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.

  • Azzu@lemm.eeEnglish
    251·
    3 days ago

    Are there any plans to deal with the most common annoyances regarding Lemmy? In my opinion these are all based on federation:

    1. Some completely automated way for users to join Lemmy. Yeah, it’s not hard to select a server and it’s a “good thing to do”, but it’s still better to give people the option to go for convenience instead of the “proper” path. Maybe some kind of system where instances sign up for this general, convenience way of signing up, and the registered users just get automatically distributed evenly across those instances.
    2. Duplicate post aggregation. The nature of federation will always make it make sense to have duplicate communities, but this will also make posts with the same links, same images, same videos, etc show up in people’s “all” feeds multiple times. It is technically possible to algorithmically detect these duplicates and offer users a UI option (not actual backend merge) to merge them all visually into one post.
    3. A way to backup your whole user data and completely restore it on any instance you want. If an instance goes under, it should be possible to keep all subscriptions, all your posts, all your comments, and migrate them to a new instance.
    • Dessalines@lemmy.mlMEnglish
      10·
      2 days ago

      Yeah, it’s not hard to select a server and it’s a “good thing to do”, but it’s still better to give people the option to go for convenience instead of the “proper” path.

      We could add a “fast join” button to the signup dialog on join-lemmy.org , where it takes you to a random instance’s signup page.

      Overall though, we should ignore the “advice” from reddit that tells us that people are too stupid to sign up for anything now. People did this for every forum and every other site all until ~2005 when US tech gobbled up most services, and ppl continue to show us that yes, they do know how to type in a username, password, and email to sign up for something.

      Duplicate post aggregation. The nature of federation will always make it make sense to have duplicate communities, but this will also make posts with the same links, same images, same videos, etc show up in people’s “all” feeds multiple times.

      In lemmy-ui we have a post-deduplicator for feeds, but unfortunately not a lot of other apps (including jerboa, that’s my bad) have added something similar.

      A way to backup your whole user data and completely restore it on any instance you want. If an instance goes under, it should be possible to keep all subscriptions, all your posts, all your comments, and migrate them to a new instance.

      Settings export already exists. Copying historical content and rewriting history isn’t possible in a federated system, but we do have an open issue for data export.

      • Azzu@lemm.eeEnglish
        4·
        2 days ago

        we should ignore the “advice” from reddit that tells us that people are too stupid to sign up for anything

        Definitely agree. The problem is just when someone in the past said “you should join <forum x>!”, you were always able to just immediately go to forum x’s signup page and sign up. But if someone hears of Lemmy, and goes to join-lemmy.org, there is no way to go to a signup page directly. They have to first learn about the multiple servers, and choose one. I think a “fast join” button like you say should be fine, and immediately next to it something to catch all the advanced actually curious users with something like a “advanced sign-up”

        In lemmy-ui we have a post-deduplicator for feeds

        That’s weird, because that’s exactly from where I’m coming from, I’m always using the lemm.ee website directly on all my devices, and I constantly see duplicate posts.

        Copying historical content and rewriting history isn’t possible in a federated system

        I have less knowledge of this topic so I’ll defer to you, but I have the feeling this may not be true. You might of course not be able to ensure consistency between all instances, ensure that it’s been changed everywhere, but I really can’t see why this is any different than “editing” a comment’s content or a post title, which is already possible. Why wouldn’t it be possible to “edit” the comment/post author in exactly the same way?

        Thanks for your response and all you’re doing!

        • Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          3·
          2 days ago

          That’s weird, because that’s exactly from where I’m coming from, I’m always using the lemm.ee website directly on all my devices, and I constantly see duplicate posts.

          I was thinking about what you were saying yesterday and I had another look.

          • on the subscribed feed, using “New Comments”, crossposts seem to indeed aggregate
          • on the All feed, using “Top of the Day”, crossposts would indeed appear multiple times, depending on their respective scores
            • Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              1·
              2 days ago

              Then that’s where the issue comes from. I guess you might open an issue on the Lemmy GitHub so that crossposts are grouped in the Top views too rather than separated by their own upvote scores

        • Die4Ever@programming.devEnglish
          12·
          2 days ago

          The problem is just when someone in the past said “you should join <forum x>!”, you were always able to just immediately go to forum x’s signup page and sign up. But if someone hears of Lemmy, and goes to join-lemmy.org, there is no way to go to a signup page directly.

          People should probably stop saying “join Lemmy”, and instead link directly to the site/instance they suggest

    • TXL@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      11·
      3 days ago

      Multispam is one of the things that is genuinely a threat to Lemmy’s usability. If you follow certain topics, you start seeing 2-5 copies of every post. It’s a genuine spam problem and “just block” or “just scroll” is as much of a non solution as it is with other spam.

      • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        Personally when I want to share something to multiple communities, I deliberately space out the posts in time. It has the slight downside of potentially showing up for a person repeatedly for days, but I think this is outweighed by the upside of them not seeing the same post multiple times within a few minutes, which is really annoying. And it has the added advantage of being more likely to be seen by people who weren’t online at the right time to see it the first time.

      • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        Sometimes. But other times the instance/moderation vibes of each post will be different. Sometimes I enjoy seeing how different groups respond.

    • Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      131·
      3 days ago

      it’s still better to give people the option to go for convenience instead of the “proper” path.

      https://phtn.app/signup gives a prepopulated list

      show up in people’s “all” feeds multiple times.

      Which interface do you use? Crossposts only show up once on the default UI

      A way to backup your whole user data and completely restore it on any instance you want. If an instance goes under, it should be possible to keep all subscriptions, all your posts, all your comments, and migrate them to a new instance.

      You can already export and import your subscriptions between instances (account settings - import/export)

      Posts and comments can’t be migrated, but Mastodon doesn’t allow it either.

      Mastodon currently does not support importing posts or media due to technical limitations, but your archive can be viewed by any software that understands how to parse Activity Streams 2.0 documents.

      https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#export

      • Azzu@lemm.eeEnglish
        4·
        3 days ago

        gives a prepopulated list

        The official one also does that. I’m talking about choosing a username, password, and email maybe, and then clicking register, and being done. No thinking involved.

        Crossposts only show up once on the default UI

        False, you get links to the other posts, of which you posted a screenshot, but each post is handled as being completely separate. If you are in the subscribed, local or all feeds, you would see all of these posts separately. Have you really never noticed scrolling by “the same” post multiple times? You have to go to each post manually to get all the comments to the “same” thing.

        but Mastodon doesn’t allow it either […] due to technical limitations

        Yes, I know that. But I’m also a programmer and I know that “technical limitations” is mostly a term for “that’s how we started it and it would be too costly to solve now, so we’ll just dismiss it” and not for actual limitations (i.e. not technically possible). It’d maybe require breaking changes of some kind or some kind of annoying backwards compatibility workaround, but that is why I’m asking. I’m not completely familiar with activity pub, but there’s likely some key used to verify posts/messages are made by a certain user, and there’s currently no way to transfer or change that key to a new account. But it seems very technically possible to me, and also possible without massive security issues. So that was my question, is there any plans to do this or no?

        • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2·
          3 days ago

          False, you get links to the other posts, of which you posted a screenshot, but each post is handled as being completely separate. If you are in the subscribed, local or all feeds, you would see all of these posts separately.

          I understand your frustration, however these can be multiple posts but to different communities with varying focuses and moderation styles.

          Simply consolidating all the comments in one introduces its own problems.

          • Azzu@lemm.eeEnglish
            2·
            3 days ago

            That’s why no one suggested “simply consolidating”. I didn’t suggest any solution at all. I’m just posing a question of if this actually pretty big problem is attempted to be handled.

            • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              3·
              3 days ago

              I guess it’s just been mentioned too much in the past that it still comes to mind when I hear this. Sorry.

        • Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          3·
          3 days ago

          The official one also does that. I’m talking about choosing a username, password, and email maybe, and then clicking register, and being done. No thinking involved.

          This should probably be handled more by people when they talk about Lemmy. Instead of explaining what Federation is, just point people to https://vger.app/settings/install so that they can install an app.

          Voyager by default suggests Lemm.ee as the instance to register, so no thinking indeed: https://vger.app/profile

          That’s the recommended approach nowadays on !fedibridge@lemmy.dbzer0.com

          False, you get links to the other posts, of which you posted a screenshot, but each post is handled as being completely separate. If you are in the subscribed, local or all feeds, you would see all of these posts separately.

          I only see them once in my subscribed feed. You may indeed see them multiple times if you are not subscribed to all the communities.

          You have to go to each post manually to get all the comments to the “same” thing.

          This one I agree, and it’s why I generally suggest to consolidate similar communities to solve that issue. !fedigrow@lemm.ee has quite a few examples of successful consolidations.

          I’m not completely familiar with activity pub, but there’s likely some key used to verify posts/messages are made by a certain user, and there’s currently no way to transfer or change that key to a new account.

          You’re looking for https://activitypods.org/ . I haven’t been following their recent progress, not sure how mature their solution is, and how many Fediverse platforms support them.

    • Ferk@lemmy.mlEnglish
      6·
      3 days ago
      1. A way to backup your whole user data and completely restore it on any instance you want. If an instance goes under, it should be possible to keep all subscriptions, all your posts, all your comments, and migrate them to a new instance.

      This would be great… also even if the “restore” part were not possible (yet?) I feel offering a way to extract your data might even be a requirement for a server to be fully GDPR compliant (though I could be wrong on that, IANAL), reddit does allow you to download your data after all.