Lemmy AMA March 2025
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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.
Reddit has far more niche communities. There’s the saying that “there’s a subreddit for everything.”
What do you think the trajectory/timeline looks like for lemmy to develop a more robust array of niche communities (aka niche subreddits)?
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Reddit has far more niche communities. There’s the saying that “there’s a subreddit for everything.”
What do you think the trajectory/timeline looks like for lemmy to develop a more robust array of niche communities (aka niche subreddits)?
It'll likely continue to happen organically: niche communities on reddit will keep getting fed up with the changes, and migrate to lemmy.
I don't know if we'll ever reach a tipping point, because redditors have shown that there's almost nothing they won't tolerate, but its also likely they still don't know that alternatives exist. There's a general conspiracy of silence about most fediverse software. Even with all this recent reddit drama, not a single article bothered to mention lemmy or other alternatives. The info is out there, but interested people have to go out of their way to find it.
We've also added a scaled sort to boost posts from smaller / less active communities, so that should help some with discovery. It'd also be nice for instances to use the sidebar, pinned posts, or site taglines to highlight smaller communities to help them grow.
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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.
More customization for site owners. I have an independent instance and there's a lot of things on there that are confusing for people unfamiliar with the fefiverse or lemmy. It would also be nice to remove the donation beg at the top. I know Lemmy needs funding, but it makes it look like I'm asking for donations.
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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.
What Is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
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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.
Just wanted to say I LOVE lemmy! It's a really positive community, the atmosphere is great and I like how it's unique but also familiar. I really appreciate your work on it. I know this is AMA... what's your favourite animal?
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What Is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
African or European swallow?
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More customization for site owners. I have an independent instance and there's a lot of things on there that are confusing for people unfamiliar with the fefiverse or lemmy. It would also be nice to remove the donation beg at the top. I know Lemmy needs funding, but it makes it look like I'm asking for donations.
The easiest solution would be to mention in the sidebar or in a welcome post that donations are not for you, but for the developers of the software. Also the frontend supports custom css so you can change the entire design. It is also possible to use a different frontend or write your own, as its all open source.
To be honest its quite bold of you asking to remove the donation buttons. Working on Lemmy has been our fulltime job for the past years, and we rely on user donations to pay for food and rent. Yet you are getting the results of our work entirely for free. Having some donation links is a very small price for that.
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Just wanted to say I LOVE lemmy! It's a really positive community, the atmosphere is great and I like how it's unique but also familiar. I really appreciate your work on it. I know this is AMA... what's your favourite animal?
Youre welcome! Im not really an animal person, but I choose dogs.
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It'll likely continue to happen organically: niche communities on reddit will keep getting fed up with the changes, and migrate to lemmy.
I don't know if we'll ever reach a tipping point, because redditors have shown that there's almost nothing they won't tolerate, but its also likely they still don't know that alternatives exist. There's a general conspiracy of silence about most fediverse software. Even with all this recent reddit drama, not a single article bothered to mention lemmy or other alternatives. The info is out there, but interested people have to go out of their way to find it.
We've also added a scaled sort to boost posts from smaller / less active communities, so that should help some with discovery. It'd also be nice for instances to use the sidebar, pinned posts, or site taglines to highlight smaller communities to help them grow.
Conspiracy is a good way to describe it now that you mention it. Makes me wonder how Pixelfed managed to get so much media coverage recently.
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The easiest solution would be to mention in the sidebar or in a welcome post that donations are not for you, but for the developers of the software. Also the frontend supports custom css so you can change the entire design. It is also possible to use a different frontend or write your own, as its all open source.
To be honest its quite bold of you asking to remove the donation buttons. Working on Lemmy has been our fulltime job for the past years, and we rely on user donations to pay for food and rent. Yet you are getting the results of our work entirely for free. Having some donation links is a very small price for that.
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.
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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 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.
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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.
