Hi folks!
Over the past few months, we have started seeing a significant amount of new user sign-ups. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all of our new members, and to share some useful resources and info about lemm.ee.
First, some stats
Here is a bar chart of daily new users (this is only counting users which have been approved by our admins):
As you can see from the chart, for most of 2024, we were accepting roughly around 10-20 new users every day. Then, from the start of this year, the daily numbers have been constantly growing. Yesterday, we approved a massive 609 new users on lemm.ee.
The increase in sign-ups is significant enough that I have been taking several steps to improve our monitoring & anti-bot measures, but so far, it seems the vast majority of the new users are completely legitimate real humans! (Thank you all for not being bots 😅)
About lemm.ee
This Lemmy instance is turning 2 years old very soon. It was initially created around the time of the Reddit API changes, when existing Lemmy servers were getting overloaded with new users - lemm.ee was intended to help spread the load. We’re now the second largest Lemmy server when it comes to monthly active users.
Our core philosophy for this instance has always been to treat it as a generic gateway to the Lemmy network. I want to provide our users a stable and reliable home for their Lemmy account, so that they can have easy access to all of their communities, regardless of what instance the community is actually hosted on.
We run on some decently beefy hardware, and our setup is fairly customized in several ways in order to ensure a smooth experience for our users (most of the time, this has worked out quite well!). Our servers are currently hosted in Finland.
Our infrastructure has been funded by the community almost from the start through GitHub sponsorships and Ko-Fi donations. I am sure I speak on behalf all of our users when I say that I am extremely grateful to all supporters - you are really responsible for the continued existence of this instance!
Lemmy itself is open source software, and while it has improved massively during the time I have been using it, it definitely still has some rough edges. Please be patient when using Lemmy, and remember that it is being built collaboratively by humans (not corporations), without any intent of ever turning it into a business.
Useful resources
- If you’re confused about anything, feel free to check out our F.A.Q.
- We have an instance policy for administration, moderation, and federation - feel free to check it out if you want to understand how admins and mods are expected to act on lemm.ee
- For staying up to date with instance news, feel free to subscribe to [email protected]
- If you ever can’t reach lemm.ee, please check our status page at https://status.lemm.ee/ - I communicate updates on that page when dealing with any unplanned problems.
- You can always find these resources (and some more useful info) in the sidebar of our front page (https://lemm.ee/)!
Don’t forget to participate!
Communities on Lemmy only work if people actively use them. Even upvoting/downvoting based on quality of content is a great start, but I would really like to encourage you all to comment and even write posts, because that’s really the best way to build communities.
If you have any questions or thoughts about lemm.ee or Lemmy in general, feel free to post a comment below this post, and myself or one of our veteran users will definitely respond.
I hope you enjoy your time on lemm.ee, and I wish you all a great week!
I’m a sponsor and I’m not saying this to get thanked or something, I just want to say that I kick in $2 a month. It’s not a ton but if I can help keep this place running then I’m happy to toss a coin to my admin 🙂
Thank you very much for the support!
Our infrastructure costs are currently quite stable at around 200€ per month, and considering that the instance is right now quite decently supporting nearly 6000 monthly active users, you could say that you are indeed relatively contributing a ton - you are effectively covering server costs for 60 people!
The fact that it’s a monthly amount is particularly great, because with recurring income, we will get advanced warning if there is danger of funds starting to run low.
Boost for reddit stopped working for reddit. Then I saw they made a boost for Lemmy. Was curious and now I regularly check this platform out.
That’s awesome! I don’t know what sparked more people to come over though. Would be great if someone can fill me in since I’m so out of the loop.
Also, PSA to all new users on Desktop: Try Alexandrite - a gorgeous front-end for Lemmy https://alexandrite.app/lemm.ee/
There was a popular post on YSK on Reddit yesterday that sent me here, and at least one other commenter I’ve seen said the same thing.
Not sure about posting Reddit links here, but this guy: https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/1j7g7ju/ysk_the_reddit_alternative_lemmy_has_gotten_much/
Congratulations - feddit.uk has also see an order of magnitude growth in sign-ups, just from a lower base. This is definitely Rexxit 2.0.
good, as soon as spaz started gargling the billionaires, it went to crap.
He was always on their team…
Why the sudden rise? Actually bonkers
Reddit started banning people for upvoting a certain way.
You are safe to express ur self in this here social media dear…
They hate the idea that internet loves Luigi haha
Some people are currently looking for European and more private alternatives to traditional social medias. Hopefully more will follow.
Hi dudies
hi! is there any “default” community or a place where every new user is automatically registered in? or a place where we can see some kind of graph for lemmy users signing up on a daily basis? would be nice for [email protected] datahoarding too haha.
Hey, there isn’t any default community right now. There are a few different databases that track graphs of such things, for example, fedidb.org.
Hello! I joined today
Ayyy-Ohhh so did I Dude!
welcome!
Welcome on lemm.ee!
Welcome!
I’ve been wanting to get away from the primary social media platforms because reasons and I’m glad to have found lemm.ee just yesterday! I’m still looking for good alternatives for instagram and youtube but in fairness I haven’t done a lot of research yet. Happy to be apart of something new!
You should check pixelfed. There’s not much chance of a proper youtube alternative popping anytime soon.
Youtubes a tough one. You kind of need lots of capital to keep the servers running if it becomes too popular
I have pixelfed, but is anyone using Peertube? I don’t see its impact (yet) to social network like PF.
I’m using it, started a project on there the other day that was initially going to be on YouTube but… screw them.
I can understand why it would be tricky for those relying on monetising content but there is always Patreon and Ghost will be on the Fediverse soon.
link to your channel? afaik lemmy can post comments on PT videos
Lemmy itself cannot, unless a lemmy group is mentioned in the video.
Thanks for the suggestions! I’ll definitely have to check these out.
Just joined a few days ago, actually loving it so far. Of course we lack a few of my fav subs here but I know it’ll grow.
If you see any demand for new communities then start them. [email protected] can help.
Thanks!
It will come with time, if possible be the change you want to see. I’m trying to grow the South African sub.
It might take years but 🤷♂️
Welcome!
Hello! Just joined as well :)
Welcome aboard!
I joined yesterday here too! I already hated reddit for the API thing (even though I use infinity) and for the enshittification that was happening, but censoring Luigi was way too much. Happy that I’m not the only one making the switch
Welcome to Lemmy, here are a few pointers to help you settle in
Welcome, new neighbours!
While checking out this wacky new space, I’d like to emcourage everyone to check out the Local tab, either at the top of your feed, or in your app menu. That’s where yoi’ll find posts from “communitues” (Lemmy’s “subreddits”) that are hosted on lemm.ee!
A lot of communities are on different sites, and are ported (tarriff free!) for your enjoyment, but as with most things, it seems, the most sustainable way forward is to support Local!
One thing that many people new to Lemmy and the wider “fediverse” (because it’s not just people on Lemmy-based websites that you’ll find posting in the communities here, surprisingly enough) struggle with is that each website on the network has its own “name space”, meaning that each community name can be used on each site. So, you can have, say, [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected]. People often fret over “having to follow all of them”, and wanting ways to collapse them into a single forum. And for a really niche topic, that might make sense (the thing to do, though, is just pick the one that best serves you and don’t worry about what’s going on on the other side of the fence). But for bigger topics, this “splintering” is often a godsend, since we can all have real discussions about the topic in smaller spaces. And, of course, !politics is going to just be meanibgfully different on .ca vs .ee vs .world.
If you look to local first, it becomes much easier to stop worrying and love the
bombdistributed network.Respectfully I would disagree with part of your message. It sounds a bit like you’re encouraging some degree of instance tribalism, but the whole beauty of Lemmy is that I can be a regular and full member of
!something@lemmy.cawith my@lemm.eeaccount.For new members, I would have the opposite advice: don’t pay too much attention to what instance a specific community is on. Just treat each community as its own entity and each person as an individual.
The reason I bring this up is that I think useless instance tribalism can be a real issue on Lemmy sometimes. I have seen statements too often along the lines of “oh you have an account on <instance>, so I will just ignore you”.
It’s not “instance tribalism”, it’s making sure the website you’re using isn’t just some dumb terminal, and preventing the network from collapsing down to “lemmy.world and some empty tributes”.
It’s creating a space that is resilient to network splits, and accepting the fact that, at some point down the road, network splits will happen.
It’s seeing the fediverse through a “Local+” lens, and encouraging people to treat their local site as meaningful. And rejecting the illusion that this is centralized social media.
Look for what you want on other sites. But there’s no reason to look off-site first, if what serves you is already hosted locally.
the thing to do, though, is just pick the one that best serves you and don’t worry about what’s going on on the other side of the fence
Not sure we have enough of a userbase and content posted to recommend that
It totally depends on how many people one needs in a community, and how much content they’re posting to feel served, doesn’t it?
The persistent FOMO that has floated around Lemmy for the past two years has not been a positive for the space.
hi! glad to be a part here!
Welcome!
I was finally looking to take the plunge away from corporate social medias. I was already using BlueSky as my Twitter/X replacement, and one thing stuck with me that they were doing: Federation. That seemed cool, and look! There is a Reddit replacement that does this “federation” thing. Lemm.ee seemed to line up with my general principles (Im a leftist so i don’t want any lefty communities or instances defeded) and i like talking with the community at large, so here i am :D
I’ve also recommended it to all my friends who enjoy BlueSky and are sick of reddit kowtowing to billionaires interests. Sorry/you’re welcome for some of the user rush the last couple of days haha
…sick of reddit kowtowing to billionaires interests
Welcome. If you’re not aware, BlueSky is seeded by venture capital money and is generally under the ownership of billionaires; their “federation” is you optionally running a server that hosts your own (meta)data but the access to use that data (your content feed) still goes through one and only one website owned, operated and moderated by billionaires. They’ve already made it well known they intend on adding ads to their platform and have not yet worked out actual server federation. $0.02
Welcome!
