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.

  • @nutomic@lemmy.mlOPM
    link
    fedilink
    10
    edit-2
    11 months ago

    Its not so difficult to implement functionality that remote content can be fetched automatically on demand like you describe. It just takes a certain amount of work, and so far we are busy with other things. These things take time when there are only two developers funded with donations, and not some startup with millions in venture capital.

    • anji
      link
      fedilink
      711 months ago

      Really… I thought you two were loaded with billions of VC funds… ;P

      Yeah, totally understood. What Lemmy is today is already quite impressive! I’m just chipping in my thoughts of what I hope can happen eventually, as a more unified experience is something I think I’d enjoy, and it may help make the platform more accessible.

      If I had any spare time (sigh) I’d help code this up. Rust is neat.