I've searched for this information for a while, but haven't seen anything on it anywhere.

I know that some instances are barred from communicating with others. I've also noticed that many leftist instances are anti "tankie" while lemmygrad is specifically for us, which is kind of concerning.

My question: Is lemmygrad banned from communicating with many other instances? Or any at all?

I was struggling trying to get the app to login without much success. If you're facing a similar issue, it's possible to login into the instance via your preferred browser, ideally one that respects your privacy, and go to Options (usually the little three dots on the upper right corner of your screen), from there you can tap "Add to Home Screen" or "Install" and it will create a shortcut that can be accessed as an app (identically). Hope this helps, hasta la victoria!

Hey guys, let's suppose I want to create a new community here, this would make me a mod in the community right? So what does that mean exactly? Do I have to mod it just like in Reddit or nah?

Also what is the instance url for android apps?

Just wondering if there's a NSFW function here. I just saw a post about the Ukraine conflict, and the poster mentioned they didn't know how to blur the photo that was included. That got me to realize I don't know how to, either.

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Right now, the bulk of the activity on Lemmygrad is happening in one community: lemmygrad.ml/c/genzedong. This is expected and completely normal. We are in the immediate aftermath of a mass exodus away from one of the last large, explicit bastions of anti-imperialism and communism on Reddit, and in our haste to settle we have made and populated /c/genzedong, and, in doing so, recreated the home we were familiar with: an all-purpose hub designed to be a seat of ML engagement. However, while familiar, many unfavorable structural features forced upon us by merely existing on Reddit have carried over with us. We became desensitized to the less-than-ideal compromises we made to have a presence on Reddit, and, now that we have stepped outside into greener pastures, our eyes have not quite adjusted to the new opportunities to aid our cause. Let's accelerate the acclimation!

TL;DR: We are no longer constrained from things as simple as outletting frustration by wishing death on Nazis to the more impactful, such as the freedom to actively organize and educate. There are myriad new ways we can better equip ourselves for the long fight with the tools and technology Lemmy's federalized structure offers us. We should lean into these changes quickly.

To contribute to this process (which is happening and will continue to happen whether or not we expedite it), I will outline a niche of optimization yet unexplored:

Lemmygrad is already the /r/genzedong equivalent that /c/genzedong is trying to be.

Lemmygrad is an instance of the Lemmy structure. Lemmy instances can be thought of as what subreddits would be if they were hosted on their own separate domain/websites. More accurately, you can also think of Lemmy instances as what Reddit would look like if you could just copy Reddit's code, buy a domain, and make your own version of Reddit that you own and administrate, instead of some large company in San Fransisco that can delete you and your forum off of their site for stating that there was no massacre in Tiananmen Square. Consequently, we need to treat Lemmygrad as if we stumbled upon an unoccupied yet functional Reddit domain, with full subreddit capability.

We are no longer forced to view /c/genzedong as a catch-all forum for every possible ML post, as a de-facto standard-bearer and home for those posts that have no better place to be posted. As we grow, we should periodically fracture off posts by purpose into new, focused communities.

Among some already-implemented ideas to spark this transition:

• a /r/worldnews equivalent that isn't a hellscape of propaganda as a place for the /r/genzedong posts about significant global developments:
  • lemmygrad.ml/c/worldnews
  • lemmygrad.ml/c/us\_news
  • lemmy.ml/c/worldnews (bigger but in the main, non-communist instance)
• a community just for the types of post that were only allowed on 'lib cringe weekend'
  • lemmygrad.ml/c/shitliberalssay
  • lemmygrad.ml/c/shitfascistssay
  • lemmygrad.ml/c/okbuddyanarkiddie
• a launch-point community aimed at education and agitation
  • lemmygrad.ml/c/redditactionfront
• a pipeline receptacle community to catch new users entering Lemmygrad, where questions can be asked and educational resources are easily accessible
  • lemmygrad.ml/c/newtolemmygrad
• Expressions of our Humanity; the Beautiful Contradiction that is our individual enactments of our shared, single substance:
  • Power Music
  • Dialectical Materialism
  • Video Games

What You Should Do Right Now

• Join Lemmygrad if you haven't already!
• Browse through Lemmygrad's ever-growing list of communities (subreddit equivalents) and subscribe to and engage with those that interest you.
• Create your own communities to fill important niches we were prevented from imagining at Reddit.
• Cross-post between communities to give posts in smaller, specified communities visibility in the most popular communities, like lemmygrad.ml/c/genzedong
• Produce high quality content natively in Lemmygrad, then link to it on targeted Reddit subs to draw in more users
• Link this post to all places that contain people disenfranchised and disillusioned by Reddit's looming ban of /r/genzedong (e.g. Reddit, Discord, Telegram, Element, etc...). We need to advertise why Lemmygrad is more than just a knock-off subreddit replacement that will be forgotten about in a month. Moreover, we should aim towards reaching appreciation of the unique opportunities Lemmy presents for the people already inside the community.

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• Browse Lemmy's current app offerings. Likely due to a large influx of new accounts and activity, some instance behaviors are unusable on the apps and many users, including myself, have been using the Lemmy web app on our phone's browsers in the meantime!

Lastly, stay patient - this transition was a long time coming, and it will take weeks if not months for our community to adapt to the new demands and realities and eventually stabilize. For instance, there have been significant periods of downtime where Lemmygrad has been unusable, either due to increased traffic or DDOS efforts (instance behavior on mobile apps has also been unusable, even when the site is accessible). While solutions to these issues do occur, they do not happen overnight. Hang in there :)

This is an attempt to explain Lemmy and Lemmygrad in a way that is easy for newcomers to understand.

What is Lemmy?

Short answer: Lemmy is a selfhosted and decentralized social link aggregation and discussion platform. Similar to Reddit, but not controlled by a single organization.

Long answer:

Lemmy is a selfhosted and decentralizated social link aggregation and discussion platform. It is completely free and open, and not controlled by any company. This means that there is no advertising, tracking, or secret algorithms. Content is organized into communities, so it is easy to subscribe to topics that you are interested in, and ignore others. Voting is used to bring the most interesting items to the top. The UI and community, post, comment, and vote system is very similar to sites like Reddit, so much so that Lemmy is often referred to as a "reddit clone" or "reddit alternative". Unlike Reddit however, Lemmy is decentralized and does not rely on a single server from one company; and Lemmy's development and essentially all Lemmy instances are not for profit and not headed by corporations, but by small teams of individual people.

Lemmy is written mainly by @[email protected] and @[email protected], who are both Marxist-Leninists. The server is written in Rust using the library, Actix-web, and has the benefit of being fast, efficient and lightweight.

Lemmy is built around the concept of federation. In a nutshell, that means there are many independent instances (which anyone can host) that all share data with each other using some common internet protocol. The protocol that Lemmy uses is called ActivityPub, which also powers similar projects such as Mastodon and Pleroma. Basically, whenever a user on one instance does something, like create a post, comment or community; or vote on a post or comment, that information is copied over to all the instances that have decided that they want to receive content from that instance. Instances are uniquely identified by their domain name, and communities on other instances are identified by their unique name, followed by an @ character, and the domain name of the originating instance. For example, the user @[email protected] is AgreeableLandscape (me) from the instance lemmy.ml, and the community [email protected] is the communism community from the instance lemmygrad.ml.

The benefits of a federated social network is that it gives users freedom to choose exactly which instances they want to see. Different instances have different administrators, federate with (send and receive content from) or block different other instances, and generally have different atmospheres, cultures, languages, and popular ideologies. You can choose which instance is right for you, and make an account there if you'd like to participate in it. You can also create multiple accounts on different instances, for example, I have an account on lemmy.ml, as well as lemmygrad.ml.

You can find more information about Lemmy, as well as a list of popular instances, at our project homepage, https://join-lemmy.org/

What is Lemmygrad?

Short answer: It's an explicitly leftist, mostly Marxist-Leninist, Lemmy instance.

Long answer:

Lemmygrad, identified by the domain name lemmygrad.ml, is an explicitly leftist and especially Marxist-Leninist oriented instance on the greater Lemmy network. It was created by Dessalines and Nutomic, the lead developers of the Lemmy project. It has everything from memes, discussion, media, learning, and more, all from a leftist perspective. Generally, it is expected that nearly everyone on Lemmygrad is far-left, and most are Marxist-Leninists. The instance is intended to serve as a safe haven for leftists, away from right-wing propaganda, misinformation, censorship, and anti-left attitudes.

Is Lemmygrad right for me?

Well, it's impossible for me to give me a definitive answer, you'll have to decide for yourself. But here are my personal thoughts as a Lemmygrad user:

• If you are a communist, socialist, or Marxist-Leninist, then it is quite likely that this community could be a good fit for you, as most users here fall into that camp.

• If you are an anarchist or other leftist, then Lemmygrad could still have things that you like and would be worth checking out, but the instance is less geared toward your political ideology, simply because most people here are not of those ideologies.

• If you are not far-left, or simply don't want your Lemmy browsing experience to be very political in general, then it is likely that you would find other Lemmy instances a better fit as most instances are not communist, and don't even have an announced political/ideological affiliation. That's the power of Lemmy, people can choose what instance is right for them. I recommend checking out a more general purpose instance, like Lemmy.ml, in that case.