Lemmy AMA March 2025
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Do you have any plans to make it easier to manage the images stored in pictrs? One issue I have is that I used to proxy images, I no longer do that, but now I have like 300GB on backblaze doing nothing. In this post I outlined more precisely what I mean.
This is something which should be handled by external tools, for example lemmy-thumbnail-cleaner.
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In the last weeks Lemmy has seen a lot of growth, with thousands of new users. To welcome them we are holding this AMA to answer questions from the community. You can ask about the beginnings of Lemmy, how we see the future of Lemmy, our long-term goals, what makes Lemmy different from Reddit, about internet and social media in general, as well as personal questions.
We'd also like to hear your overall feedback on Lemmy: What are its greatest strengths and weaknesses? How would you improve it? What's something you wish it had? What can our community do to ensure that we keep pulling users away from US tech companies, and into the fediverse?
Lemmy and Reddit may look similar at first glance, but there is a major difference. While Reddit is a corporation with thousands of employees and billionaire investors, Lemmy is nothing but an open source project run by volunteers. It was started in 2019 by @dessalines and @nutomic, turning into a fulltime job since 2020. For our income we are dependent on your donations, so please contribute if you can. We'd like to be able to add more full-time contributors to our co-op.
We will start answering questions from tomorrow (Wednesday). Besides @dessalines and @nutomic, other Lemmy contributors may also chime in to answer questions:
Here are our previous AMAs for those interested.
Thanks a lot for the work you do! How do you get by with such a limited amount of funds? How sustainable is your financial situation if donations don't pick up considerably?
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In the last weeks Lemmy has seen a lot of growth, with thousands of new users. To welcome them we are holding this AMA to answer questions from the community. You can ask about the beginnings of Lemmy, how we see the future of Lemmy, our long-term goals, what makes Lemmy different from Reddit, about internet and social media in general, as well as personal questions.
We'd also like to hear your overall feedback on Lemmy: What are its greatest strengths and weaknesses? How would you improve it? What's something you wish it had? What can our community do to ensure that we keep pulling users away from US tech companies, and into the fediverse?
Lemmy and Reddit may look similar at first glance, but there is a major difference. While Reddit is a corporation with thousands of employees and billionaire investors, Lemmy is nothing but an open source project run by volunteers. It was started in 2019 by @dessalines and @nutomic, turning into a fulltime job since 2020. For our income we are dependent on your donations, so please contribute if you can. We'd like to be able to add more full-time contributors to our co-op.
We will start answering questions from tomorrow (Wednesday). Besides @dessalines and @nutomic, other Lemmy contributors may also chime in to answer questions:
Here are our previous AMAs for those interested.
I am new to Lemmy, so haven’t really looked into if the following is possible but can I create groups of communities with a similar topic across multiple instances?
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Thanks a lot for the work you do! How do you get by with such a limited amount of funds? How sustainable is your financial situation if donations don't pick up considerably?
I live in Spain, the cost of living here is much cheaper than Germany or especially the United States. I also dont need luxuries, and have enough money saved to last for a while. If donations are not enough I could always work for some company, and spend less time on Lemmy.
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I am new to Lemmy, so haven’t really looked into if the following is possible but can I create groups of communities with a similar topic across multiple instances?
This is part of the roadmap and will be implemented soon.
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African or European swallow?
I don't know that.
[gif that lemmy imageproxy refuses to show for some reason]
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In the last weeks Lemmy has seen a lot of growth, with thousands of new users. To welcome them we are holding this AMA to answer questions from the community. You can ask about the beginnings of Lemmy, how we see the future of Lemmy, our long-term goals, what makes Lemmy different from Reddit, about internet and social media in general, as well as personal questions.
We'd also like to hear your overall feedback on Lemmy: What are its greatest strengths and weaknesses? How would you improve it? What's something you wish it had? What can our community do to ensure that we keep pulling users away from US tech companies, and into the fediverse?
Lemmy and Reddit may look similar at first glance, but there is a major difference. While Reddit is a corporation with thousands of employees and billionaire investors, Lemmy is nothing but an open source project run by volunteers. It was started in 2019 by @dessalines and @nutomic, turning into a fulltime job since 2020. For our income we are dependent on your donations, so please contribute if you can. We'd like to be able to add more full-time contributors to our co-op.
We will start answering questions from tomorrow (Wednesday). Besides @dessalines and @nutomic, other Lemmy contributors may also chime in to answer questions:
Here are our previous AMAs for those interested.
Do you plan to introduce some kind of post tags into Lemmy, preferably something that will behave like Hashtags on Mastodon and other activitypub platforms? I know that Lemmy has been embedding community name as a hashtag for a while now, though having tags that can be populated by users would help discovery greatly.
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I don't know that.
[gif that lemmy imageproxy refuses to show for some reason]
Turns out the size limits for animations that we set on lemmy.ml also apply to proxied images. I would think its only for local uploads. Removed the limits now to get it working. Thanks for letting me know.
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Do you plan to introduce some kind of post tags into Lemmy, preferably something that will behave like Hashtags on Mastodon and other activitypub platforms? I know that Lemmy has been embedding community name as a hashtag for a while now, though having tags that can be populated by users would help discovery greatly.
Lemmy is not for microblogging, so I dont think hashtags make sense.
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Indeed it is a big ask, however, It would be something I'd be willing to pay for. Many foss projects make money from paying customers as well as donations. I also mention and explain what lemmy is and encourage people to check it out in the getting started area of the site.
How much would you be willing to pay for this? Im not sure if its worth the effort because its not clear if anyone else besides you would be interested, and it would require a bunch of work to setup. It would require an automated way to check donation status, and a way to build and distribute these private releases. Feel free to respond via private message.
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Lemmy is not for microblogging, so I dont think hashtags make sense.
Well they don't have to show up as hashtags to users on Lemmy, they can show up as their own designated tags you add to the post on creation of editing. Just some form of post tags to indicate the category of a post (could even be specific to communities like subreddit flairs) but they would show up as hashtags on Mastodon, similar to how Lemmy already embeds a hashtag of the community into posts.
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How much would you be willing to pay for this? Im not sure if its worth the effort because its not clear if anyone else besides you would be interested, and it would require a bunch of work to setup. It would require an automated way to check donation status, and a way to build and distribute these private releases. Feel free to respond via private message.
I guess I wasn't thinking about how much work it would actually be in order to enforce it. I doubt I could afford the cost. Maybe if it was coupled with a managed services type of deal and you had enough subsrcibers it could be enough to hire another staff member? It seems like adding "premium" features could alieanate the userbase unless it's just cosmetic changes.
I put my foot in my mouth bringing it up, sorry. -
Well they don't have to show up as hashtags to users on Lemmy, they can show up as their own designated tags you add to the post on creation of editing. Just some form of post tags to indicate the category of a post (could even be specific to communities like subreddit flairs) but they would show up as hashtags on Mastodon, similar to how Lemmy already embeds a hashtag of the community into posts.
Ah, post tags are currently work in progress. They are also going to be federated.
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I guess I wasn't thinking about how much work it would actually be in order to enforce it. I doubt I could afford the cost. Maybe if it was coupled with a managed services type of deal and you had enough subsrcibers it could be enough to hire another staff member? It seems like adding "premium" features could alieanate the userbase unless it's just cosmetic changes.
I put my foot in my mouth bringing it up, sorry.No worries that's what the AMA is for. I thought about managed hosting before, but it would likely involve mainly support and sysadmin work, while my passion is programming.
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No worries that's what the AMA is for. I thought about managed hosting before, but it would likely involve mainly support and sysadmin work, while my passion is programming.
You could always outsource and automate the basic troubleshooting aspects. Running updates accross multiple customers would be a breeze. I beleive I've seen one managed services company that will set up an instance and manage it for around $20/mo.
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You could always outsource and automate the basic troubleshooting aspects. Running updates accross multiple customers would be a breeze. I beleive I've seen one managed services company that will set up an instance and manage it for around $20/mo.
That would mean hiring someone, which requires initial funding like a bank loan. It is also necessary to get the funding and skill to setup a website, automate the hosting and most importantly run a marketing campaign. Otherwise no one will know about the service nor use it. So it requires setting up a whole business, do you know how to do that?
