We are happy to see that many of you are exploring Lemmy after Reddit announced changes to its API policy. I maintain this project alongside @dessalines@lemmy.ml.
Lemmy is similar to Reddit in many ways, but there is also a major difference: Its not only a single website, but consists of many different websites which are interconnected through federation. This is achieved with the ActivityPub protocol which is also used by Mastodon. It means that you can sign up on any Lemmy instance to interact with users and communities on other instances. The project website has a list of instances which all have their own rules and administrators. We recommend that you sign up on one of them, to avoid overt centralization on lemmy.ml.
Another difference compared to Reddit is that Lemmy is open source, and not funded by any company. For this reason it relies on volunteer work to make the project better, whether it's programming, design, documentation, translating, reporting issues or others. See the contributing guide to get started. You can also donate to support development.
We also recommend that you read the documentation. It explains how Lemmy works and how to setup your own Lemmy instance. Running an instance gives you full control over the rules and moderation, and prevents us developers from having any influence. Especially large communities that want to use Lemmy should host their own instance, because existing Lemmy instances would easily be overwhelmed by a large number of new users.
Enjoy your time here! If you have any questions, feel free to ask below or in the Matrix chat.
Question for everyone, where is lemmy getting linked from? (besides me in that apollo thread yesterday)
I found it in the big AskReddit thread. Someone made a list of alternatives and this was at the top. It also seemed like the one least likely to have the problems reddit has (and had).
Ahh I see, here's that thread.
I found Lemmy in many comments about Reddit alternatives, Lemmy seems nice, I hope it will grow :)
I saw an AskReddit thread about Reddit alternatives and someone mentioned Lemmy. No link, but I found it through DDG.
I saw it in the PrivacyGuides subreddit, they're trying out an instance here too from the sounds of it.
yeah they're at !privacyguides@lemmy.one. Already on their own server (lemmy.one) :)
The API mess was just the recent kick in the pants I needed to jump over when I learned about the r/piracy back up
I saw it mentioned on r/BoostForReddit in a thread about the api hike
Welcome!
I also created jerboa, and based the UI mainly off of boost, because it is ( I should say was) my favorite reddit app. Boost was closed source tho, whereas jerboa is open. But I'd love to have them or anyone contribute if they can.
There were some people in the Apollo discussion mentioning it. It's also in a stickied thread on various alternatives in /r/RedditAlternatives. That's where I found Lemmy and started browsing before joining up.
Twitter, same as an alternative for reddit. Keep up the good work! 🫶