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.
What is a ‘tankie’?
Edit: Apparently a Stalinist or someone who defends the USSR sending tanks to Hungary to smash the 1956 Hungarian uprising.
Yeah, that’s a simplified way to explain it. Basically it’s communists who are perfectly ok with genocide, as long as it’s against a certain class of people rather than a certain race or religion. And it’s also an attitude thing. It’s like - they know they’re in the wrong, so instead of being willing to have a discussion about the ethics of murder, they would rather just kick you out of the forum (and it’s always just a forum - you’ll never find these people in real life - in real life they’re normal, regular people who are reasonable - it’s just online when they Role Play as Lenninist/Stalinist/Maoist Revolutionaries). They delude themselves into thinking that they’re the ones who are the “realistic/pragmatic” ones, and that those of us who think we can achieve communism through peaceful means or achieve a non-hierarchial/non-authoritarian social system are naive children (hence them calling us “anarkiddies” etc.). When in reality, they are the childish ones who insist on calling people names and wallowing in their cynicism and not allowing those of us with “cooties” into their little online treehouses.
It’s like they’ve completely absorbed and fallen into the CIA PsyOp effort to divide the left - to silo out those who are willing to commit murder to achieve their goals (or at least pretend they do online), and separate them from the rest of the left, in their own little enclaves online, where they can be monitored and tracked.
It’s funny how they’ve done this to themselves, honestly. They could have so many friends, if only they were friendly.