A message to new users
A message to new users
Hello World!
The last week or so we have seen quite a big 'boost' in the amount of new users signing up so we thought it would be a good time to highlight some things that are of interest to new users.
CODE OF CONDUCT
Lemmy World is not a free speech instance, there are a couple of ground rules that need to be followed. If you're new, I would advise you to read our Code of Conduct.
NEW USER QUESTIONS
If you are new to the fediverse as a whole, it might all be a bit overwhelming. What is Lemmy? What is federation? What even is an instance? For those questions I would suggest you have a look at the getting starting guide. It should cover most of your questions.
STILL HAVE QUESTIONS?
You can head over to the [email protected] community. This community should be used for questions regarding Lemmy World and is not the support community for the Lemmy software this site uses.
Our Admin @quinten recently made a post covering the most recurring questions there too. Read about that here.
ALTERNATIVE USER INTERFACES
Lemmy World hosts a few custom User Interfaces which give you a completely different experience both on the desktop as on mobile.
- https://a.lemmy.world - Alexandrite is a beautiful and convenient desktop-first alternate web UI for Lemmy. Official site https://alexandrite.app
- https://p.lemmy.world - Photon A sleek client for Lemmy with powerful mod and admin tools. The only alternative client with feature parity to the official client. Official site https://phtn.app
- https://m.lemmy.world - Voyager was one of the first alternative UI's that became available. Optimized for Mobile. Official site https://vger.app
- https://old.lemmy.world - a familiar desktop experience for lemmy. Official site https://mlmym.org
THIRD PARTY APPS
There are a lot of Third Party apps available for Lemmy. From Paid to Open Source, you will find something that suits you easily.
For a complete list of apps have a look at https://lemmyapps.netlify.app/ (Thanks [email protected]).
EDIT: Updated the apps list. Also some more interesting links in @[email protected]'s post here: https://lemmy.world/comment/3962001
EDIT 2: Instead of https://photon.lemmy.world you can now just go to https://p.lemmy.world. You can thank @[email protected] laziness for that.
Welcome to Lemmy. I love you.
Welcome to Lemmy. I love you.
Welcome to Lemmy. I love you.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Love you too
The list of apps is pretty out of date. For example, Boost already came out and [email protected] is a pretty popular extension. I use it a lot to make posts, and just used it to open that post on my instance.
Also related is how to find communities
I help with [email protected], and the idea is that you can subscribe to keep seeing more recommendations. We also have a guide for finding new communities here: https://lemmy.ca/post/5581032, which I've copied below:
A great way to find lesser known communities is to look at the
/communitiespage on an instance. For example: https://lemmy.ca/communitiesFor a list of instances to look through:
- pangora.social (NEW): Great way to find instances related to a particular topic. This is also great for picking an instance when first making an account/moving accounts.
- awesome-lemmy-instances: not that organized, but it
🔎 Search pages
🔥 Apps and Browser Extensions
- Instance Assistant: Browser extension with tools to help you redirect & search for communities
- Voyager Migrator: Tool to help you migrate Subreddits
- More Apps: https://lemmyapps.netlify.app/
🙌 Communities for discovering new communities:
- [email protected]: You're here right now
- [email protected]: Daily posts with the trending communities from across the threadiverse
- [email protected]: Find out about new communities
Here are some other communities, some of which are less active:
Remember, you can also post questions about finding new communities right here!
👽 Coming from Reddit?
- sub.rehab: You can sort by official replacements & sister communities
- redditmigration.com: List from the migration
- quippd.com: Another list created by a user during the migration
Great list!
For apps, there is also https://lemmyapps.netlify.app/
please don't use emojis in headers
I'm laughing my ass off at old.lemmy.world whoever did that, hats off to them.
Throwback to one of my favorite comments on Lemmy: https://lemmy.world/comment/1572043
This is the only way to browse!
Holy shit that is hilarious!
Any particular cause for this latest boost of new users? I came here when the API ban happened and am much happier with Lemmy. So welcome to everyone!
[email protected] saw it's official release and the announcement over on Reddit gave us a bump, much like when [email protected] was officially released a while back.
Also there might have been a (albeit smaller) bump a few days ago due to Reddit removing the ability to opt out of ad personalization.
That's why I'm here now! I loved boost for Reddit
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected], [email protected]
The boost believe it or not came from the launch of Boost for Lemmy which was a popular Reddit client.
Boost for Lemmy, Boost for life!! 🚀
I also really liked that one.
I’m here b/c of the advert policy change on reddit
Welcome!
I just left today because relay went into subscription mode. It's nothing against dbrady I know he does his best (made the best app for Android afaik, and even his subscription isn't a money grab) but fuck reddit charging people for using their social media. Don't want snap insta tic tok Facebook twitter etc... to start charging us.
Fuck that shit. I'm old and I remember what the internet used to be. I'm having a hard time accepting everything becoming a fucking subscription (looking at you YouTube).
Also, I'm using boost for Lemmy and I quite like it. If anyone can suggest anything else/better to try I'd be grateful.
Edit: this is my first comment 🥳🥳🥳
I’m old
You'll fit right in.
Same. I didn't care for relay compared to RiF, not my preference, but it was good enough after RiF died. But now that relay is out too? I'm not sure I can stomach using the reddit app. I'm definitely not paying for anything either. I already pay with my mental health by reading reddit comments, I'm not paying money to do it too.
Welcome!
Welcome! Former long time Relay user, but I left reddit in June. For what it's worth, I like Thunder and Connect. They are both open source and add free (no offense to ad supported apps). Just thought you might like to know what a fellow Relay user settles on after months of trying them all out.
Same, relays fine but sync was my main app they ceased their reddit app in june. Just realized they had a spiritual successor for Lemmy up and running so I'm giving it a try now. All the server stuff got me feeling like a boomer but the app actually feels like I remember sync for reddit feeling so I'm hoping I can get into the swing of things without too much trouble!
Relay Pro had to move to a Subscription model for 10/01, as API costs are now being enforced. Both that and the SafetyNet requirement means those of us on custom android phones can't use any premium Reddit app, so RIP.
For me the infinity subscription bypass stopped working so I finally made the switch
I> Remember to criticise ideas, and not people.
That’s a nice guideline. I kept trying to explain that to my recent ex… the vast difference between saying “this behavior is unproductive” vs. “you are unproductive”.
I think for some people, there is zero difference between the two. These kind of people are "you are what you do" kind of people. Lazy people have lazy behavior, unproductive people have productive behavior, etc.
It could also be that they take "you are unproductive" to be a sort of shorthand for "Right now, you are being unproductive. How people perceive themselves and others in time can be strange. That can also cause problems with communication.
Anyway, have a great week!
Avoiding that is something I learned to do intentionally, I suppose. Labeling the person and not a behavior is more confrontational and psychologically suggests to people that they can’t change. It’s also a lot broader, more sweeping type of statement that suggests all of their behavior is that way.
Thanks, I hope your week is lovely as well.
I think for some people, there is zero difference between the two. These kind of people are "you are what you do" kind of people. Lazy people have lazy behavior, unproductive people have productive behavior, etc.
Some people are intellectually lazy and just don't care to differentiate. I try not to spend much time talking to them, they tend to be dicks.
This idea is also related to a philosophy known as Nonviolent Communication.
Honestly tho, if people aren't being absolute dicks, its pretty frickin' free in the speech department. I have to be conscious of it cuz I'm on several different boards with way higher standards and I don't want to be booted from them. It never hurts to be kind and fun and even a little intense sometimes.
Just afix your heart to the right place and everything's gonna be just fine. Stay excellent u lemmings!
can attest to this. used to being banned on reddit for some very mainstream (yet controversial in terminally online spheres) opinions. i hope lemmy moderators never become what reddit moderators have become
Oh man... my first post here on Lemmy, hailing from Boost for Lemmy!
My Boost for Reddit is still working but I got permanently banned for an absolutely ridiculous reason..
Here's to hoping that B4L can be everything that Reddit threw out the window, and more!
Welcome to Lemmy, I love you
☺️ just happy to be back!
Welcome to Lemmy, this is gonna be great 😄 !
Even i came here after a ridiculous permanent ban
Thank you. Gave up Reddit when Reddit Is Fun (RIF) died. Found Lemmings. Wait a few weeks and now here I am. I have to admit the different instances and this federation thingy, a lot to learn though it feels.more background stuff that Reddit may have had but we just didnt notice. Appreciate the post and happy to be here. Cheers!
Welcome. Glad to have you here!
I hope there's a "Lemmy Is Fun" app eventually, but I haven't heard whether the original developer is interested. He's apparently working on something with Tildes.
Hopefully after Tildes, though I wouldn't blame if he doesn't want to support two apps.
Check out Boost, IIRC you can get it to behave mostly like RIF with some settings tweaking. I haven't used RIF since like 2016, I found Boost around then and switched full time - Boost's compact mode was the closest thing to old.reddit.com I could find in a 3rd party client.
I gave up reddit when I got banned by an automod because I commented on a subreddit they didn't approve of. No attempt to put my comment in context (I was questioning the "offensive" subreddit). No appeal, no one to talk to. Pretty ironic that a site that claims to be for "open conversations" is run like an authoritarian gov. Really scummy site.
I feel right at home in the fediverse, it gives me a much more secure feeling than Reddit. Thank you devs for your hard work at creating a suitable alternative.
So, on that topic of "security" - just remember that whenever you post, your post is essentially sent to every "instance" that is federated (and listening for the community you posted to). Each instance is it's own server running it's own version of an activitypub implementation (lemmy, mastadon, etc).
So on lemmy.world that means your post is sent to literally thousands of servers that you cannot directly influence. If you delete a post, a request is made to those servers to also delete the post, but if that instance is modified or unavailable when the request is sent (it'll re-try, but there's a limit how many times), then it's possible your post will not be deleted and you'll never know.
Keep in mind this also means that anyone, say a government or private company, can establish an instance, federate, and receive the posts of everyone. Their instance may be nearly completely invisible - so you won't know they're collecting that information.
However, lemmy stores and sends almost no information about any user. A user profile does not contain IP address or country or anything. All of that stays in the server logs of the instance you originate from, and never enters the database. So your "true" personal information isn't shared, but your account name, and a link to your account, and the post content (whatever text you add) is shared.
Lastly, images tend to be shared. Lemmy uses "pict-rs" which is a FOSS image hosting server, and when an instance receives a federated post, if there is an image in the "URL" field, then it will ask pict-rs to download that image to its server for easier serving to its users.
Great point, however, I would rather have my posts be sent to like minded peers than to some walled-garden company like Reddit. Also, what data would any supposed malicious instance get that isn’t already available to the public? As for account names, text and images from posts, etc. aren’t these the very definition of social media? What kind of social media is not sharing text or images anyway?
wow, old.lemmy.world is perfection.
Very cool!
😲
That's great, what happened in the last week or so to produce a boost?
Reddit got rid of their privacy policy
Relay stopped allowing you to browse reddit for free.
Yup, that's why I'm here. Since sync for reddit ended, Relay was the only app I found with the accessibility settings that I need. Using sync for Lemmy, haven't tried any other apps or browsing methods yet but so far it's been great.
Yep, That's why I've fully moved to lemmy.
Thanks for making the effort to host and support the community!
Ps: Boost gang! 🚀
Heh, "Boost"
Wait a seccond... good catch!
Glad Lemmy is back to gaining users again.
Remember quality over quantity.
But yes, I am glad mor people are joining as well.
Willkommen.
Danke!
What is your favorite Alternative UI? Are you using it full-time or still switch back to the default one? We want to know!
I went from Jerboa to Connect and now am using Boost, which I also used in the past
On desktop? Old “lemmy” I’m just too used to that ui
Usually Photon, occasionally Alexandrite or switching to the regular Lemmy interface.
For desktop, I’m now a 100% Alexandrite user. It looks great, and it actually maximizes screen real estate.
Lemmy lives on my phone and iPad. So rarely venture into the web UI. But I use Voyager On my mobile devices.
Alexandrite on the desktop
I use Voyager. Been self-hosting it since the day the project released. On desktop I just use the default UI, fits my needs I guess.
Sync for Lemmy. It's just super easy to do what I want - and to customize.
I’ve been using Voyager (or wefwef as it used to be known) since day one here at Lemmy. Moved over from Reddit when the API changes were announced, and then any potential negotiations with Reddit and third party app developers broke down.
@Obscura I was experimenting with different apps & ended up using Voyager for my @beehaw account & Memmy for my @lemmyworld account. I know I can use one app for both, but it’s kind of convenient having two.
Avelon on iOS, mlmym on web at the moment. Still looking for a UI that let's me show the local feed of another instance while still being signed in.
I tend to use photon.lemmy.world, but it'd be really cool if I could log in to lemmy.world using tesseract. It's a fork of Photon - so I imagine it also has feature-parity with the official UI - but it's "designed for media-rich feeds and content". It's what they use at dubvee, and db0 also provides it as an alternative
I don't use the default one because it gets confused when lemmy decides to bring a gif in from an external site, and then convert it to a mp4 (it's a pretty hit-and-miss affair in the Gifs Community), though I realise it's ultimately lemmy itself that's causing the problem.
On the desk, photon.lemmy; on the mob, Boost for Lemmy. rockin'it.
Videos aren't played inline for reasons I'll make a sticky about in the photon community.
However, when you open a post page, it'll play a video if it detects it.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]
I've been Connect pretty much the whole time, besides briefly trying out a few others. I was a RIF user, so Connect gives me a fairly similar experience
Can we get an option to hide disliked posts, please?
I've been here a few months, but still learned quite a bit from this post - thanks for putting this together!
And welcome aboard to all the newest newbies! ...did Reddit slap its users in the face again?
Yes, making people pay to use the third party apps, I just posted on [email protected]
Welcome to the Fediverse all!
Username doesn't check out.
WELCOME ALL
Welcome everyone 😀 !
Hello. This is my first post on Lemmy. Still trying to figure my way around.
What made it “click” for me was when someone explained it like email addresses. You can send emails between Gmail and Yahoo Mail just fine, and two email addresses with the same username are distinguished by their @ handles. So like “Example@gmail(dot)com” is a different address than “Example@yahoo(dot)com”. They’re entirely separate accounts that can send emails to each other.
The fediverse is very similar. My account @lemmy.world is separate from the same username on another instance. And the same goes for communities. There may be communities on certain instances that naturally grow and absorb the smaller ones, but there’s nothing stopping you from making your own identical community on another instance, with its own rules, moderators, and content.
Federation is simply the process of connecting two servers together. The same way gmail and yahoo can talk to each other via a standard protocol, federation allows the different servers to talk to each other. This occasionally causes weird things when one instance federates with another, and you suddenly get flooded by posts from that new server. But that’s just your Home feed catching up, since all of those posts are now considered unread.
Federation isn’t an automatic process in the sense that new servers announce themselves and get connected automatically. Instead, federation happens when a user from one instance tries to interact with another instance. For example, maybe you have a community over in @examplecommunity(dot)com. The first time you (as a Lemmy(dot)world user) try to interact with that examplecommunity server, the two will federate and begin the process of sharing posts.
Didn't know bout the desktop apps, awesome!
Ha! 'boost' - I get it!
Welcome
I'm curious: How does this work if you're posting in this instance from another instance? Can I be banned? Would I be informed of a ban? Can you delete or edit my posts? I see more instsnce banned users from Lemmy.World than any other instance, and the rules don't seem to be much different than another other social site, which is concerning as looking through those banned users, I quite often can not find anything that would have broken the rules, whether it was deleted or not. Which really makes it seem like some admin or admins over here are banning people who disagree with them.
Edit: So I was just checking the modlog over at Foodporn (of which I am a mod) and noticed that most of the actions taken were an admin from Lemmy.World deleting and banning a single user who argued against eating meat. The only thing the offending user did was argue with the admin. They didn't break our rules or site rules, they just happened to engage in an argument against this admin. Definitely not a good look.
You could be banned yes, because it would be
https://lemmy.world/u/[email protected]that would be kicked. To see the effect of this, compare [email protected] with lemmy.world's version of it -https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]- (all the posts by banned user [email protected] are missing)
As a reddit and lemmy enjoyer, I approve this message
It reminds me when the Mastodon replaced Twitter. I did my account there, then I had trouble logging in because instances don't share the logging process. Eventually my posts were lost, now I just checked and my account disappeared.
bro my account got banned here. i figured it was my fault thwir server their rules, whatever. then like 3 days later i can log in again.
growing pains i suppose
Your account is automatically removed after a long time of inactivity
We appreciate you.
Long live lemmy(world)!!
I was using old.lemmy.world for a while but unfortunately it seems to be a bit buggy. It's impossible to make a top-level reply on any post, and upvoting/downvoting doesn't work inside a thread. It's fine when I just feel like browsing and lurking, but a no-go when I feel like the world needs to see my gem-like commentary.
Welcome!
big "boost" in the amount of users? What kind of dumbass stunt did spez pull again this time?
It might have to do with the release of the app "Boost for Lemmy".
The reason why I'm here is I was permanently banned from reddit that's Possibly why alot of people decided to just hop onto lemmy and give it ago I noticed myself it's alot easier to get banned on reddit nowadays then a few months back before all this started
I changed email to an alias called fuckspez@ and even changed the username to the same name ever since spez blackmailed 3rd party apps but I haven't been banned yet.
The amount of posts on the front page of Reddit that were no longer available because user was banned or broke the rules or mods just didn't like the post, is just way too much. My friend would share reddit posts with me only for me to see that they weren't available anymore. It really gets in the way of the experience. Also I had so many posts removed without explanation, or in some cases, with the mods insulting me.
Thank you for this, welcome everyone!
I still call voyager, “wefwef” and it’s the subdomain I still use.
Me too. The PWA icon label on my phone still says wefwef.
I'm not sure where to post my question, it's more of a general question rather than something specific that belongs in [email protected] so I'll just ask here.
I have read the guide for new users and similar posts but couldn't find anything that addresses it.
I somewhat understand the distributed nature of the fediverse, but my question is: how does it differ from reddit in terms of eventually a small handful of people will create all the most popular subreddits (or communities here), consolidate power, and turn it into a dictatorship like reddit.
That was one of the main problems on reddit, where like 25 power mods ran every single popular sub.
Apologies if this has been asked before or if it's the wrong place, I did look around and try to find an answer..
Thanks.
However, unlike Reddit, there's alternatives. You might not like the community on @lemmy.world, but you might like the community on @anotherlemmythatmight.exist.
Because of the federated nature, communities will naturally fracture and focus. Here, a bad faith mod will just kill a community on instance a, and people will move to instance b.
We've already seen things happen like this under the banner of 'free speech', where people believe that free speech means free from consequences. If you think that, there are plenty of instances out there. Lemmy.world isn't one of them.
This means that you can find your favourite community in places with different server rules. Which means it will be the community - the people, the mods, the knowledge, that grows one, not just the fact the names taken.
Hmm, interesting, thanks for that!
I only joined lemmy.world because it was the first one on the list in the tutorial I read when setting this up. I'm still brand new here and trying to figure out how this all works.
I somewhat understand the distributed nature of the fediverse, but my question is: how does it differ from reddit in terms of eventually a small handful of people will create all the most popular subreddits (or communities here), consolidate power, and turn it into a dictatorship like reddit.
That's something any community needs to be on the lookout for, I wouldn't assume the worst just yet. Lemmy is entirely community driven, if governance is a concern then get involved in governance and see what you can help with.
How do we report users directly to admins, such as this?
Question, is there any plan to implement/compatibility issue with VPNs and Lemmy? Sorry if this has been answered before; I figured this was a good place to ask. I am seeing more and more sites break with VPNs.
Is there anything specific which nreaks on lemmy when you're on a VPN?
I'm going to be honest, I'm probably not going stay on lemmy for much longer. It's just the few toxic members ruining for the majority couple with the extreme political polarization. Some people turn benign discourse into heated arguments and argue in bad faith and some leave mean spirited or nasty comments without provocation. Those are the things that I do not miss from Reddit. I've already blocked a few people, but that's not something that Iike to do, but such is life.
If I were to describe it in a simple way I'd say it feels very anti-normie.
I just tag people who argue in bad faith with a note and avoid engaging with them in the future. Don't let a few assholes ruin an entire community for you.
Like the place is run by elitists, yeah.
The nice thing about lemmy is that if you don't agree with how a particular instance is run you can always find another that's more your speed. That isn't really an option on any other social media network.
I've definitely run into some assholes on the platform who can't separate the user from the idea but by and large it's a step up from Reddit.
@LongPigFlavor any thoughts on where you’d go?
I do hope to stay, but if I were to leave, I'd just stop using social media as a whole or use it very seldomly.
Are there any free speech instances?
Well, conspiracy theories? That's a pretty broad brush right there. Saying the virus originated in the Wuhan lab, or that it was even bioengineered at all was a "conspiracy theory" that got a lot of people banned from all kinds of forums.
Saying that conspiracy theories means artificial birds and flat earth is simply saying that any ideas that you think can be labeled as "conspiracy theories" are just as stupid. But that is not the case.
Even saying that the US provoked the war in Ukraine is probably so thing bannable according to your logic.
Reeks of gatekeeping to me.
Agreed, there's quite a bit of gatekeeping, but I don't think it's because of malicious intent. I feel like the line for what is a damaging conspiracy and what isn't is quite blurry and hard to even think of, so I imagine whoever wrote that rule didn't really think that deeply about it.
I got banned because i criticized your usage of Discord. No one should create an account on this instance.
That sounds kind of like "your opinion" of what you got banned for. I would imagine it was more about "how" you disagreed.
Rate it for me
For anyone looking for free speech friendly instances, don't worry, they exist, you can even cuss like a big boy. Join us.
That being said I am a proponent of defederating from obvious troll farms like hexbear and Lemmygrad.
I can tell you didn’t even read the fucking code of conduct page.
It doesn’t say a goddamn thing about cursing.
Mostly it boils down to not being hateful or attacking people.
I'm not sure Lemm.ee is as "free speech" as you seem to think it is either though.
They also have rules against "personal attacks" and "abusive language"... Kind of vague if you ask me.
Oh yeah, totally, this isn't my only account, but it was the first one I made. It hasn't been an issue for me because I'm not personally going around harassing people, but I am still not on the side of heavy censorship and I don't think this war social media has been on will ever succeed in creating the bubble room world they seem to want. People will always talk with emotion and use vibrant language no matter how much they try to create a squeaky clean Internet.
