Makes me happy to see it, a future for a platform that is not locked by a single large player. Instead, I can have my own profile that I actually own and do not “lend”.
Yep! We come from all over.
Lemm.ee has been lagging for me lately idk if it has to do with all the new signups
Yay!!! Let’s go :)
I hope this keeps growing. I’m loving it here, and the fediverse idea is amazing. I hope we succeed and descentralize social media. Power to the people again
This is great but i feel like we still need some speciality communities that will drive people here. This is an amazing start though
I think we need default instances that new users are put in to stream line the sign up process. Instances with little to no defederation so people can window shop for a instance that reflects their values. Or even just browse.
Looking through a intimidating list of instances all with their own special rules is not for everyone.
I agree, though you’ll probably get a lot of pushback on that from Fediverse enthusiasts since it goes against the idea of the decentralised concept and we should “distribute the users more evenly among instances”. At least that was the way discussion went on this topic back in 2023.
For the moment I feel like lemm.ee is a fairly solid “default” to recommend, though. Few defederations and great admins, very stable amd large enough to have a populated /all but not the massive behemoth that is .world (which I do agree has gotten too large).
Glad to be part of it!
The growth in 2025 has been staggering, ngl. And this is the kind of thing which converts from a trickle to a tsunami very quickly. It never happens with one shock. But a consistent amount of enshittification shocks. Reddit’s desperate struggle for profitability practically ensures those will keep happening, so this is all inevitable at this point. The only thing that is uncertain is whether digg can recapture the fleeing masses who are not cognizant of the dangers of corporate vc-backed enshittification yet, like bluesky did to Twitter.
But a consistent amount of enshittification shocks
I think the proper term is enshittification sharts
Lel
The user growth we’re seeomg could result in an overwhelming flood of users at anytime. Which is why people should consider supporting the lemmy devs and instance admins either financially or through contributions so that the lemmy software and infrastructure is ready to handle the growth.
This seems unrealistic in my opinion. Normal people really don’t like to donate, unfortunately. I think that Lemmy needs to make it so anyone can easily self host an instance without too much fuss. Something like docker on an old laptop. I know they have docker containers for Lemmy already, but in my opinion, they aren’t simple enough to set up. And there should be an option to bundle it with a wireguard VPN tunnel, so that they really don’t need to fuff about with reverse proxy to browse on your phone. This way, the cost is distributed across all users. It should be that setting up a domain and port forwarding should be the largest hurdle.
I can tell you as a sample of one that everything you just said would scare me off
Its not unrealistic. I don’t think anyone expects 50% or 100% of users to donate. Also sites sustained off ads get less than a few cents per user. Donating literally anything puts you ahead of an ad supporting user. If Every lemmy user donated a dollar a year there would be 500k in rev to support the development. When the culture shifts from everything must be free to everyone giving a little to the services they use we can easily fund the costs of these platforms.
You can host an instance very easily on low spec hardware but its a lot harder than giving a small donation.
In the sims modding community people pay $5 for a dress and modders make over 100k a year. This is because sims players are happy to pay for things they find valuable.
Normal people really don’t like to donate,
I’m on a medium-small instance; if %5 of users donate a dollar a month, the hardware would likely be paid for.
If lemmy.world had %0.01 of users paying, they could probably cover their hardware, storage and network fees.
If you’re not paying the admin’s mortgage, it not that hard to chip in. Unlike the other “options”, no one is getting ad revenue or selling your data, if that’s not worth a cup of cheap coffee a month for 1:20 people they have their priorities in the wrong places. .
And then in 5-10 years the users will destroy it like everything else on the Internet…
Seriously, though, make me wrong - because this kind of model is so new to me, I don’t know, is there anything different about this that will resist it going the way of things that were once good and eventually weren’t, like Craigslist and Reddit?
Obviously a lot of Reddit sucks due to how it’s run, but let’s not overlook that part of its downfall, like with Craigslist, is the users as it grew having no respect for the model. I’ve been on my way out since well before the API exodus (and yet I was addicted and too lazy until now, that’s on me). People posting whatever they want wherever they want and having very little understanding of nuance in language (“oddly satisfying” doesn’t just mean “I like this”), misusing downvoting (I know I’m yelling at clouds, but that was where Reddit was doomed from the start to become an echo chamber, and I didn’t know if Lemmy is different in that respect - do votes determine visibility here?), moderators becoming more power hungry, and I’m sorry if this is mean, but the userbase trending younger steering content much more to “mah crush, aitah?,” fake stories for “points,” and I feel the general populace there being more gullible. Not to mention the same comments being made over and over, and I’m not talking about bots, I’m talking about constant “this is the way” and “username checks out.”
I’ve seen so many actual discussions here already that are full of real passion and good points even when they’re heated, some lovely user created and has posted around a really through socialist reading list. I’ve only seen “this is the way” once. Reddit is lazy one-word answers and downvotes. How do we encourage this and discourage that?
Anyway, I rant. This place is great now and will only get better as it grows, but I hope this model will in some way resist that downfall. But I’ve come to accept that nothing on the Internet is permanent. And also that people are gonna people and if I don’t like that, it’s on me to leave.
lemmy already has a bunch of echo chambers, I think it’s inevitable from the design of a network like this where the user selects what content to view and be served
rant about eternal September, !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com and the young
There is beehaw.org a very peculiar instance, they defederated from lemmy.world to preserve their unique community vibe. Fediverse enables a more fine grained approach to handle those issues.
A lot of problems are still there but there are other projects that want to address them like piefed
The difference is the way it is run. You got it. And if one day Midwest.social starts doing things you hate and treating it’s users like crap, then come on over to lemmy.world or lemmy.ca, or one if the other thousands instances.
People hosting the database are not the owners of the platform unlike Reddit. They get to tell us how we can use it just because they host the database.
I’ve already moved at least once and have been very happy it was as easy as it is.
I’ve never moved, but I assume you just create a new account and start over. Or is there more you can do?
it’s possible to migrate your subs on lemmy
it’s possible to both migrate your subs and make a redirect on mastodon for followers, but the redirect requires the old server to remain in service.
Gotcha. That sounds like a good solution.
If your instance gets destroyed, there will be others to join.
You bring up some good points and I do believe that the model that Lemmy use can insulate it from a lot of those issues.
People posting whatever they want wherever they want and having very little understanding of nuance in language I dont think this would be a huge problem, mods can remove unwanted content and instances can decide what type of users they want to accept. As for misusing downvotes I think that issue never has ever mattered and the difference between reddit and lemmy is we have a open source algorithm to decide how content is served. If anyone can think of a better way to server content they’re free to put that in.
moderators becoming more power hungry This is an issue on every platform but Lemmy is more insulated against it than reddit for two reasons. First is that we can have the same community name shared across servers. On reddit once someone gets the catchy community name they can camp it forever. On Lemmy you can just make the community somewhere else with the same name. Second, each instance can decide how it wants to moderate its communities on Lemmy ML they are OK with power hungry mods but on other instances its frowned upon. On reddit its ignored completely.
One thing that makes Lemmy better is that its made by the users for the users. We have the code, we have the protocol its built on. This means we can have Lemmy tailored to however we want. We are not at the whim of a massive company that only cares about profit. If I have an idea for a feature i can goto the github and suggest it, better yet if I could program it I could help build that feature. If I dont like a change that is made by the lemmy devs I can fork the project and remove the change and still interact with the rest of lemmy.
Yeah. Reddit is currently enshitifying in overdrive. They used to just do dumb features nobody wants, but now they are actively harming the base. The entire Luigi over-moderation this is just bad, and it feels like they want the formerly leftist site to go full maga now. and even if I do have to use it, the website often tends to not function properly these days, with the site constantly reloading, or voting functions to be broken. This is the year of lemmy.
I figured the planned paywalling of content was going to be the last straw for me, but then they gave me a fucking warning for upvoting. I made a Lemmy account the same day. Fuck them.
The paywall shit is still planned for this year afaik so be prepared to see more of Reddit heading this way.
deleted by creator
I got a warning for a comment. Ive been on reddit for almost 13 years and have never been warned before. It’s crazy. My beliefs and writing style haven’t changed. Reddit has.
want the formerly leftist site to go full maga now.
Reddit and X, sitting in a tree.
The MAU of lemmy.world is ~18,600 which is a bit greater than the combined MAU of the next 7 instances (a big help here is lemm.ee which has ~7000 MAU). This is a really healthy spread of users and it means we don’t lose lemmy if the biggest instance goes down.
Compare that to Mastodon, where mastodon.social has more MAU (~372,000) than the combined MAU of the next 30 instances at least (I gave up counting). Thats not healthy for the ecosystem. Though tbf the total MAU of mastodon is ~899,000 so without mastodon.social they will still have ~527,000 but it will be very spread out.
I think the biggest instance, lemmy.world, not being operated by the Lemmy devs is also a good health indicator - on every other Fedi service I can think of, the server run by the devs is the biggest by far.
I don’t think it’s healthy enough but certainly better than the mastodon ecosystem
It’s mostly because people keep recommending LW instead of other instances.
I didn’t really understand this on the way in. Is there an explanation somewhere. I found a mobile browser app and it sort of stuck me on one without me being able to select.
I think I’m with lemme ee?
Got it. Is there a way for me to transfer or do you just register into a new account once I figure out the best server for me?
You have to make a new account in order to move instances. But I think you can export your subscriptions.
Awesome thanks! I will scan around for a couple weeks and then register into a new account. Being a reddifugee with the recent censorship and a big “Center for humane tech” nerd am excited to be shifting in a better direction - so will for sure be invested in server and site health.
You can browse instances without an account before applying for one, if you want to get a taste first.
Register for a new account, but you can also export, then import your subscription list and other settings.
Think of your instance you signed up as as your email provider. Using that email you can send messages to anyone else who has an email. You do not have to pick a specific email provider to use email, gmail, hotmail etc they can all talk to each other. Lemmy works in a similar way except it not limited to DMs, the instance you sign up for allows you to talk to people across all Lemmy instances and see posts from other instances. When you go to “All” on Lemmy you are seeing all posts across all instances. When you go to Local, you are only seeing your home instance.
I think the distribution is fine as long as we still have nodes with good capacity. Our real issue is everyone demanding to be on the same instance because they’re scared of Federation.
What I’d REALLY like to see is a Federated Resource Locator service, kinda like nameservice for a federated user.
rumba@mastodon.social is 101254684, if I move to rumba@ingrowntownail.es, I want all my followers to do that lookup and still be following me. It’s great to have my settings migrate with me, but it would be bangin’ to have other people linked to me to still follow me.
There are no followers on Lemmy
there are on mastodon
Currently using phtn.app for browsing lemmy, though it’s a bit buggy on mobile. V2 will be coming soon so hopefully most bugs will be fixed.
What y’all using?
A mobile browser for phone a desktop browser for desktop.
Idk why anybody would actually want a third party app that is so insecure.
Voyager on iOS is great.
I tried it but I have one beef with it: once logged in, my subscribed communities are no longer appearing and i have to resubbscribe to all of them. I did it once on phtn and wouldn’t want to do it all over again as I’m hopping around lemmy apps.
Wait, aren’t community subscriptions synced with your account?
I thought so, but at least in Voyagger iOS after I logged in I had no subscriptions. I didn’t bother to double check for now as I’m quite happy with phtn.
LE: reinstalled voyager and now I have my subscriptions linked with my account. Looks dope too.
Nice!
vger.app
Firefox
Connect for Lemmy. Super under- rated.
Boost for Lemmy on Android.
I’m using my web browser (on mobile)! I know I’m not the only one, but that’s usually pretty unpopular. I’ve never been big on social media, but I’ve never used an app for any of them I have used in the past, including Reddit. Website with ad blockers for me, screw those guys. Here, though, I might give in eventually and try an app…
Phtn.app is actually a website/selfhosted interface for lemmy. The mobile PWA is a big buggy, but the desktop one works fine.
I also just use the web interface and it is so simple and excellent to use. I will never use an app for this.
Idk why people want to use apps to begin with. They love to be hacked or spyed on? I just don’t get it.
Self hosted tesseract web UI.
This one looks sleak af.
Voyager on android, im perfectly happy with it.
Thunder. I used to use Sync for reddit before, and used it a bit for Lemmy. But I like thunder a bit more.
I also use Interstellar for mbin.
Interesting. Is mbin the same as kbin or?
From what I understand, it’s a fork of kbin. when kbin dev went silent and didn’t trust anybody else to help them, a few other devs forked it.
And what do you think of it? What’s the general feeling? I remember being hyped about kbin then there were lots of problems with the site, then dev disappeared.
Idk it doesn’t really feel different NGL
I haven’t been using both Lemmy and mbin that long, just lurking mostly
And for that I don’t have any problems
And the same way I used reddit, both I use for mobile. So apps make or break it. And the choice of Lemmy apps outshine the only app for mbin. Interstellar is good for mbin, but I just like thunder and sync more for myself.
I picked mbin for the combined threads posting like reddit and microblogging like twitter/masto but have to day I don’t try to take advantage of that
On the other hand I’m looking forward to piefed maturing more. Since they have multireddit / combined topic community feeds
I’m using Mlem as I think it looks the best!
Will look on it too, heard about it back in 2023 but never tried it.
Tesseract on desktop and mobile.
Eternity on phone, Lemmy as a PWA on my tablet and official Lemmy site on my laptop and on desktop.
Jerboa. Tried several and liked it best.
That’s the one I like. Or piefeds mobile on Firefox.
It’s very exciting to see 48k MAU jump up to 55k. In such a short time.
It’s so nice to see the servers are not crashing anymore this time around like how Lemmy.world did for me a few times back when I first joined in 2023 and I remember when the only app that was available on ios was just Wefwef before Memmy and Mlem came out of testflight. Today the apps are much more developed as we now got much more options, advanced search, moderator tools, user tags, in-app video playback, baby account indicator, media bias check, alt check and personal contribution stats.
Yes I remember the lemmy.world servers being DDOS’ed every couple of days and having to switch between 3 clients and the webinterface because all of them were missing some features.
So by my math and some googling, that’s about 0.0000005% of Reddit’s MAU.
On the one hand, cool, growth is growth.
On the other hand maybe it’s… healthy to stop looking at Lemmy as an “alternative” to anything and start thinking about it as this small forum you like to use sometimes. Worked for me in the 90s, works for me now.
The problem with (very) low user count is the more nieche things will not have activity.
Yep. Which ends up being why old forums were such tight-knit communities. You ended up hanging out with a handful of people. I’m mostly fine with that. If anything, it requires starting something yourself for your niche interests and being fine with it being dormant most of the time.
I think this is where lemmy/fediverse shines compared to reddit: you can have instances for niche things, yet be able to communicate with other instances. And each instance is free to have their own rules and (de)federate with others. Also the improved tools for searching/posting/modding of lemmy compared with old forums.
Sure. I mean, having a single log-in for all of that is definitely useful, as is being able to chat with others. Defederation as a moderation tool is… overrated, but it is there.
Why do you think defederation is overrated? Genuine curiosity.
Well, for one thing it only works asymmetrically. It’s fine if you have a very specific source of issues that you can isolate and cut off, but it’s not really useful if what you have is hostile users across the network. And it only protects the larger space. For smaller instances it’s a choice between functioning as social media or not existing at all.
It’s extremely far from a magic bullet, it is not resilient to large scale, systemic issues and the only reason its limitations haven’t been apparent is that the AP ecosystem is too small to suffer most of the issues of larger social media.
Aaaaand it’s designed to function via the petty squabbles of FOSS developer arguments, which I hate anyway, but that’s a me thing.
ALSO with this model, maybe we can get away from the 24-hour news cycle mentality where a post that’s more than a day old is dead. Comment on something from 2 weeks ago!
You’re off by some orders of magnitude.
It’s 0.005%
But that’s based off of the 1.1 billion number I saw. Somehow I very much doubt there’s 1.1 billion people with accounts who login and browse at least once a month.
Yeah, 1 bill with all the bots and alt accounts maybe.
In spez’s wildest jizz wet dreams there are 1 billion Reddit users.
Also never underestimate how many bots there are. And how many users have 10+ accounts. Seeing less evidence of that on Lemmy so far, though who knows honestly.
Totally, we don’t want numbers for the sake of numbers. We need passionate people who are ready to ditch other mainstream ones for federated alternatives. Then only we can grow.
I super agree, would rather have one decent regular than a thousand average redditors who don’t fit the vibe around here
Reddit is inflating its numbers by a wide margin.
A sub like https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/ has 150k subscribers, but the activity definitely doesn’t reflect that compared to !buyeuropean@feddit.uk and the 9k weekly active users
It may or may not be.
It is definitely not inflating its numbers by the orders of magnitude it’d take to make a dent on this particular takeaway.
where can I check these status? Which website do you use?
The one shown is from join-lemmy:
https://join-lemmy.org/instances
Also of interest for people that love statistics (which I do):
https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy
https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/stats
EDIT: As you can see, the Fediverse being what it is, it’s basically impossible to get an exact, definitive count, so the numbers will always be a bit fuzzy. But they clearly show trends
Fedidb used to have graphs for lemmy no? Now its only for all fediverse stuff combined :/
It seems like the other two tools only report about 49k MAU, any idea why?
I can’t be certain in this case, but the usual suspects are not being connected to as many servers (e.g. not scraping some because of robots.txt settings), delays in scraping the stats, or excluding some servers consciously because their stats are deemed a bit suspicious.
on fediverse observer, you need to switch to daily stats not monthly stats, right now it says 53,225 MAU for March 13th as the latest datapoint
https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats
fedidb is probably doing something similar, just showing the average for the whole month, instead of the current day
It is really awesome here. Like the good ol internet days.
Absolutely. Feels like it’s 2005 again, and you discover all kind of new places on the internet.
Agreed. I hope it doesn’t become so popular that it turns to shit.
Eh. to some degree, enshittification is going to happen as more people come in, because more people = more shitty people. If we want to have the good niche communities that are IMO the only excellent thing about reddit, we’ll have to put up with the fact that that also means a bunch of annoying people use the service.
At least Lemmy has far, far better tools for dealing with them.
Our most precious features is you’ll never have to. If a community turns to shit, they just get defederated. If you can’t find a server that defederates them, you can host it yourself. Your groups will be smaller, and you’ll lose something in the transition, but what you have is what you’ll put up with.
Let’s go Lemmyyyyy!!!
