I’m an old reddit user, going back to '08. Like many of you I’m sure, I’ve seen the site rise and fall. Killing 3p apps was a major blow, along with the purge of so many subreddits, and now you have to log in to even view it…it’s getting real bad.
I had heard of the fediverse back when Mastadon was first announced. Briefly checked it out, but didn’t give it much mind. This morning I was browsing reddit and read a thread about the continual degradation of the site. Someone mentioned Lemmy (new to me), but I thought "hey! I’ll check it out, why not’'. A brief google search gave me some iOS apps, and I wound up using Voyager (10/10 btw, Voyager reminds me a lot of Apollo in it’s hayday). I applied/logged in…and just…wow. Wow y’all. Lemmy reminds me so much of reddit circa late 00’s. Sure, there is a smaller user base, but so was reddit at the time. I remember the subreddit you were supposed to go to when you made an acccount and introduce yourself :D
And here on Lemmy, nothing looks like obvious bot posts. Content seems real. In correlation with that, the post titles seem pretty reasonable and not based around rage bait / click bait.
After setting it up on my phone, I found the desktop site (I’m on a laptop some times) and I adore a.lemmy.zip. To me its the perfect layout. The other incredible thing about Lemmy is just how seamless it was to set up, on both mobile and desktop. It feels super accessible to non-technical users, which is something I don’t think is true for a lot of fediverse things.
But seriously, I used to adore reddit so much. Watching it fall apart has made me sadder and sadder over time. There was seemingly nothing in its place. I really felt like that era of internet over entirely. Just my first few hours on Lemmy has made me realize I was wrong, in the best way possible. It gave me chills. I’m looking forward to this platform growing. So anyway, thanks for any/all of you who developed/are developing Lemmy. It really, truly feels like a return to the golden age of social.
Welcome, glad to have you here! Yes, the feel of this site will be quieter, more human and personal and a lot like early Reddit, with the good and bad attached to it. Please enjoy your time here.
The fediverse is pretty much a project of the community, without an overarching moneyed interest pulling the strings. Every bit you can contribute to a healthy and vibrant discourse will be appreciated.
I’ll put forward a couple of the challenges Lemmy and Piefed have, so you know it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, you can level your expectations accordingly and ride out the bumps.
As a site largely of tech freedom enthusiasts that contribute their free time, users, mods and site admins here tend to have strong convictions and sometimes that has brought about extreme personality traits that can seem unreasonable from the outside. That means is now and then, you might face a couple dozen downvotes for what seems like a normal take to you, a post removal or comm ban from a mod or admin that doesn’t like the topic you post about, and some drama and bickering between prominent users or admins. Just don’t take it personally.
Understand that unlike Reddit where admins have full centralized control and are like kings of their empire, Lemmy and Piefed servers are like smaller fiefdoms that each respective admin has control over. Your account at lemmy.zip allows you access to other Lemmy site’s communities but just be aware you are subject to that site’s rules and idiosyncrasies as well. Luckily we have a public modlog where you can review the reason given for what happened to yourself or someone else. You can make a new account on a different Lemmy-compatible site or even host your own, if .zip doesn’t suit your needs. Lastly, the way to publicly appeal unreasonable mod behvaiour if direct communication fails, is post to !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com, bring your old account name and people can judge who is the reasonable one.
So get out there and have fun!
Thanks so much! Great info. I had a question - can I group communities together into a custom feed? I can currently view all subscribed on my Home feed. But if I have , for example, 6 news communities, can I group them into a single “MyNews” style feed?
It has been “coming soon” for some time now in Lemmy, officially implemented in upstream code on June 17, 2025, however it is for a long awaited 1.0 release which there is no publicly announced timeline and involves many API overhauls, while virtually every lemmy server is on version 0.19.xx at this moment (latest status update). The feature is currently available with an alternative software called Piefed, and some Lemmy frontend user apps such as Summit.