I chalk it up to the name. Your name is your central piece of branding, and can be used to your advantage. To me, when I wanted to join what I thought would probably be the largest lemmy instance, I didn’t look at the stats or rules. I just looked at the names of all the not-tiny ones. This one clearly signified to me that the owner intends to become a very large Instance.
To most people, it will simply sound cool and be very easy to remember. Both of those are very important points.
Look at the automotive industry. Performance is desirable in a vehicle, certainly, but according to the market, does it seem more desirable than looking cool and having enough cup holders?
I am new like most of us. When I signed up I had now idea what an instance was. To me the name Lemmy.world sounded like it was more general and therefore would have more content so I picked that one.
What is an instance? what is a federation? what is a server? can someone please describe in simple terms how this all runs and how we as users navigate it?
(continued from above because of character limits)
ActivityPub is used for more than just Reddit-likes. Mastodon has a similar micro-blogging format to Twitter, and PeerTube is similar in function to Youtube. There are alternatives to Facebook and I believe Snapchat as well.
You can kind of think of it like email–there is no central email.inc that all emails go through; gmail and protonmail and icloud and compuserve and hotmail and whatnot are all different servers that are capable of using the internet to find each other and send messages back and forth.
How all this runs.
You sign up for an account on an instance, say lemmy.world. This is your local instance; your local instance will handle all of the data going to and from you. If you create a community, it will be stored on your local instance. You may notice that instance addresses look a little like email addresses, ie !nostupidquestions. That notes which instance that particular community is on. If you don’t see an instance name appended, it’s on your local instance.
When viewing lists of posts or communities, you are given an option to search for Subscribed, Local, and All. Subscribed will show you only communities you have subscribed to, it’s like your Reddit home feed. Local will show you only posts or communities made to your local instance. All will show you posts or communities from across the Fediverse. You can subscribe to, post and comment on communities from other instances, like I am doing now (my local instance is sh.itjust.works, I am posting to lemmy.world). It looks and works just like posting to my home instance.
A major difference users of Lemmy/the Fediverse should keep in mind: Reddit had platform-wide rules of conduct, which individual subreddits were allowed to expand upon. Lemmy does not have central admins or owners like u/spez to enforce platform-wide policy; those general rules come from the admins of each individual instance, which community moderators may add to. So rules and norms can vary between each instance, and when posting on an instance that isn’t your own, it’s a good idea to read the sidebar of that instance’s homepage to review them.
Long time reddit is fun user and now I feel lost but I feel moving on is the right thing, I was wondering how do I find community spaces like there were on Reddit?
You are in a large instance, so searching for communities shouldn’t be so much of a hassle, since most are fetched. You use the feddit community browser, look for some keyword of your interest and if it exists you just search it within your instance. Subscribe and you’re done.
If you for some reason can’t find it, it means it is not fetched yet.
So you copy the whole URL (any.instance/c/anycommunity), paste in the search bar and then search again for the community name only. It will show up and you can subscribe to it.
There’s a user on lemm.ee who has been making hundreds of communities over the last few days, but it seems like a flag-planting operation more than anything else. It would be impossible for one person to moderate all of these communities, and they have zero post or comment history....
other than those specific names on that specific instance being “claimed”, they have no real value or purpose. XeNoX (or whomever) doesnt know how decentralized media platforms work.
Looking to maybe self host my own instance, I’m still learning about the fediverse. If a different instance that I federate with hosts something illegal are there risks to me? Is anything from other instances hosted on my server like a copy of it? Or would I only end up hosting things my users post? I’m paranoid and sorry if...
I’m running it in the smallest VPS of vultr with 25GB of disk.
This instance only has 3 users, with me being the only active. It says it’s been up for almost a month and I’ve only used 3GB.
Here are the docker volumes which have the actual data of your instance, and from inside the DB the biggest table is the one called activity which the devs said it’s only sometimes used to validate the data, but could be truncated if needed (there’s a schedule task which only keeps up to 6 months).
Also the thing to have in mind is to properly configure the logs of whichever installation guide you follow.
After that I’ve seen other admins say the next biggest is the media uploaded (from bigger instances).
I keep trying to make one. But when I finish writing the name and details I try hitting create and nothing happens, no comment that i did anything wrong either (im ont the mobile site btw)...
Another thing to look for is whether your community name is already taken, on your instance. (You can use the same name on different instances, but only once per instance. Same with usernames.) Sometimes Lemmy just gives you the spinning wheel of death when something is wrong, but doesn’t tell you what the problem is.
Ok so different instances have different rules on who and how communities can be created
some require that you ask the admins, and they create it and give you mod priveliges.
some allow you to create communities on an ad-hoc basis.
some only allow admins to create communities and give no mechanism for users to do so.
Generally you can only create communities in instances you’re apart of, but you can be given moderator privileges for communities across instances, provided the admins of the instance where the community allow it. If you don’t like the community creation requirements of a server? Create an account on another instance and start a community there.
Community names are unique only to the instance they are created on - meaning you might want to do some research and check if the community already exists on other instances.
Otherwise redundancy means different versions of the same community on different instances can have lightly more or less palatable rules and moderators, therefore catering to different people of the same group.
There is talk of adding an option to, on a per user basis allow an option of browsing a combination of communities across instances at once. But it’s hard to say whether this should be incorporated into the backend as an API addition or to let the various frontends implement it based off of the data they can already get from the API.
One of the best things about reddit was looking for answers or other users with the same problem as you, and since Google didn’t really help with that anymore and instead insisted on giving you business results, the best practice was to put your search terms in followed by ‘reddit’ and you’d find your answer.
I guess you would need the name of the instance where the community resides. But usually if you search about specific questions the site with the information will appear (be it reddit or some lemmy instances) without adding it to the search term
I’d be really keen to host a lemmy instance but just wondering with GDPR and everything, if there is anything else to consider outside of the technical setup and provisioning of hardware?...
Personally identifiable information are IPs, email addresses, street address, name, date of birth, … Lemmy only collect IPs and email addresses. And these are not shared between instances.
Whether the service is hosted in the EU or not, as long as it serves EU users, lemmy should provide a way to delete emails and ip information in a self serving way. (maybe by deleting the account) In the mean time, instances admins have to fulfil requests to delete emails/ips of EU citizens from the database.
As I said in another comment, the GDPR protects people. And the GDPR only applies to personnaly identifiable data (IPs, email addresses, street address, legal name, date of birh…) Lemmy only collect emails and IPs, and do not share them between instances. So it’s very easy to comply to the GDPR as long as you don’t do anything shady.
The EU has a marketing issue. They tried to pass legislation to prevent companies to collect data. But instead, company displayed a popup, kept collecting data, and blamed it on the EU. Everytime I see a popup, I blame ruthless data collection.
Actually, Lemmy is most likely violatiing the California Consumer Privacy Act, which, as opposed to the GPDR, gives the right to update/delete any data generated by the user, not only personally identifiable information.
First of all, I’m not a lawyer or a legal consultant, just a instance admin that wants to make sure that his instance complies.
Lemmy does not store any PII (birthdates, legal names, addresses,securitynumbers). But users are able to share whatever they want. And that can be a problem.
For managing my library on disk, I just recently made the effort to set up the *arr apps. I love having the metadata, tagging, organizing, and file naming all consistent and automated. Previously I used mp3tag and filebot to manage them and it was way more manual. Everything is set up with docker-compose and Ansible.
Library file stuff:
Two Radarr instances, one for 4k and another for lower resolutions
Sonarr for TV
Lidarr for music
Two readarr instances, one for epub/pdf and one for audiobooks
Jackett
deluge+openVPN
For library frontend stuff:
Jellyfin for movies, tv, music, audiobooks
Plex, for when Jellyfin is acting up
Jellyseer for TV & movie requests
LaunchBox for videogames and emulators
Calibre + calibreWeb for ebooks & syncing to my Kobo eReader
Haven’t set up yet:
flaresolverr
unpackerr
audiobookshelf
Doesn’t exist yet/wishlist:
*arr app for emulator ROMs (I’ll have to check out romm, looks pretty cool!)
The Fediverse – a network comprised of Mastodon, Pleroma and other adjacent projects – suffers from the same glaring contradiction. Similar to email nodes, servers (known as Instances within this network) are branded around common interests, political beliefs or sexualities. Users are encouraged to join the servers that...
Why YSK: Beehaw defederated from Lemmy.World and Sh.itjust.works effectively shadowbanning anyone from those instances. You will not be able to interact with their users or posts.
I apologize, you are correct; I assumed every account displayed as “[name]@[instance]” if it wasn’t native to that instance, and that every account that was just “[name]” was a native one, but it seems like some (mainly kbin.social?) accounts don’t do that.
I've been on the Fediverse for a little while now, but I'm only getting into Lemmy now. I've noticed that it is very cumbersome to follow communities from other instances. You have to click on search, select "Communities", enter the name (but without the instance), find the correct one in the list if there's multiple and then...
You can do that on browser if you know the community name and instance it’s on. For instance if you’re on lemmy.world and wanted to go to c/spaceporn on Lemmy.fmhy.ml you could just enter lemmy.world/c/[email protected] and it’ll bring you to the community through your instance.
Or if you search for !spaceporn in your instances community search tab, it’ll bring it up too.
It’s not elegant, but it makes it easier than searching through a bunch of other similar named communities.
Basically do you like the administration policies of the instance. All instances can speak to all other instances, unless instances block each other.
Lemmy isn’t one website, it’s a bunch of websites talking to each other and people choose to moderate in their own manner, and can also choose to stop talking to other websites if they deem them to be a problem.
It’s less obvious when picking between big general ones, but here’s some examples:
beehaw.org: A curated instance with extremely heavy moderation. Leans centre-left.
lemmynsfw.com: It’s in the name - allows NSFW (porn) posts, which other instances tend not to like hosting.
lemmy.dbzer0.com: Primarily focused around Piracy, something other instances wouldn’t be comfortable hosting.
exploding-heads.com: “Free speech” instance (you know what that means)
lemmygrad.ml: Extreme-left instance, labelled as “tankies” by most people.
Then other than that, you have the big general ones such as lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, sh.itjust.works, and so on. Each of those will have their own rules, but tend to be about anything and everything, but it’s still important to learn how they moderate their instances!
Don’t forget though, no matter which instance you pick, you can still interact with all the other instances unless they are blocked (which they are in some cases for various reasons).
Your account only works where you registered it. You browse other communities through your lemmy.world instance. Use the search function or the All tab and you’ll see what I mean.
Imagine you’re on a forum with your account, but then you can use the search feature to search posts on another forum and reply to them from there.
All users and communities have names like e-mail addresses, like user@instance or community@instance, anything that doesn’t have the middle @ is on the same instance as you.
I figured it out I think! The problem was that the link basically opened in a browser, and the browser has no idea what my Lemmy.world login is. My Lemmy App (Connect) has a search bar on the left side where I had to enter the community name and choose the right instance. IE there were 3 different Anarchychess communities with the same name, but the Sopuli instance was the "right" one. Going to the page trough the search bar allowed me to subscribe like I wanted.
Welcome! You’re going to want this to find communities on different instances. Not only will this show you communities that aren’t available on your home instance (either because no one’s requested it yet, or you aren’t federated with them), but it will also show you when the same community name exists on multiple instances.
This standardisation has already proven itself for multiple years now, with millions of people using it over on Mastodon. People will get used to it. The “this is unfamiliar and scary to me” reaction goes away as the familiarity develops over time.
How did Lemmy.world become more popular than Lemmy.ml?
I don’t understand how Lemmy.world developers managed to surpass both Lemmy.ml and Beehaw.org instances in user activity.
ELI5 Reddit to Lemmy
What is an instance? what is a federation? what is a server? can someone please describe in simple terms how this all runs and how we as users navigate it?
I was wondering how do I find community spaces like there were on Reddit?
Long time reddit is fun user and now I feel lost but I feel moving on is the right thing, I was wondering how do I find community spaces like there were on Reddit?
How do we effectively report users and/or communities?
There’s a user on lemm.ee who has been making hundreds of communities over the last few days, but it seems like a flag-planting operation more than anything else. It would be impossible for one person to moderate all of these communities, and they have zero post or comment history....
If I self host a Lemmy instance for just myself and maybe a few friends are there any risks?
Looking to maybe self host my own instance, I’m still learning about the fediverse. If a different instance that I federate with hosts something illegal are there risks to me? Is anything from other instances hosted on my server like a copy of it? Or would I only end up hosting things my users post? I’m paranoid and sorry if...
How do I make a community?
I keep trying to make one. But when I finish writing the name and details I try hitting create and nothing happens, no comment that i did anything wrong either (im ont the mobile site btw)...
Can Lemmy posts be indexed by Google or other search engines?
One of the best things about reddit was looking for answers or other users with the same problem as you, and since Google didn’t really help with that anymore and instead insisted on giving you business results, the best practice was to put your search terms in followed by ‘reddit’ and you’d find your answer.
Anything else to consider when hosting a Lemmy instance in the EU?
I’d be really keen to host a lemmy instance but just wondering with GDPR and everything, if there is anything else to consider outside of the technical setup and provisioning of hardware?...
What do you use to actually manage your stuff?
Everyone here is talking about how to get the latest and best stuff, but no one is talking about how they actually manage it 😜...
This is Fine: Optimism & Emergency in the P2P Network (newdesigncongress.org)
The Fediverse – a network comprised of Mastodon, Pleroma and other adjacent projects – suffers from the same glaring contradiction. Similar to email nodes, servers (known as Instances within this network) are branded around common interests, political beliefs or sexualities. Users are encouraged to join the servers that...
YSK: If you're on Lemmy.World or Sh.itjust.works you should not subscribe to any Beehaw communities
Why YSK: Beehaw defederated from Lemmy.World and Sh.itjust.works effectively shadowbanning anyone from those instances. You will not be able to interact with their users or posts.
Is it just me, or is the Lemmy search interface not... great?
I've been on the Fediverse for a little while now, but I'm only getting into Lemmy now. I've noticed that it is very cumbersome to follow communities from other instances. You have to click on search, select "Communities", enter the name (but without the instance), find the correct one in the list if there's multiple and then...
YSK: how to painlessly migrate you and us from reddit
Signing up...
Lemmy communities need a distinct one word name for communities like how reddit has "subreddits"
Part of the latest migration wave. Something I realized when looking for communities on google is that “lemmy community” is super clumsy.
Boost for Lemmy is happening! (lemmy.world)