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.
Thanks for the welcome! I was a little standoffish about signing up but then found an app for it and it honestly feels like reddit should at this point. (For those curious, it’s Jerboa for Lemmy on the play store)
I’m hoping this new influx of users helps to improve jerboa over time. It pretty as it is, but some areas could use attention.
I wonder if there are any other app alternatives. This one is nice, but lacks most features that many of the 3rd party apps had for Reddit
Lemmur is another one I’ve heard recommended for Android.
Lemmur is no longer being maintained, I’d love it if some of the apps that are about to not work on reddit anymore switched to lemmy though coughinfinitycough
That’s a pity, I had Lemmur installed and was wondering why it wouldn’t workm IMHO a better name for a Lemmy app than “jerboa”.
Yeah I tried it too before I found out, imo one thing lemmy really needs is a selection of usable apps like mastodon has and reddit is about to throw away