hey! You should totally create those communities by yourself, takes less than 5 seconds!! (Via the website though -- sadly the apps don't yet have that functionality...but will soon)
For example, I created beatles@sopuli.xyz, since there's no Beatles community here. Never modded any subreddit in my life, so it's a first for me.
I'm soon gonna make a list of maybe 8-10 communities I like and create them over here. Then I'll post links to them on the corresponding subreddits.
I don't plan to actually mod them actively, so I'll pass the modding powers to others if/when the communities get a good number of followers.
You could do the same, it's like being Johnny Appleseed!
I thought about creating them but I figured someone already did and I don't want to fracture the community. Someone already created a boardgames community in a German server (content seems to be English), is it best to jump in there and add some content or create a new English community? No clue.
I'd say just go post in English there, if you're not supposed to, someone will probs drop you a ping.
I also sense that people here are keen on having multilingual communities, so English posts may even be welcome. Either way, it's the wild west here, so just go for it.
I’m loving Beehaw! And it’s super cool that we can all interact across servers and communities.
I think this has a lot of potential, I mean I’m already using it a ton. The only thing missing imo is more niche communities, but those will come along as the user base grows.
Go make them! :)
I know lol it just seems really daunting. And idk if the userbase is even large enough to support what I'd personally want. It'd probably be just me.
But regardless, I'd love a community like the NatureIsLit subreddit, or even AIDKE (animals I didn't know existed).
I just made !awwducational@lemmy.ml! I have no idea what I'm doing!
I just made !awwducational@lemmy.ml!
I would gladly join AIDKE
I just made !awwducational@lemmy.ml to combine a couple animal subs. AIDKE is always low key awwducational in my mind
Digging it so far. Some technical issues but I think they may just be due to the mobile app I am using (sometimes when I open a post, the comments displayed are the ones from the last post I looked at). But it feels much more.. Democratic? Than reddit did.
Which app are you using?
Jerboa for Lemmy from F-Droid. You may have to install F-Droid for it, my phone has not the google play store so i dont know. I think i did something wrong because Lemmur was too confusing for me.
Nope it's in play store too (at least in US)
got into reddit fully just a few years ago. it was my go-to for silly frog pictures to cheer me up. any other instances (i hope i'm saying that right, something similar to a subreddit) that are frog related? i'd love to contribute some :)
You could try starting your own community?
It's strange. I feel lost.
Give yourself a day or two, and it will be a second nature to you. Speaking from my two-day experience :)
Question: is the "lag" from hitting the post button to seeing the post intentional or is that just a sign of stressed servers?
Yeah, I've noticed that. I'll probably notice it again once I hit reply for this post. ;-)
Sometimes it's lightning fast and sometimes it's sloooow. I just don't know if that's a feature/consequence of federation tech, or if the servers are just stressing under the mass-reddit exodus. :)
One last reddit hug of death
Looks like it's actually a bug: https://lemmy.world/post/15786
New thing to learn, I saw your reply in my inbox and had to hunt you down to say thank you, so, thank you!
You're welcome!
Glad to see an alternative is gaining traction! The inversed colours for up and downvotes will take some getting used to!
To double-check that I understand Lemmy correctly: the equivalent to a subreddit is a server, right? So within lemmy.world there aren’t necessarily subforums/topics/subreddits.
I'm waiting for some new communities to pop up, but the layout is good.
I've started photography and !formula1@lemmy.world would be great to see you in either
Both my links are doing weird things, if anyone knows how to do this please tell me!
I am still trying to wrap my head around how it all works, but I feel like I am slowly getting the hang of it. One thing I was wondering, and forgive me if I get the terminologies wrong, since instances are their own little ecosystems, wouldn't there be multiple versions of the identical communities i.e. gaming, videos etc., or is that the beauty of it all?
Another minor concern I have is that since instances are run by individuals, wouldn't there be a risk of losing massive amounts of content if said owner no longer wishes to maintain their instance or "goes rogue" for a lack of a better word and shuts down access to all communities located on that particular instance/server.
I think those are all fair points. Reddit did duplicate communities too, sometimes because some communities wanted to focus on specific elements of the topic they were covering, sometimes because of splits and disagreements, and sometimes just because it happened over time. People tend to find their niche, as do communities, but there will usually be a main one with the most members and activity.
Regarding individual instances, the way Mastodon has tried to manage that is by asking the people running instances to commit to a set of rules, one of which is giving appropriate notice should they wish to shut it down. This has been adhered to for the most part, and instances that don't voluntarily subscribe to those rules can get degenerated, or more likely just not promoted through the various explorer tools. So long as there's notice, there's opportunity to migrate to another instance and copy over data. It would be good to see something similar on Lemmy, if it's not already there (this is my first day!).
Maybe lemmy can already do this, but maybe we need to reintroduce the concept of ‘mirrors’ — being able to create a community on one server that can mirror a copy of all posts from a community on another server, so if the original disappears then the mirror can be promoted into its place.
…or maybe this is already a thing, or isn’t necessary? I’m new here and still learning the ropes.
It feels quite right. We need to set up lots of niche communities, but what I miss the most is the user base. It was diverse, and lemmy is known to have an specific user profile. Would be nice to reach out, wear a former redditors badge, and wear it with pride!
I'm surprised at how many Linux instances there are here. Very few Normie's instances so far.
I'm trying to understand it still. I understand you can visit communities from any other instance, but are communities shared between them? I mean, if there's an r/NFL in lemmy.world, can lemmy.ml also contain an r/NFL and would those two be two different things?
First of all the r/ doesn’t apply here (okay, I’m being pedantic, sorry), but if I understood correctly what you’re asking, you can see any community from all instances. Each instance can also create a community of the same name (so in that case they wouldn’t be shared) but you can access !community@instance everywhere and it’s the same for all
Yes this would be two different communities on two different servers. Right now everything here is still wild west but overtime you will get something like a "default" NFL community where most people visit and several smaller sub-communites on different servers.
We have a gaming on lemmy.ml and we have a gaming on beehaw.org. The later is already bigger and way more active than the former.
First time here for me, and I’m confused as well.
Say there’s a ‘movies’ community on this server, and one on lemmy.ml, and over time the one on ml becomes the definitive one, do I need to have an account on the ml server as well or is there a way to be able to see multiple communities on different servers in my stream?
Thanks for taking the time to help us newcomers out.
You only need one account to access the entire Lemmy network. So you can still access the movies community on lemmy.ml if it does become the definitive one and considering that it's the "main" instance right now, that shouldn't be hard either.
I mean, I'm commenting here in lemmy.world from lemmy.ml
Have a look at this post, which will help you find some communities to join: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/61827
In short...
lemmy.world.community(aka subreddit) also has a home instance. The home instance for this community happens to be also belemmy.world, same as our accounts.lemmy.worldfederates with.So while it's possible for multiple instances to have an
nflcommunity, it's not necessary since you can sub to the NFL community on another instance and that's totally normal and expected. Think of it as the subreddits name includes its instance name, so!nfl@lemmy.mlis just a different subreddit than!nfl@lemmy.world, just like on Reddit you could have competing subs named/r/nfland/r/nflfootball. And just like reddit, when things start to calm down, I think you will see that in cases where a bunch of dupe subs exist... one or two with active mods start to dominate on user count and those end up being the most interesting. It will be a bit wild west for a while though. Lemmy is a lot smaller than reddit, though, when I find dupes of a topic I care about, my strategy had been to subscribe to them all and I'll cancel the ones that flopped a few months from now when it's clear what is active and what's dead.So my account's home instance is lemmy.world. Do I need to make a new account to access another instance, or can I use this one across every instance?
Is there an easier way to find communities on other instances? I wish I could browse another instance as if it were "local" to organically find more communities.
There is!
Click Communities, and from there you can sort Local (Communities that originate from your instance, for you it's lemmy.world!), or All, which includes most communities every public instance (like how I'm commenting to you from beehaw.org!)
From there, simply subscribe to what communities you like, even if they come from a different instance.
Here's a link for you to investigate.
I like it. Bringing over some No Man's Sky people. Is there a shorthand way to link communities? Like typing /r/NoMansSky would link to the subreddit on reddit, but /c/NoMansSky doesn't link to the community here. Would be a cool future feature if it's not one now!
You can! With a few caveats.
[asklemmy](/c/asklemmy@asklemmy.ml) becomes asklemmy
However it won't work if your instance doesn't know the community exists. In those cases it needs to be searched for in the usual cumbersome way, but after that the relative links should work.
Thank you!
I'm having trouble navigating through lemmy. The Frontpage was different before I created an account. Could someone explain the instances? I logged in to lemmy.world does that mean the content on the rest of lemmy is off limits? I have to create an account for each instance?
I see there is lemmy.ml and others
Edit: I get it now. Thanks for the explanation
No, that's actually the beauty of it all.
Imagine if now every subreddit would be located on its own server, not somewhere in a Reddit headquarters. So r/funny is now running on server with address my-server123.com and thus have address my-server123.com/r/funny. r/europe is now running on eu.gov and thus have address eu.gov/r/europe. etc. Good, but lets say I want to create a subreddit r/myFavoriteYoutuber but I don't have a server. No problem, I contact people at r/funny and they allow my subreddit to run on their server, so its address will be my-server123.com/r/myFavoriteYoutuber. The "my-server123.com" and "eu.gov" is what we'd call an instance.
I write some extended explanation after lunch :)
This has some pros and cons:
You might say - ok but I don't care about instances, servers and whatnot. Also now instead of one Reddit website, we have thousands of them! Do I need to register everywhere? I don't want this, I just want to to come to Reddit and browse stuff from everywhere!
... and this is possible! Instances can communicate with eachother so with account on one instance you can connect (not login) to all the instances you want. Basically your browser or smartphone app just now needs to download posts from different servers instead of one giant Reddit server. But it needs your help, you need to specify the address of the instance otherwise it doesn't know where to connect. This is the same as email, if you want to send an email to John Smith, you don't just write recipient as john.smith, you need to write the server also so john.smith@gmail.com
So if I take the example from previous comment, you cannot just write that you want subscribe to r/funny because your app or browser doesn't know where the r/funny is. You'd need to write funny@my-server123.com or europe@eu.gov. And voila, that's basically Lemmy
I lost my job the day I found out about the issues with third party apps for Reddit. I found Lemmy and Mastodon searching for alternatives. So far this community is a lot more wholesome and I'm enjoying being a part of it
Lets work to keep it that way! While the ethos of individual communities is up to the community, I love the vibe they're propagating over on Beehaw. We can work to make sure Lemmy doesn't become another 4chan lite.
I'm trying out Jerboa but it keeps telling me I'm not logged in every time I try to do something.
Anyone else having this issue?
I can't get it to work but I'm very new.
This is my first visit so I'm still trying to figure things out. I'm on the mobile website right now because I haven't been able to figure out how to log in on the Jerboa app. Can anyone tell me what "instance" means on Jerboa when you're logging in? I tried a couple different ones from the dropdown menu but they all said " incorrect login."
Instance is basically a server. All of the servers talk to each other, so you can post and comment on any one of them. But your physical account resides on only one server. Currently, you can't migrate your account from one server to another, but it's planned as a feature in future releases of Lemmy.
Your instance (server) is lemmy.world, so you need to type that in the instance field. Thus, your username on Lemmy (and in the fediverse) is Violet@lemmy.world.
Thanks for this explanation. Where are "subreddits" and how do I find them? Are they on different instances?
"subreddits" are communities. You can find them with the search field from your instance, or using the community browser.
It's quite laggy (understandably) and I'm having trouble navigating myself, finding communities/topics, finding people to interact with etc. Naturally there will be teething problems early on, and different problems will arise as the reddit exodus increases. Still, I think Lemmy has huge potential.
Check out https://browse.feddit.de/ for finding communities, it's not 100% perfect but it's a good start :)
I tried to do that and it logged me out :-/
Sorry, what exactly did you try to do and what happened? Happy to help I just don't want to go off on a tech support ramble and have it turn out I completely misunderstood the problem :D
I clicked on the link to communities, and it said "you must log in". I stupidly didn't write my (auto-generated) password down and Opera isn't letting me view or c&p my saved passwords. So I had to go back to the home page and refresh to be logged in again.
You gotta copy the link to the community then paste it into your instance's (lemmy.world) search bar.
is there any advantage of using one instance vs another? I made accounts on both kbin and lemmy.world, is it all the same except whatever UI i prefer?
When i visit some communities in kbin, it tells it the posts might not all be up to date
You can join communities hosted on another server than the one you registered with. Some posts might take time to update because I am guessing the two servers need to communicate the changes.
I'm liking it but if there's a search function I'm not finding it? Like, I want to go looking for communities by topic.
For all of Lemmy: https://lemmy.nz/communities/listing_type/All/page/1
For just your instance: https://lemmy.nz/communities/listing_type/Local/page/1
There isn't really a way to search by topic as of right now, but you can search in those menu's with generalized subjects to find related communities
Thank you!
Pretty good, can someone explain how federation works with Lemmy? Are communities linked?
I'm commenting here from another instance (feddit.de) where I'm logged in and this community is available at https://feddit.de/c/lemmyworld@lemmy.world
Similarly, you can just access communities from other instances here, e.g. https://lemmy.world/c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
but like if there are two Gaming communities on different instances, do they merge? or are they separate?
They are separate. Think of community names like email addresses: john.smith@here.edu is different from john.smith@there.com
Similarly, gaming@lemmy.ml is different from gaming@beehaw.org
This is the best explanation.
Thanks for having us! I'm excited to try this out. I am only just trying to figure out how all of this works.
I have subscribed to several communities now, but when I go to the main page, I still see the generic content that was there before I logged in. How do I view a feed of just the communities I have subscribed to (analogous to the front page on reddit)
There should be a button to view subscribed communities at the top along with local instance communities and all known communities. You can change the default in the settings.
Oh, I got it. Thank you!
I have finally managed to create an account, so do we have CSS like original reddit? Other then that lemmy seems pretty cool
It doesn't look like we have the same css feature yet, but you can start your own lemmy instance just to host your community and customize the hell out of it.