What is Lemmy?

Lemmy is link aggregator software that exists in the fediverse, meaning it connects with other “ActivityPub” software like Mastodon and other Lemmy instances. Basically, you can follow and interact with communities here on Lemmy.one, on any other Lemmy instance, or even from your Mastodon account!

What is Lemmy.one?

Lemmy.one is a general-purpose instance of Lemmy—a self-hostable, decentralized alternative to Reddit and other link aggregators—hosted by myself (Jonah). I am the administrator of the Mastodon server mstdn.party, and the founder of privacyguides.org.

This instance is generously supported by our contributors, if you use this instance to interact with the fediverse, please consider a monthly contribution to support my work.

Support me on Ko-Fi

What are the rules here?

  1. No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, or casteism
  2. No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies
  3. No harassment, dogpiling or doxxing of other users
  4. No content illegal in the United States, Germany, or Finland
  5. Do not share intentionally false or misleading information
  6. Do not spam or abuse network features.

As a general-purpose instance, we do not have heavy moderation in terms of what topics people are allowed to post about, however all users are expected to follow our rules at all times, and generally be nice and friendly on the federation.

Please report all content you see which might violate our rules for evaluation. If you are on a remote server, please forward any reports of our users to our server for our moderators to take action, we pledge that remote reports will remain confidential within our moderation team and will not be used for any form of retribution against the reporter.

    • srpwndEnglish
      9·
      2 years ago

      In the instances sidebar there is following written about it:

      Downvotes are disabled on this instance, because it is a very small community. If you see something against the rules, report it. If you see something you don’t like, go find something you do like and upvote that instead :)

      Personally, I am okay with this being implemented and agree with the reasoning.

      • JonEFiveEnglish
        11·
        2 years ago

        Yeah, I didn’t catch that before I joined. I wish I had, but I didn’t even realize disabling a core feature would be on anyone’s mind.

        That’s also a pretty weird stance considering that lemmy.one doesn’t have many local communities by design. So the idea is to disable downvotes because lemmy.one is a small community when most of the interaction is with other servers that don’t have features disabled?

        It might be time to revisit that opinion with the current level of growth here. Or I might need to seek out another instance. Downvotes are a valuable part of self-moderating communities.

        • InnominateUserEnglish
          2·
          2 years ago

          Have you found another instance? And if so, why did you choose that particular one? I’m also considering another instance due to this ones stance on down voting.

      • RevaneeEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        Shouldn’t this apply only for communities on lemmy.one? I think a user registered on lemmy.one should still be able to downvote when interacting with an instance in which it is enabled. Do you know if this is a technical limitation or something that can be configured?

    • smartwater0897English
      7·
      2 years ago

      I think it’s good that it’s disabled, since people downvote when they disagree, and it creates the same echo chamber as on reddit.

      People need to be OK with others opinions and be able to read and move on without needing to punish the person for his opinion.

        • ctrl_alt_cheatEnglish
          17·
          2 years ago

          Agree here. Disabling downvotes is dumb and it doesn’t help discouraging echo chambers.

            • CeruleanRuinEnglish
              9·
              2 years ago

              Just adding my voice to the chorus here. A downvote allows for balancing out the follower effect.

                • CeruleanRuinEnglish
                  2·
                  2 years ago

                  I understand the notion to disable them as a precaution when a bunch of unknown users might be coming in, just to discourage negativity at the start, but it’s definitely not something I want as a permanent feature, and if lemmy.one doesn’t have plans to enable it at some point, I will probably be looking for another instance where dissent isn’t suppressed as a general principle.

    • livejamieEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      I wish downvoting was enabled on this server and it would be interesting to see if they open it up to the community to see how others feel about it.

    • Doombot1English
      5·
      2 years ago

      Seconded! I would’ve made my own comment but didn’t want to crowd things up any more than they already are. Thanks @jonah! Very excited to be a part of this all.

  • legionEnglish
    12·
    2 years ago

    What’s up with downvoting? I can do it on other instances.

    • Eighty@mastodon.au
      9·
      2 years ago

      I think in this instance (lol) they’ve opted to disable downvotes since it’s a smaller community. Instead, the sidebar encourages you to upvote other posts to encourage discussion :)

        • erik
          13·
          2 years ago

          Not lame. Just not what you want. The joy is, there are instances that allow downvoting, which you are free to join, if that’s the way you want to interact.

  • CralexEnglish
    10·
    2 years ago

    Very, very slowly getting the hang of this. I got the Mlem iPhone app on testflight, but it’s not as nice to use for discovering new communities as on the desktop. Thanks for hosting this beginner-friendly instance!

    • DraconMariusEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      +1 for browse.feddit.de

      I haven’t tried Mlem just yet, been on the browser for now, but I have been using lemmy explorer by @andycuccaro@lemmy.ml for the past two days.

      You can set your home instance, then you can search for and navigate to available communities from your home instance automatically. Less copy and pasting imo!

    • FlippanteerEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Some apps are better than others at specific things like this. I encourage you to check out Thunder, Memmy, and Liftoff as well, all for iOS. My preference so far is Memmy, and their latest search function is pretty good for communities, posts, and profiles.

  • dillEnglish
    8·
    2 years ago

    Easily the most sexy instance imo

  • SocialEngineer55English
    7·
    1 year ago

    My first comment! Really hoping Lemmy can be the replacement for Reddit :) trying this from the Memmy App!

  • Conman_SignorEnglish
    7·
    2 years ago

    I noticed that we can’t create communities in lemmy.one, so is there another way for us to create communities or do we need to register with another instance?

  • lovesickoysterEnglish
    6·
    2 years ago

    any chance of getting a specific cycling community, like r/cycling?

      • lovesickoysterEnglish
        3·
        2 years ago

        hah, I would swear there was nothing just a couple of minutes ago when I searched for “cycling”. Thanks!

        • jonahOPMAEnglish
          12·
          2 years ago

          There probably wasn’t, because nobody on lemmy.one had “discovered” it yet. It is slightly complicated, but you can find remote communities more reliably with a tool like https://browse.feddit.de/, and then paste the URL of the community you find in the search page. That will tell lemmy.one to fetch the community from that server, the communities you see on lemmy.one are ones where that process has already happened.

          details: https://lemmy.one/post/1600

          • FiendishForkEnglish
            3·
            2 years ago

            So if someone on here discovered a “new” community that no one else on here discovered yet, then after that other people here would be more easily able to find it afterwards?

  • Eighty@mastodon.au
    6·
    2 years ago

    @jonah I’m still getting used to navigating the federated space so forgive me if this seems utterly silly.

    What’s the best way to interact with lemmy.one/lemmy in general? Ideally I’d like to use my mastodon instance for singularity sake but I’m unsure how to interact (such as liking and interacting on lemmy directly) rather than through mastrodon. Sorry, didn’t know where to ask

    • jonahOPMA
      9·
      2 years ago

      You can’t interact via the Lemmy interface without an account on a Lemmy instance. Mastodon lets you follow Lemmy communities, upvote posts (via likes), and reply to Lemmy posts like you did here, but all that only happens through Mastodon if you use a Mastodon account.

      This is why for people who use Lemmy regularly it probably makes more sense to register somewhere like kbin.social or lemmy.one, but interacting via Mastodon like this is nice if you just want to leave a quick comment every once in a while without needing yet another account.

      • kiwi
        1·
        2 years ago

        Is it possible to do the opposite? Can I connect from a lemmy instance to follow a couple of people on mastodon?

        • jonahOPMA
          5·
          2 years ago

          Lemmy doesn’t let you follow individual users unfortunately.

  • NightOwlEnglish
    6·
    2 years ago

    Hi everyone. Glad to be welcomed into this instance. I think it’s the best and coolest one given how much help I’ve gotten from privacyguides.org.

  • steakfriesEnglish
    5·
    2 years ago

    so much to learn jeez its a bit daunting. but im gonna try to figure all this out