We are happy to see that many of you are exploring Lemmy after Reddit announced changes to its API policy. I maintain this project alongside @dessalines@lemmy.ml.
Lemmy is similar to Reddit in many ways, but there is also a major difference: Its not only a single website, but consists of many different websites which are interconnected through federation. This is achieved with the ActivityPub protocol which is also used by Mastodon. It means that you can sign up on any Lemmy instance to interact with users and communities on other instances. The project website has a list of instances which all have their own rules and administrators. We recommend that you sign up on one of them, to avoid overt centralization on lemmy.ml.
Another difference compared to Reddit is that Lemmy is open source, and not funded by any company. For this reason it relies on volunteer work to make the project better, whether it's programming, design, documentation, translating, reporting issues or others. See the contributing guide to get started. You can also donate to support development.
We also recommend that you read the documentation. It explains how Lemmy works and how to setup your own Lemmy instance. Running an instance gives you full control over the rules and moderation, and prevents us developers from having any influence. Especially large communities that want to use Lemmy should host their own instance, because existing Lemmy instances would easily be overwhelmed by a large number of new users.
Enjoy your time here! If you have any questions, feel free to ask below or in the Matrix chat.
I've just moved here from reddit. I've read the documentation introduction but I'm also an idiot.
Could someone please explain how this works in super simple terms? Sort of eli5
I'm a newbie as well, so take this with a grain of salt.
Lemmy is a language. Different "reddits" (called instances from this point on) can talk to any other instance that the moderation team hasn't banned. Every instance has their own rules, settings and moderation teams. Every instance can make "subreddits" (sublemmies). You can contribute to any sublemmy on any instance as long as they haven't banned your instance or your user.
What this means in practice is that if you don't like the moderators, go make your own instance or find one with like-minded people. If the moderators of an instance are not happy with the contributions of another instance as a whole, they can ban that. Assuming they're talking to (federated with) another instance, it's seamless and you can comment and post with all those people too.
So are we gonna go with "sublemmy" from now on? 😀