Lemmy

When reading posts sorted by date, I often have the timeline import a whole bunch of old posts from one community at the top. This is annoying since I basically have to reload the page, otherwise all relevant content is gone.

The new sort is pretty important, since Lemmy doesn't have a lot of posts anyways.

Would Lemmy be a good fit for adding individual "blogging" as a feature? What I mean is the ability for a user to create posts tied to their account instead of a specific community. The default Lemmy Frontend/webapp has all the basic features that would normally make up a blog: ability to make posts, markdown editor, hell even replies that you normally need to disable on blogs because of spam. I can imagine adding a section next to the "Communities" button that says "Blogs" where you could browse users blogs. Not sure if you'd want to federate the blogs but something I'm thinking about.

Not asking this as a feature request on the part of the developers. This should be something I implement myself. But I thought I'd throw the idea out in the wild and see if folks could either tell me "why not" or point out what might be problematic with this.

Apologies for all the translators that weren't able to sign up before (it was email issues), this should be fixed now.

I had an awful night. I was surrounded by incredibly racist, sexist, ignorant, and insensitive people.

I was astounded by the lack of basic knowledge about the world that was possible. I knew conceptually that ignorant people with relative privilege existed, but seeing it in action is another thing. It just hit me in the gut to hear slurs flying around, and hearing unironical defenses for fascism, apartheid, and social Darwinism.

This got me thinking. I have to be honest. I sometimes fear Lemmy could be a place for violence and dogma, but after tonight, after being surrounded by absolute pieces of shit, I have to recognize this place is much more special than I gave it credit for.

Here in Lemmy, I consistently see posts that reflect a sound understanding of how the world works, be it ecology, politics and economics, programming, heck, even basic sciences. I also see humane concern for the wellbeing of others, regardless of who they are*.

*Well, to be fair, maybe I do see a bit less concern for those who are most destroying the livelihoods of others. But even they are sometimes seen as victims of a system.

The point is I am grateful for you. I love that you aim to grow your knowledge about the world. I love that you're empathetic and kind*. I love that this place is inclusive and fosters growth among us.

I just realized that lemmy doesn't have karma like reddit. I've never paid much attention to karma. But even so it does seem to play an important role in moderation on reddit.

For instance, many subs put a karma restriction on who can post which helps decrease trolls.

And while it's true that karma gives an incentive for people to seek karma I think it's overall regulatory principle might be worth considering as a trade off.

What are the recommended specs, dimensions,etc for the icon and banner we create for a new instance?

From the UI that pretty much copies Reddit's in the regard, it would seem that yes. However, the votes are actually not secret. Maybe they were when they were local, but now they are transmitted to the federated instances. From other platforms, like Friendica, one can actually see the votes as (dis)likes. I can see your votes.

Because of Lemmy's UI, it is very easy to believe that the votes are secret, and many users probably assume they are. For example, I am quite sure the ones who use an alt from another instance to double-downvote do make that assumption. I think this fact should be disclosed in a clear way, at least in the instances' sidebar, if not in a banner.

From there on, I see two possibilities:

• embrace that the votes are not secret, and allow Lemmy user to optionally see them
• make the votes actually secret

As a Friendica user, who is used to like as a public appreciation mark, I am naturally in favor of the first option, but that is only my personal preference.

If the second one is preferred, it means that the other admins should never receive the voters' identities. One should not trust the other admins to just not display them. In fact, I think "never trust the remote admin" should be an important rule in the fediverse, an instance should generally protect its own users rather than expecting others to do it in its stead.

In that case, I think it would be appropriate that "Vote" should be an disctinct activity from "Like", and in particular one that cannot be federated with the authors name. Maybe it could be a private thing sent to the Group, who in turn sends a IsVoted activity? This is pure fantasy, I am not qualified to suggest an actual implementation, I just think it should be distinguished from other platforms' public likes.

I can't found it how can I post embedded videos or posts from social media sites, like on Reddit or other similar sites.

Is it possible to navigate through Lemmy with keyboard shortcuts? I appreciate the vim-like shortbuts in Mastodon.

I have finished writing instructions for deploying lemmyBB on a production server, which you can follow at the link above. Right now the project is still in a very early stage, nevertheless main funcionality is already working. This includes browsing communities, posts and comments, writing posts/comments and registration/login. Before developing the project further, I would like to get some feedback from users and admins.

If you are interested, you can follow the instructions to install lemmyBB on your own server. This setup also installs lemmy-ui, in order to access functionality which is not yet available in lemmyBB (particularly moderation).

You can also try out lemmyBB on a test server with this setup, namely lemmybb.lemmy.ml. It runs lemmy-ui at lemmyui.lemmy.ml, which shows the same data in another format, and the same account login works on both domains. Registrations are currently open, but keep in mind that this instance is only meant for testing, until other instances are created.

If you notice any bugs or want to request new features, please open an issue or comment here.

Lemmy is structured in a way that backend (database, api, federation etc) and frontend (html, css, javascript) are completely separate. This makes it possible to create other frontends which can take the place of lemmy-ui. I have long been playing with the thought of having a Lemmy frontend that looks more like a traditional forum. Now I finally found some time to work on this, and get an initial proof of concept working.

To reduce the amount of work, the project uses HTML templates and CSS themes from phpBB, which are open source under GPLv2. This also has the advantage that many preexisting phpBB themes can be used for lemmyBB. It is written in Rust, because it allows for tight integration with the Lemmy API, and is generally a great language for webservers.

For now the funcionality is very basic, but nonetheless its already usable. You can:

• browse the local post listing
• browse comments
• login and logout
• create new posts and comments

To give it a try, run the following commands on your local computer, replacing lemmy.ml with your own instance:

git clone https://github.com/Nutomic/lemmyBB.git
LEMMY_INTERNAL_HOST=https://lemmy.ml cargo run

If there is any specific feature that you would like to see added, please open an issue. For now there arent any instructions for deploying lemmyBB to a server. If you would like to do that, please open an issue as well.

This post was made from lemmyBB.

Discussions here are often very interesting, and at times incredibly helpful. If I had no clue about Lemmy, but I searched online for a topic that happened to be discussed in Lemmy, will that discussion appear in the search engine?

As a related question, do you think the discussion example would show up in the search results in the most informative way? I mean in an search engine optimization-kind of way.

I like it a lot. I come here often, it's a good addition to my reddit use, it has some nice people and some interesting content.

I love that it is decentralized, which means that there will always be a server without ads, tracking or bad governance.

Also it feels like being part of Lemmy is being part of something new and novel. The idea of decentralizing services online, away from corporate silos, should be resurrected.

What is this post?

A quick and dirty look into Lemmy instances, their size and interactions, and some insights.

Disclaimers

• I AM NOT AN EXPERT OR WITNESS: I only started using Lemmy in March 2022. Lemmy was around for around 3 years before that. I am not a developer or instance owner.
• I DID NOT GO AND TALK TO PEOPLE WHO UNDERSTAND THIS STUFF: This is just me exploring for fun and starting a conversation. This is not a proper study. Consider telling any one who links you to this page as if it's an expert historical account that I called them an idiot.
• This is limited by my experience and my searching, it's not comprehensive. If someone made a dark instance, I probably won't find it. If there's some deep lore, I probably don't know it.

Thanks to https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list for many of these stats.

Alright,

Now for the casual rambling.

Organic posting started on lemmy.ml from April 2019 so I will consider that the start of Lemmy as a service (my understanding is that lemmy.ml is the oldest non-dev instance)

As of now (May 2022) AFAIK, the Lemmy-based sites with the most total user comments are:

• hexbear.net (2.5M)
• lemmy.ml (114K)
• lemmygrad.ml (105K)
• bakchodi.org (42K)
• wolfballs.com (15K)
• szmer.info (15K)
• feddit.de (3K)
• [dev instances ignored]
• sopuli.xyz (1504)
• lemmy.eus (1262)
• lemmy.ca (974)

The count of users active in the last month is similar:

• hexbear.net (unlisted, approx. 1.3K in the last 14 days)
• lemmygrad.ml (508)
• lemmy.ml (474)
• bakchodi.org (286)
• szmer.info (65)
• feddit.it (51)
• sopuli.xyz (31)
• wolfballs.com (29)
• feddit.de (29)
• lemmy.ca (17)

My guess is that the difference at the bottom of the list is due to highly federated instances spreading their user comments over many instances with more activity, and also due to some instances peaking a few months ago and then declining. For those new to user statistics, you'll notice that popularity usually tends to be exponential: more popular things get more popular.

What was that first one? Hexbear?

Two of the sites listed there, Hexbear (aka. chapo.chat) and Bakchodi, do not federate. They are not part of the Fediverse, but they are using Lemmy. Hexbear is actually running their own fork of Lemmy. In that sense it reminds me of Gab, another huge island fork, but only due to size and isolation. While I can't find an admin statement, various Hexbear Gitea issues from 2020 and this comment from December 2021 "We’re working on bringing Lemmy up to speed with some of the features our “fork” (it’s more of a rewrite) has. When that’s ready we’ll switch to that which will already have federation ready for us." and this from Feb 2022 "The only issue is that [Hexbear] doesn’t support federation for semi-technical reasons (happy to explain), but that’s going to be fixed (later this year maybe)?" indicate Hexbear is open to the idea but unready (this 2020 comment even states they chose Lemmy precisely because of its federation goal), and Bakchodi appear to have just not set any up (the admin states "Federation is not functional as of now." in a post and nothing more). Contrast both against Gab who cited abuse/security issues and lack of local federation users for their voluntary removal of existing federation.

Another point regarding Hexbear and Bakchodi is that they are continuations of existing popular communities: I believe that Hexbear is a continuation of reddit's banned subreddit /r/ChapoTrapHouse, and Bakchodi is a continuation of the banned /r/chodi (which I believe was banned around the same time as /r/GenZedong's quarantining caused a mass exodus to https://lemmygrad.ml/c/genzedong ). To the best of my knowledge, lemmy.ml, most of lemmygrad, wolfballs and szmer are new original sites rather than an existing active community migrating as a mass.

Connections

Most instances are connected into the Fediverse. Hexbear and Bakchodi appears to be the only active non-trivial instances that don't federate.

Due to the political environment of the internet today and the content currently on Lemmy, I personally think it makes sense to classify the current federation networks of Lemmy instances into four loose groups:

• socialist 'left': Primarily value socialism and/or anarchism, and related topics. Generally explicit about their instance's political alignment. The largest group. Examples are lemmy.ml, lemmygrad.ml, midwest.social, and would include hexbear.net if it were connected.
• liberalist 'right': Primarily value freedom of speech and other liberty. While none yet are e~~xplicitly politically-biased through administration~~[correction], they do overwhelmingly have users with views typical of the American 'right-wing' as an inevitable result of where they are promoted, the ideas only they tolerate and the existing posts. Examples are wolfballs.com and exploding-heads.com.
• general open: Overall mainstream OR diverse political views, will generally tolerate political instances on both sides of the above divide. Often national instances or 'general-purpose'. mander.xyz is an overt example, gtio.io is also an example. lotide.fbxl.net would be an example, but it's a lotide instance rather than Lemmy.
• anti-intolerant: Primarily value friendliness and inclusivity, and so will readily block instances that tolerate intolerance, such as those in the liberalist 'right' category and potentially those further in the socialist 'left' category. An example might be sopuli.xyz.

These are all politically determined, as unlike Mastodon and Pleroma there don't tend to be any instances based around controversial single topics or around graphic content that causes instances to defederate. I thought there were more instances that blocked both sides of the 'left'/'right' divide, but they don't seem to exist yet (which is a good sign) beyond lemmy.rollenspiel.monster. It is also worth mentioning that lemmy.ml has blocked some instances due to abuse rather than any cultural disagreement.

The first two of the four categories are by far the most popular, even if not the most numerous in instances, probably due to them picking up users being kicked out of reddit and reddit alternatives as they block more and more political subreddits or become unsavory. The earlier kicking of many 'harassment' subreddits from reddit around 2015 lead to many 'right-wing' users to populate Voat and then later bannings lead to communities.win becoming popular, which I believe explains why Lemmy doesn't yet have a strong influx of users who align politically with those banned subreddits and more-so with recently-banned communist subreddits (the core developers' political views and lemmy.ml's reputation may have impacted people moving to instances named after Lemmy or considering hosting new instances, but I suspect it wouldn't affect people who were invited to a place called Wolfballs).

Interestingly, there is already a mirror instance that reposts from reddit: goldandblack.us.to

Growth

fediverse.observer has some stats. Ignoring the huge outliers in the middle, there has been a jump in growth in the past two months which I would mostly attribute to the influx to lemmygrad.ml wow look at that second graph and the launch of unfederated-but-included bakchodi. Apart from that, there has been a remarkably consistent growth in all the active instances. That's a good sign that this group of communities could last a while.

Some concluding thoughts, with regards to reddit

As someone who hasn't really used reddit in many years, I like to promote the view of us being independent, growing our own culture, our own norms and not merely aiming to mirror the same shallow emptiness. The bottom line is, we grow a lot when reddit shuts a place down, and as you can see in some of those stats, growth creates more potential for growth. I think it's important to think about what habits we see now both here and there that we want to encourage, and which habits we don't. Think about what should each community tolerate and reject and enforce (and make no mistake, that answer differs depending on purpose and audience!) and how do we redirect people in the wrong places or teach those who are mistaken? (protip: typing these things out each time is very dumb! That's why we invented FAQ pages!) What struggles did Mastodon face as they started to grow more and more?

Parts of reddit and similar groups will continue to arrive. Look at this list of communities that used to be allowed: it started off with the very blatant controversies like sexualizing minors, moved on to open blatant racism-focused places that conducted raids, and now they're at banning subreddits about a US (former) president and pro-China memes. Now that Lemmy has established itself as the home of some of the most recently banned communities, I personally think it's only a matter of time before reddit pops off a few more communities as they face pressure from media flak, investors or other major influences, and we should prepare for how to handle this: make potentially targeted communities aware that we exist before an incident, and make sure communities have a clear set of rules and guidelines written for the people that come in expecting this to be reddit again. I think this is an opportunity to fix the things we don't want repeated.

Does anyone know if it is possible to create a new community on another lemmy instance using my lemmy.ml account or do I have to necessarily create a new user on the new instance?

And if the community is already created, is it possible to add moderators from other instances or do community moderators have to be registered to that instance?

If I understand correctly, users of other fediverse things like Mastodon can follow lemmy communities (and users?) but the reverse is not currently possible. Would it not make sense for lemmy users to be able to subscribe to a hashtag or user on a mastodon instance?

It's my, general, understanding that most people connect to the Internet through mobile apps.

If this is the case, then why have apps such as Remmel, Lemmur and jerboa taken a back seat?

IMHO, it would be a mistake to market Lemmy without these mobile apps functioning properly.

I have forked the three aforementioned mobile apps here and will try to 'drum up' support from developers wherever I can find them.

Please, if you don't feel comfortable talking to me about this here, then send me a private message. Thank you.

Lemmy.ml has long had some political conflict among the userbase, especially in communities like worldnews. This is because the instance is composed of both leftists (anarchist/communist) and liberals (those who agree with the mainstream political views in western countries). Additionally, the instance admins all belong to the former group.

Recently we made an announcement offering free Lemmy instance hosting for one year, for non-politics instances. We are hereby making a similar offer to host a liberal or mainstream political instance, which can accomodate those who are unhappy with lemmy.ml moderation.

This has many advantages. Instance admins have full power to set the rules, block federated instances (like lemmygrad.ml), or remove unwanted content. An administration team that is closer aligned politically would certainly be an improvement for some of the users here.

So if you are interested to host such an instance, send an email to contact@join-lemmy.org some relevant details about yourself. You will also have to buy a domain. We will only host one such instance, so if multiple people are interested, you should coordinate among yourselves. As in the original offer, the hosting will be limited to one year.

On a side note, we would also like to help with the creation of a general-purpose instance that is less focused on politics than most of the existing instances. This is fully within the terms of the initial "free instance hosting" announcement, so if you are interested, send us an email!

Forgefriends highlights how propriety services, like GitHub, can lock in a projects and destroy its momentum.

If Microsoft were to release a competing link aggregator; then they could persuade GitHub (Microsoft's subsidiary) into locking or removing the main repository for Lemmy's source code.

We just launched our instance at https://beehaw.org not too long ago.

However, a good number of people have been asking questions like this for the past several days on our Discord server.

P.S. - I will have a big surprise (hopefully...if all goes well) for the Lemmy community in March.

This is horrible and terrible. Just suspend new subscription untill you find a way to address this thing. Now we have gore image too. Please just shut down new subscriptions for now, those trolls attacks are completely out of control

In my opinion the only good thing it does is to create copies of already existing communities, so basically people tend to follow one community or the other and it divides the people who could be active.

If you want to create a community that's similar to one and for some reason you don't want to be a part of it, find another name, if you can't find another name, create your own instance. So if Lemmy is federating now we could have /c/worldnews, /c/world_news, and the same applies to every other instance that decides to do the same. In my opinion this only segregates people.

The same applies to uppercase letters, which Reddit uses but luckily Lemmy does not, imagine how many copies of a community could be created if you use both.