Getting Started With Lemmy

With the mass exodus from reddit and the influx of new users in the federated world, I wanted to try and write a simple guide to help get someone started quickly with Lemmy, and remove some of the (understandably!) confusing things. Hopefully this circulates and people gain value from it.

Please also make contributions or corrections if I've misspoke or could explain something more clearly. I'm all about collaboration and sharing knowledge!

What is "Federation"?

Federation in relation to platforms like Lemmy is when each Lemmy instance (this term is interchangeable with terms like "website" and "server") is aware of the others around it. By default, when a Lemmy instance is created, federation is enabled by default. This means that as instances come online and become populated with their own content and communities, they can then automagically share that content with other instances.

The Join Lemmy Federation page has some additional information that you may find helpful.

I'm still confused, Mr. Orca!

Fret not, my fellow aquatic friend. In the old days of forums or message boards, your username was limited to the forum it was registered on and could only be used there. If you register on Forum B, your account could not interact with posts or users on Forum A, and vice versa. This is what's considered centralized. All of the content exists in one monolith and can only be interacted with by users on said forum.

Lemmy is different. Think of Lemmy like your email inbox. Let's say you've got a Proton Mail email address and you want to email someone that has a Gmail address. This is easy, right? You send them an email and go about your day. Lemmy has a similar flow. Once you've signed up on a Lemmy instance that you like (I will provide some basic selection guidelines further down), you can interact with other instances and their users without having to sign up on them as well. One account to rule them all!

Another way to think of Lemmy is like crowdsourced RSS. As new instances come online, they become aware of the content "federated" from other more mature instances. A good example is lemmy.world. If you were a part of the Reddit exodus, chances are high that you've heard of Lemmy.world. It was where I initially landed before I created Orcas Enjoying Yachts.

How do I pick an instance to sign up on? There are so many!

This is one of the key things everyone gets hung up on, and that is completely understandable! There are a ton of choices. I'm going to try to provide some really easy and quick bullet points to pick a community:

Start browsing instances

Start with something like the official Lemmy servers page. This page is handy because it provides recommended instances, instead of simply throwing you to the wolves

There are a few things I look for: the topic the server focuses on (tons of them are general purpose like this one, so don't feel like you have to narrow your search to a specific interest), and... how fun the URL is. The latter sounds silly but you really can keep your criteria this loose. This was a big driver behind why I chose the URL I did for this instance (which you can read more about here).

ProTip: With Lemmy.world being so heavily populated right now, I recommend checking out lemmy.ml or lemm.ee. If you're feeling a little more adventurous, sh.itjust.works is a lovely Canadian instance (and a fun url to fly your Lemmy flag under!).

What are communities?

Lemmy is comprised of 3 main things:

1. Communities - Topic-focused areas that contain posts
2. Posts - The content that users write (housed under Communities)
3. Comments - The replies you and others write to one another under Posts

You'll find that all of the above is commonplace on the web. When you get rolling with Lemmy, you'll slowly find familiar patterns and flows.

Communities are user-created (or sometimes admin-created) spaces for topics of interest. As your adventure on Lemmy unfolds, you'll find that you can create communities on some instances, but not on others. One of the configuration settings a Lemmy instance administrator (or just "admin") can modify is whether or not users can create communities. This is handy for when someone wants to have more finite control over how their Lemmy instance is shaped.

I signed up on a small instance and my feed is empty! Help!

Here are some simple questions to ask yourself when selecting an instance to call home:

What type of Reddit (or just any social network) user are you?

The Casual User™: If you're a casual user that often lurks and browses everything that's hot, find a server that is listed under "popular", and take a little time to peruse it quickly. If it grabs you, sign up! If not, try another one. This allows you to let content creators across the Lemmiverse do the heavylifting, while you enjoy (and upvote and comment on if you're feeling saucy!) the content, memes, and fun facts they share.

The Intermmediate User™: You're the person that grandpa always calls when the interwebs and router go down. You like to shape your experience and put in some work. You might comment here and there but you find yourself mostly lurking (perhaps in a short list of favorite subreddits or communities).

Try digging a little deeper. Peruse the aforementioned server list and maybe find something that has a summary that stands out. Just because you're a Linux geek and registered under a heavily Linux-focused instance/server, doesn't mean you can only post there. If you're like me, you anchor your decisions about certain things to interests or hobbies. I'm a programmer, so I often gravitate to communities comprised of similar nerds.

The Hardcore "HACK THE PLANET" User™: I don't think I have to say a lot here. Find a community (like this one!) that is in its infancy. You can become a core contributor (with a rad super short username like "orca"!) and help shape a community. If your interest continues and you find yourself invested, offer to become an administrator, or perhaps host your own Lemmy instance!

If you can figure out where you fit in above, I hope that it helps give you some insight into how one goes about finding their home in the Lemmyverse. The popularity and amount of active, contributing users a Lemmy instance has, will determine how much content it produces and provides (via federation, which allows each instance to essentially create a linked copy of content from other fellow instances).

If you want more content and you want it on auto-pilot, go with the Casual User route. Willing to put in a bit of work? Go the Intermmediate User route.

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This is all I can write for now but please let me know if anything can be improved, corrected, etc. I created this initial guide after having a long discussion with a more casual user that primarily lurks. It helped me see the caveats when trying to explain things like Lemmy and Mastodon, and I genuinely enjoy helping others and trying to condense concepts down to something everyone can get started with.

Thank you!

On that note, I can't recommend Lemmy-Easy-Deploy enough. I tried both the official Ansible and Docker instructions and encountered issues with both (part of it was probably PEBKAC).