I'm not 100% sure, but my interpretation of that message is that you're waiting for the federated servers to communicate, and you can close the page.
I recommend asking in its own post on [email protected]
If nobody answers in some days, then I'd create a feature request on GitHub.
See which instances are blocked more than others
awesome-lemmy-instances adds two new columns:
- BI - The number of instances that this instance blocks
- BB - The number of instances that block this instance
Now you can quickly see which instances censor (or are censored) in the lemmyverse:
- https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances
Suddenly my server started getting thousands of requests per minute and my varnish cache hit rate jumped to 99%. Thank god for varnish!
Looks like the reddit blackout is #1 on the frontpage of hackernews, and this article is #2.
I actually posted this article to hackernews, but I never got a single upvote. This isn't my first time getting on the frontpage of hackernews, but it always happens when someone else reposts my link.
Can anyone tell me how the fuck hackernews' algorithm works to where I can't ever get traction but someone else does after me?
I made a text-and-images version of this guide:
Added to the article. Thanks for the suggestion :)
You should ask in /c/mlemapp
And if it's a bug, please report it on GitHub
I made a text-and-images version of this guide:
The only thing I need to improve this article is a short video demonstration showing how to find and add remote lemmy communities
Are there any video producers on Lemmy that can help? You'll easily get thousands unique views per day if you make a short "Guide to Lemmy" video :)
Thanks! Please also let me know if you're aware of any other lemmy communities (for video content creators) where we can cross-post this to <3
Intro to Lemmy (Video Guide)
Before reddit goes dark on Monday, I would like to add a short video to the join-lemmy.org [http://join-lemmy.org] site that shows new users how to create a lemmy account and subscribe to (remote) communities. The video should be about 2-minutes long (shorter is better) with a screen recording and v...
Before reddit goes dark on Monday, I would like to add a short video to the join-lemmy.org site that shows new users how to create a lemmy account and subscribe to (remote) communities.
The video should be about 2-minutes long (shorter is better) with a screen recording and voiceover narration. If you do this, you'll get a lot of traffic to your youtube/peertube account ;)
Here's the outline of the video requested:
-
Mention that lemmy is a federated reddit alterntaive based on ActivityPub where 'subreddits' are called 'communities'. Go to
join-lemmy.org
in your web browser and click the bigJoin a Server
button. -
Tell the viewer that it doesn't really matter which instance they pick because you can subscribe to a 'community' from one instance from any other instance. Again reiterate that what reddit calls a 'subreddit' is called a 'community' on lemmy. Then just click
Join
from a random server from the "Recommended" list of instances. Tell the user to just pick one at random because it doesn't matter which they choose. -
Signup for an account. Tell the user they may need to wait for the account to be approved.
-
Try logging-in. Wait some hours (for approval), if needed. Login to the account.
-
Show the UI for ~10 seconds, then tell the user that they can browse all communities using the "Lemmy Commnity Browser" run by Feddit. Again, reiterate that what used to be called āsubredditsā in reddit are called ācommunitiesā on lemmy, and that each lemmy instance can have many communities. Open a new browser tab going to
https://browse.feddit.de/
. -
On
https://browse.feddit.de/
, search for some popular community (egdocumentaries
) and then click the link. For the purposes of this video demo, make sure you select a āremoteā community thatās hosted on an instance thatās distinct from where the user signed-up. -
Tell the user that there's three ways to subscribe to a remote instance: [1] Search by remote URL, [2] Search by shorthand identifier, or [3] Manually construct the URL for your instance to their instance
-
Show copying & pasting the URL of the remote community (eg
https://lemmy.ml/c/documentaries
) into the search field of their own community, and then clicking on the result. -
Show copying & pasting the shorthand identifier for the remote community (eg
[email protected]
) into the search field of their own community, and then clicking the result. -
Open a new tab, and show how to manually construct the URL for the remote community in their own instance's site (eg
https:///c/[email protected]
) and load this page in the browser. Then click theSubscribe
button -
Tell the user that after they've subscribed to a bunch of communities, they can click the logo of their instance on the top-left of the UI to return to the Home Page of their instance. Then they can click the "Subscribed" tab to view posts to all the communities they subscribed to across the entire fediverse.
-
Show the changing of the sort from 'Active' to 'New' and 'Top'.
-
Tell the user that for more information on how to use Lemmy, they can read the documentation at
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/
or post questions to the Lemmy community on lemmy.ml (https://lemmy.ml/c/lemmy
or[email protected]
) thatās moderated by the lemmy developers.
Bonus: Tell that there's an iOS and Android app and show a quick ~5 seconds browsing in one or both.
I'm crowdsourcing this because I'm not much of a video creator, but I think this would be an incredibly useful resource to new lemmy users. And I can tell you that, if you make this video, it will drive a ton of traffic to your channel ;)
Can anyone with some video production skills help-out new lemmy users by making this short video? If you upload this to YouTube, please make sure you mark the license as Creative Commons
CC-BY-SA so that we can add it to documentation and share it as widely as possible :)
Intro to Lemmy (Video Guide)
Before reddit goes dark on Monday, I would like to add a short video to the join-lemmy.org [http://join-lemmy.org] site that shows new users how to create a lemmy account and subscribe to (remote) communities. The video should be about 2-minutes long (shorter is better) with a screen recording and v...
Before reddit goes dark on Monday, I would like to add a short video to the join-lemmy.org site that shows new users how to create a lemmy account and subscribe to (remote) communities.
The video should be about 2-minutes long (shorter is better) with a screen recording and voiceover narration. If you do this, you'll get a lot of traffic to your youtube/peertube account ;)
Here's the outline of the video requested:
-
Mention that lemmy is a federated reddit alterntaive based on ActivityPub where 'subreddits' are called 'communities'. Go to
join-lemmy.org
in your web browser and click the bigJoin a Server
button. -
Tell the viewer that it doesn't really matter which instance they pick because you can subscribe to a 'community' from one instance from any other instance. Again reiterate that what reddit calls a 'subreddit' is called a 'community' on lemmy. Then just click
Join
from a random server from the "Recommended" list of instances. Tell the user to just pick one at random because it doesn't matter which they choose. -
Signup for an account. Tell the user they may need to wait for the account to be approved.
-
Try logging-in. Wait some hours (for approval), if needed. Login to the account.
-
Show the UI for ~10 seconds, then tell the user that they can browse all communities using the "Lemmy Commnity Browser" run by Feddit. Again, reiterate that what used to be called āsubredditsā in reddit are called ācommunitiesā on lemmy, and that each lemmy instance can have many communities. Open a new browser tab going to
https://browse.feddit.de/
. -
On
https://browse.feddit.de/
, search for some popular community (egdocumentaries
) and then click the link. For the purposes of this video demo, make sure you select a āremoteā community thatās hosted on an instance thatās distinct from where the user signed-up. -
Tell the user that there's three ways to subscribe to a remote instance: [1] Search by remote URL, [2] Search by shorthand identifier, or [3] Manually construct the URL for your instance to their instance
-
Show copying & pasting the URL of the remote community (eg
https://lemmy.ml/c/documentaries
) into the search field of their own community, and then clicking on the result. -
Show copying & pasting the shorthand identifier for the remote community (eg
[email protected]
) into the search field of their own community, and then clicking the result. -
Open a new tab, and show how to manually construct the URL for the remote community in their own instance's site (eg
https:///c/[email protected]
) and load this page in the browser. Then click theSubscribe
button -
Tell the user that after they've subscribed to a bunch of communities, they can click the logo of their instance on the top-left of the UI to return to the Home Page of their instance. Then they can click the "Subscribed" tab to view posts to all the communities they subscribed to across the entire fediverse.
-
Show the changing of the sort from 'Active' to 'New' and 'Top'.
-
Tell the user that for more information on how to use Lemmy, they can read the documentation at
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/
or post questions to the Lemmy community on lemmy.ml (https://lemmy.ml/c/lemmy
or[email protected]
) thatās moderated by the lemmy developers.
Bonus: Tell that there's an iOS and Android app and show a quick ~5 seconds browsing in one or both.
I'm crowdsourcing this because I'm not much of a video creator, but I think this would be an incredibly useful resource to new lemmy users. And I can tell you that, if you make this video, it will drive a ton of traffic to your channel ;)
Can anyone with some video production skills help-out new lemmy users by making this short video? If you upload this to YouTube, please make sure you mark the license as Creative Commons
CC-BY-SA so that we can add it to documentation and share it as widely as possible :)
Intro to Lemmy (Video Guide)
Before reddit goes dark on Monday, I would like to add a short video to the join-lemmy.org site that shows new users how to create a lemmy account and subscribe to (remote) communities.
The video should be about 2-minutes long (shorter is better) with a screen recording and voiceover narration. If you do this, you'll get a lot of traffic to your youtube/peertube account ;)
Here's the outline of the video requested:
-
Mention that lemmy is a federated reddit alterntaive based on ActivityPub where 'subreddits' are called 'communities'. Go to
join-lemmy.org
in your web browser and click the bigJoin a Server
button. -
Tell the viewer that it doesn't really matter which instance they pick because you can subscribe to a 'community' from one instance from any other instance. Again reiterate that what reddit calls a 'subreddit' is called a 'community' on lemmy. Then just click
Join
from a random server from the "Recommended" list of instances. Tell the user to just pick one at random because it doesn't matter which they choose. -
Signup for an account. Tell the user they may need to wait for the account to be approved.
-
Try logging-in. Wait some hours (for approval), if needed. Login to the account.
-
Show the UI for ~10 seconds, then tell the user that they can browse all communities using the "Lemmy Commnity Browser" run by Feddit. Again, reiterate that what used to be called āsubredditsā in reddit are called ācommunitiesā on lemmy, and that each lemmy instance can have many communities. Open a new browser tab going to
https://browse.feddit.de/
. -
On
https://browse.feddit.de/
, search for some popular community (egdocumentaries
) and then click the link. For the purposes of this video demo, make sure you select a āremoteā community thatās hosted on an instance thatās distinct from where the user signed-up. -
Tell the user that there's three ways to subscribe to a remote instance: [1] Search by remote URL, [2] Search by shorthand identifier, or [3] Manually construct the URL for your instance to their instance
-
Show copying & pasting the URL of the remote community (eg
https://lemmy.ml/c/documentaries
) into the search field of their own instance, and then clicking on the result. -
Show copying & pasting the shorthand identifier for the remote community (eg
[email protected]
) into the search field of their own instance, and then clicking the result. -
Open a new tab, and show how to manually construct the URL for the remote community in their own instance's site (eg
https://[their.instance.tld]/c/[email protected]
) and load this page in the browser. Then click theSubscribe
button -
Tell the user that after they've subscribed to a bunch of communities, they can click the logo of their instance on the top-left of the UI to return to the Home Page of their instance. Then they can click the "Subscribed" tab to view posts to all the communities they subscribed to across the entire fediverse.
-
Show the changing of the sort from 'Active' to 'New' and 'Top'.
-
Tell the user that for more information on how to use Lemmy, they can read the documentation at
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/
or post questions to the Lemmy community on lemmy.ml (https://lemmy.ml/c/lemmy
or[email protected]
) thatās moderated by the lemmy developers.
Bonus: Tell that there's an iOS and Android app and show a quick ~5 seconds browsing in one or both.
I'm crowdsourcing this because I'm not much of a video creator, but I think this would be an incredibly useful resource to new lemmy users. And I can tell you that, if you make this video, it will drive a ton of traffic to your channel ;)
Can anyone with some video production skills help-out new lemmy users by making this short video? If you upload this to YouTube, please make sure you mark the license as Creative Commons
CC-BY-SA so that we can add it to documentation and share it as widely as possible :)
I'm actually very surprised how high the uptime is on most of these instances.
The awesome-lemmy-instances
repo on GitHub displays uptime:
awesome-lemmy-instances adds server uptime
Comparison of different Lemmy Instances. Contribute to maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances development by creating an account on GitHub.
![GitHub - maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances: Comparison of different Lemmy Instances](https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/1e306b1b-0884-41e7-9975-8d43fb3b1834.png?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
The GitHub repo that provides a comparison table of different lemmy instances now includes server uptime %
- https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances
Thanks to David Morley for providing this data via the Fediverse Observer API
- https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list
This list may help newcomers:
At what point do you plan to close this instance to new users?
Update 4: Reddit grants non-commercial accessibility exemption to RedReader
Hello everyone, after a few days of discussions with Reddit I finally have an update to share on the current situation. It has been agreed that...
![Update 4: RedReader granted non-commercial accessibility exemption](https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/a82fd22d-4302-4a37-b446-2441db3f6dbb.png?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
Hello everyone, after a few days of discussions with Reddit I finally have an update to share on the current situation.
It has been agreed that RedReader falls under the exemption for non-commercial accessibility-focused apps, due to the work that has been done to optimize the app for screen readers, and the app's high level of usage within the blind community.
To summarize:
RedReader can continue to operate as a free and open source app.
There will be no ads, monetization, etc.
I still have concerns about Reddit's current trajectory, and plan to expand the range of sites RedReader is able to access in future.
Short-term plan
In the next few weeks, there are a couple of changes I need to make to the app to comply with the new developer terms:
When users first launch the app, they will be prompted to agree to Reddit's terms and conditions.
Developers other than me who compile RedReader from source will need to provide their own API keys. For individual use, these fall under Reddit's free tier. This change will unfortunately create an extra hurdle for contributors, so I'll do what I can to make this as simple as possible and I'll write up some instructions for this. Users who download the app from Google Play are unaffected by this, as those APKs are built by me. With F-Droid, I will continue to ensure the app is distributed there (I personally use a de-Googled phone), however this will have to be distributed from the RedReader repository rather than the official F-Droid repo (similar to the Alpha version). I'll aim to release more details on this soon, but needless to say, non-Google app distribution channels are still a big priority for me.
So for the most part, we can continue operating under the status quo. Long-term plan
While I'm grateful to them for granting the accessibility exemption, I continue to think that Reddit is making a big mistake with the broader API changes as a whole, and throughout the discussions with them I've made this clear. I think it's very reasonable to be concerned about Reddit's current trajectory, and nobody can know for sure how long the exemption will last.
I also have concerns about the treatment of other developers, particularly Christian Selig, including the dubious public claims that have been made about Apollo's efficiency.
I spent a long time thinking about whether to continue operating RedReader as a Reddit app under these circumstances, and came to the decision that the app will continue to interoperate with Reddit for the foreseeable future.
Over the last week I've been in touch with the developers of Lemmy, who indicated that they would prefer a slow ramp up of traffic rather than a sudden influx. Similarly, the major Lemmy instances are struggling under the sheer number of Reddit refugees right now.
While I hope the accessibility exemption will continue indefinitely, nobody can guarantee that it will. Even in the the worst case scenario, the exemption at least grants us some breathing room to see how the situation develops.
My long-term vision for RedReader is to restructure the app to more easily support other sites, including Lemmy, and perhaps others such as Tild.es and Hacker News. Before the API changes were announced, I was already considering adding RSS reader functionality to the app, and I think it would be cool to work with some kind of "open forum protocol" which would allow a variety of websites and apps to interoperate with each other through a uniform API.
We will continue to prioritize accessibility in the app, while also continuing to serve the userbase as a whole. Thank you
Finally, I want to thank everyone in the community for your messages of support, and the nearly 200 contributors who have written code for RedReader over the last decade.
To those who have worked so hard on RedReader's accessibility features, I'd like to offer an extra big "thank you", as without your contributions, the app wouldn't have been granted this exemption.
Despite my continuing reservations about Reddit's current direction, and regardless of what people will say about their motivations here, I am pleased that they've taken into account the fact that RedReader is free and open source, and serves a purpose for users in the blind community.
See this list of "Privacy-Conscious Email Services"
Honestly I'm not sure I'll stick to lemmy if the amount of content doesn't grow. And I'm sure I'm not alone. I'm here for news, and there's very little coverage of world events on lemmy (though that has already noticeably improved as our userbase grows).
I do want lemmy to grow, but not for growth's sake. I want it to grow so the content (news article submissions and quality comments about those articles) grows.
BusKill Warrant Canary for 2023 H2 šµļø
This post contains the cryptographically-signed BusKill warrant canary #006 for June 2023 to January 2024.
![BusKill Canary #6 - BusKill](https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/8d83d41d-7d34-4035-b00f-b4e0f75e8940.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
We just published our #WarrantCanary for 2023 H2 šµļø
https://buskill.in/canary-006/
Warrant Canaries are a means for us to (not) inform you of (not being) breached if served with a State-issued, secret subpoena (gag order) #infosec
BusKill Warrant Canary for 2023 H2 šµļø
This post contains the cryptographically-signed BusKill warrant canary #006 for June 2023 to January 2024.
![BusKill Canary #6 - BusKill](https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/fe34b3cb-ed7e-47d0-8007-69ff9db3ba2a.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
We just published our #WarrantCanary for 2023 H2 šµļø
https://buskill.in/canary-006/
Warrant Canaries are a means for us to (not) inform you of (not being) breached if served with a State-issued, secret subpoena (gag order) #infosec
- Downvotes are important to ensure quality content. It allows the community address statements made by a user based on objectively incorrect (mis)information. This feature is an important reason why many reddit users aren't on Mastodon. Also, democracy is important.
- Recommended Instances shouldn't wholesale block content just because it's NSFW. As you say, policy on what NSFW content is allowed is distinct from the instance enabling NSFW content.
- People being able to create and moderate their own communities is positive
If an instance (eg Hexbear) wants to deviate from this, that's fine. That's what the Fediverse is all about :) But we shouldn't recommend those instances to new users as it will cause new user attrition.
That's not going to happen automatically, but we can manually remove instances that go down.
I only know of one site that monitors uptime of lemmy instances:
They do have an API, but I'm not sure yet how to query it (help would be appreciated!)
I found this site that tracks uptime of lemmy services. They have an API that helps you construct a query in the WUI.
Or you can use cURL to get the uptime of all known lemmy instances
curl 'https://api.fediverse.observer/' -X POST -H 'Accept: */*' -H 'Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' --data-raw '{"query":"query{\n nodes (softwarename: \"lemmy\") {\ndomain uptime_alltime\n }\n}\n"}'
See also:
I think we should add the following criteria to instances at the VERY TOP that are recommended to new users:
- The instances does not define an
allowed
list of instances - Downvotes are enabled
- NSFW content is allowed
- Users can create new communities
...otherwise new users (eg from reddit) are not going to use lemmy because it won't match their expectations.
Personally, I was pretty disenchanted by my experience on lemmy when I first joined. I had to create accounts on like 5 different instances before I found one that worked (that's why I created the comparison table of lemmy instances).
Most new users won't have that perseverance. If, for example, they see there's no downvotes on the "recommended" instance, they'll probably give up and leave lemmy.
Let's add Lemmy to Font Awesome!
I'd like to request that FontAwesome adds the icon for lemmy (the federated reddit alternative). The SVG can be found in the lemmy-ui repo here: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/blob/main/src/a...
![Icon request: fa-lemmy Ā· Issue #19758 Ā· FortAwesome/Font-Awesome](https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/eebc29e8-39ec-45da-b9c0-dadeb55466fe.png?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
I created a ticket with Font-Awesome to add the lemmy icon.
- https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/19758
Why?
I went to add my new Lemmy profile to my website's social media links, but -- err -- there's no icon for Lemmy in my "social media links" wordpress plugin.
I looked around and saw that a lot of plugins on popular platforms (wordpress, drupal, etc) just use the Font Awesome library for icons.
So, if the lemmy icon gets added to Font Awesome, it means that the lemmy icon will suddenly become available in thousands (millions?) of software/apps (themes, plugins, etc).
The Process
For context, it took them about 1 year to add the mastodon icon to Font Awesome.
I've never done this before, but it looks like you can either pay them $300 or vote in their Icon Requests Leaderboard for new icons to be added:
- https://origin.fontawesome.com/support#requesting-icons
Until the leaderboard is up, how about we show them community interest and let's all give the GitHub issue a thumbs up reaction/emoji?
Uptime Monitoring of Lemmy Instances?
I'd really like to find a website that displays the percent uptime for each of the lemmy instances in the Fediverse. Does one already exist?
If one doesn't yet exist, I'm considering making one. In that case, does anyone have any recommended very-simple linux tools for this? I use mon
to detect website outages on my .onion sites, but I don't think it records previous failures and calculates uptime.
If I do make it myself, it needs to run on Linux and I want something extremely lightweight (ie not nagios, checkmk, etc)
Comparison of Lemmy Instances
Comparison of different Lemmy Instances. Contribute to maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances development by creating an account on GitHub.
![GitHub - maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances: Comparison of different Lemmy Instances](https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/17c24665-c950-4fec-b79d-39a0a27f3968.png?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
I created a repo on GitHub that has a table comparing all the known lemmy instances
- https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances
Why?
When I joined lemmy, I had to join a few different instances before I realized that:
- Some instances didn't allow you to create new communities
- Some instances were setup with an
allowlist
so that you couldn't subscribe/participate with communities on (most) other instances - Some instances disabled important features like downvotes
- Some instances have profanity filters or don't allow NSFW content
I couldn't find an easy way to see how each instance was configured, so I used lemmy-stats-crawler and GitHub actions to discover all the Lemmy Instances, query their API, and dump the information into a data table for quick at-a-glance comparison.
I hope this helps others with a smooth migration to lemmy. Enjoy :)
What's the difference between "linked", "allowed", and "blocked"
If you query the lemmy API, you get a ton of fun JSON data:
- https://lemmy.ml/api/v3/site
One thing interesting that I saw was huge lists of other federated servers in the federated_instances
dictionary.
There's three arrays in there:
- linked
- allowed
- blocked
What do each of these mean, and what impact does it have on the server when they're set to some list of hosts or if they're null
?
Is it possible to query a lemmy instance's Federation State?
Is it possible for a user to query the state of a given lemmy server's federation state?
According to the lemmy documentation the server can be configured with one of three different states of federation:
- Open
- Blocklist
- Allowlist
Unfortunately, I joined a lemmy instance that was set to "allowlist" and therefore I couldn't interact with most of the lemmy fediverse :(
I'm wondering if it's possible for non-users to query a server to see what federation state it's set-to, so that users can be aware of how limited their content will be before they signup.
3D-Printable BusKill (USB Dead Man Switch) Prototype
Update on our progress on the 3D-printable BusKill prototype, a DIY USB kill cord to protect your laptop's data from thieves.
![3D Printable BusKill Prototypes - BusKill](https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/1356c723-332a-490d-b74f-87191ef8ddaa.png?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
This article is about a new 3d-printable prototype version of the BusKill cable.
The BusKill cable is a laptop kill cord. If you're still struggling to understand what is a BusKill cable and why you'd need a laptop kill cord, there's a 2-minute explainer video that makes this clear:
- https://www.buskill.in/#demo
Enjoy and happy printing :)