Lemmy

There is no way for an instance like lemmy.ml to know about all lemmy servers, because there’s no central server keeping track.

-- https://lemmy.ml/comment/447791

I was reading the above comment and it made me think about the relays and how they could help lemmy/kbin/other Group software. Relays were a solution the microblogging sector of the fediverse used to jumpstart instances, which would have an empty federated feed making it difficult for local users to find new users to follow.

The way I envision it working would be a community relay would be an AP server with a Service or Application type Actor. This actor could receive a copy of a community's Create message and could then Announce that community to its followers. Lemmy/kbin instances could follow relays to be alerted of new remote communities and notify the relay about their own new communities.

In this way, users/instances could learn about new communities across the fediverse in a participatory way without relying on a central authority.

I'm thinking about deploying my own instance where I'd be the only user and most probable I won't have any communities.
The only thing there will be my account to interact with as many other instances as I want.

What would be de pros and cons of having my account like this?
Would it be harder to interact with other instances in some way?

Subs like off my chest or r advice?

We all know about how Reddit closed-sourced back in 2017 and will be killing off third-party apps this July, what will Lemmy.ml do to avoid facing the same fate? Reddit started off like this (open, aiming for freedom) and it all went downhill from there.

I've seen lots of discussion on reddit of users trying to get others to join Lemmy and the prevailing reply is that it is too difficult to navigate and comprehend. Having to answer multiple questions and wait for manual verification is combersome and is limiting growth at a time when nothing should be standing in Lemmy's way. Combine this with server/instance selection analysis paralysis, and you get my point.

The linked mastodon blog post sums up my thoughts, but the TLDR is essentially this:

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Don't let dreams of decentralization interfere with the greater goal of achieving the network effect.

We should all be telling people to go to lemmy.ml and sign up. The devs should be too, and they should rethink/remove the questions and waiting period. Hell, just put a captcha. Discussions about servers and analogies to email as an example of federated service we all already use is a waste of breath. We shouldn't have barriers to entry.

Thoughts?

EDIT: I've just found kbin.social and find it has superior signup options. It's just: make an account (email/password), or sign up with Google or Apple. No server talk. Upside is the layout is nice and it acts as a Lemmy instance (threads) as well as a mastodon instance (microblogging). Only downside currently is that their android/iOS app is in development and isn't ready yet, so desktop only.

https://github.com/ernestwisniewski/kbin

https://kbin.social/

I think this might be the better recommendation for newbies at the moment.

Every time I look at reddit or twitter they're designed to be filled with the most vile or annoying posts imaginable to keep you scrolling and this place just... doesn't have that. It's relieving to not be inherently angry just scrolling through new posts

I've heard many people saying that the front-end looks old and needs more work, but I've never heard someone describe how it could look better. To me, it looks perfectly fine. I wish it had a card layout similar to libreddit, but aside from that, I think it's nice. If people want a completely different look, then there's lemmyBB, and there will probably be other front-ends in the future. However, we should hear opinions about which styles people want.

Grouping interests is really convenient.

Rule #2 is possibly our most important one:

Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here.

Learn to disagree without being rude or disrespectful.

It can be difficult sometimes, since western social media thrives on collective outrage, and they knowingly ingrain this into us for years. But please do adhere to this rule, and it will make this place much more enjoyable.

We will not hesitate to issue temp bans (usually a day or two) for those who make everyone's experience unpleasant.Hit the report button if you see this behavior.

Thanks!

Hey guys, just joined Lemmy and noticed that there isn't any searching tool like on reddit. I was scrolling yesterday and saw a cool post but didn't have time to save it and I tried searching and realized that there was no searching feature, at least not in Jerboa on Android. Anybody come up with a solution for this or maybe it's a secret hidden icon?

I really love Boost for reddit, I know it's not open source but I'm sure there are open source apps that are similar enough. Does anyone know how to adjust one of these open source reddit apps to work with Lemmy? I am using an open source android app from f-droid, and it lacks some of my favorite features like tapping to collapse comment chains, customizable UI, etc.

Active seems to order based on discussion length while hot lets you discover newer content that's also popular.

I changed my default settings to hot, since it seems to be better for discovery.

I saw Jerboa while scrolling through random apps to potentially install, and became excited that finally there's a REDDIT alternative as well, instead of just Twitter. Mastodon might be nice, but I don't use Twitter, and I probably won't use Mastodon, either. Reddit, on the other hand, oh man...

Reddit is honestly so important to the internet at this point that you're trolling if you do web searches without "reddit" appended at the end (be it technological, physiological, historical, political, or any other type of topic that you're looking for information or opinions about).

However... Reddit is going towards a terrible corporate direction, and something like Lemmy has been desperately needed for a while now, and I hope it can eventually somehow become the new "reddit" at the end of web searches eventually, as nobody knows what could happen to Reddit soon...

I find the most random, but also INCREDIBLY important and crucial bits of information deep within Reddit thread replies, since each one can go anywhere, no matter what the original post was about, such as finding out that fabric softeners are damaging for everything, especially humans, and that they should just generally not be used... on a gaming-related subreddit. Of course I start doing my research afterwards as well, now specifically regarding what I just learned to make sure and verify I know the correct information from multiple sources, but even just that initial random warning is great to start off with.

And the worst part? We might lose ALL of these things since we're at the mercy of Reddit's shareholders (even more so in the future, most likely), and these incredible resources and HUMAN EXPERIENCES that one shares, and MANY others learn from, could just... disappear...

A quick major policy change, and goodbye Reddit...

I'm looking forward to Lemmy taking off!

Is there a way to have Lemmy instances render in wide-screen mode (sort of like old reddit or older themes of Wikipedia)? I really dislike the default look of everything being in the center with tons of blank space on both sides (I use 1440p monitors).

For what it's worth, I came up with the following Stylus css script to work on the lemmy.ml (also works on github.com for what it's worth if you so choose):

.container,
.container-lg,
.container-md,
.container-sm,
.container-xl {
    max-width: 2560px !important;
}

.col-md-8 {
    flex: 0 0 85% !important;
    max-width: 85% !important;
}

.col-md-4 {
    flex: 0 0 15% !important;
    max-width: 15% !important;
}

Can just adjust max-width under the .container* options to whatever you want (I chose to set it to my monitor's width). The col-md-8 and col-md-4 are for the main content and sidebar respectively, so I have main content at 85% of the width and sidebar at 15% of the width. Result looks similar to this: https://i.imgur.com/FMAZYbh.png

Published my style here for use on Stylus: https://userstyles.world/style/10168/1440p-lemmy

Lemmy is booming

I have never before received so many reactions and comments on my Lemmy posts before, so it's obvious to see, that there are many new members here.
Welcome to all the new! And I'm looking forward to see more of you here.
Cheers!

Hello! I want to start a group of communities on here, regarding proprietary software for iOS, MacOS and Windows. Is its better to host communities or instances in this case? What to do and when?

I know it's possible to follow communities on lemmy from a mastodon account, but I was wondering if it's possible to do the reverse, and subscribe to a mastodon user? I wanted to try and get a combined feed from both platforms - I prefer lemmy, and given it works one way I was hoping it might work the other?

Hello, creating a community on firefox fails currently, the button turns to a loading button but never proceeds to send a request anywhere

New Reddit refugee here! One thing I noticed when signing up for Lemmy is the lack of multi-factor authentication to protect my account. Just curious if this on the roadmap?

This seems like the most relevant community. I have so many questions - some from pure curiosity, and some from actually considering hosting an instance.

There seems to be different UIs for Lemmy, but it's instance-wide and thus configured by the admin of that instance.

There seems to be an instance that isn't federated that uses a different UI, the only instance that I know of is Hexbear, that properly utilizes space of a desktop web browser to display content.

So what I'm wondering is, are there any federated instances that use that UI? I would obviously like to stay part of the fediverse with good moderation, I just want to find something that has UI that takes advantage of more screen real estate.

Also if there is anyone who is more familiar with the UI, hosting your own instance etc., is there any reason in particular why someone who is setting up a new instance couldn't or shouldn't use the UI that Hexbear is using?

Due to lemmys focus on communities instead of individuals it seems like some level of centralization is going to occur or already has. As an example !privacy@lemmy.ml is going to be a way more active community than !privacy@somerandomserver.org. now if i run a terrible server called terribleserver.net and lemmy.ml bans it as they should then nobody on terribleserver.net will be able to interact with the largest communities such as !privacy, !technology, etc. Other servers may have their own versions of these but they will most likely be rarely used. Mind, i doubt lemmy.ml's mods would do this, but a rogue mod could really break things by just banning other instances for no reason. I have been on mastodon for years but am decently new to lemmy so if i am misunderstanding this please correct me