I start to respond to a post or comment that I see on NEW. I finish and right before I hit post, I notice the instance/server is completely unrelated to my response and I deleted my post :) - It's an added nuance to Lemmy that takes some getting used to.
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2025
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Lemmy.ca's Main Community
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Welcome to the lemmy.ca/c/main community!
All new users on lemmy.ca are automatically subscribed to this community, so this is the place to read announcements, make suggestions, and chat about the goings-on of lemmy.ca.
For support requests specific to lemmy.ca, you can use !lemmy_ca_support@lemmy.ca.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
We have gotten a lot of new signups over the past few days, and we're all very excited to have you joining us! You'll find that people are more than happy to help you get started and learn how to use the site.
If you feel up for it, you can introduce yourself or ask questions below!
We have put together some resources to help new users get started:
You can also read:
- A quick overview of Lemmy
- A detailed guide on how Lemmy works
- A quick overview of 'the Fediverse'
- Learn about the non-profit that runs this site
These guides were published very recently, and we will be updating them over time. If you find that something is confusing or missing, please let us know and we can improve them further.
For an organized list of Canadian communities (provinces/territories, Cities / Local , Sports, Schools, BuyCanadian, CanadaPolitics etc.), see this post on !Canada@lemmy.ca. You can also ask about communities in places like !CommunityPromo@lemmy.ca.
We also encourage you to check out !NewToLemmy@lemmy.ca, so that others can help you / learn from your questions.
Welcome to Lemmy :)
Would you be able to share an example? (Short description or screenshot is fine)
We might be able to clarify or add it to the guides in the future
The question was "What type of stuff are you buying off Aliexpress?"
I started responding with "toys, cleaning supplies, phone cases, etc." And then I noticed I was responding to a post on ** Aliexpress@programming.dev**
So I felt like my response wouldn't be as helpful or would be off-topic because I was responding on the programming.dev instance.
Right? That makes sense right? LOL
Sub-forums here expect people from remote sites to comment on them. They're not just for local users. Most sites aren't going to have an Ali Express community on them for you to comment on.
Check the community's rules before posting, in case it's very specifically Ali Express discussion for software developers, and also so you know the nuances of that particular community, but don't feel like you can't engage with communities on the other side of the fence.
This whole space is best thought of "This forum I'm a member of, plus all these other things over there that I'd like to see, too!"
Hi! Great to be here, thanks! First Lemmy post ever, too.
I'm sure I'm not the first one in this Reddit exodus to mention this, but can we assume maybe there's an interest in refining the Lemmy experience to be a bit more streamlined and user friendly? As in, simpler to navigate and less dependent in tech-saviness.
For example, I had some confusion just to create my Lemmy account, or even download and sign-in to the Jerboa app. There's many Lemmy related pages and apps, which can be quite confusing and discouraging for most users showing interest in moving over. And I do consider myself tech-savvy, so I'm sure most people I know would just give up on it.
I know this is a somewhat sudden and unexpected move, and the last thing I want is to create unnecessary pressure on Lemmy, as these things take time, naturally.
Anyways I wish you well, and lots of success. I'll try my best and make this platform my main reddit-like one.
So, there are a couple of issues with 'streamlining', the big one being that Lemmy isn't a single service, controlled by a single entity. It's a website engine, that lets anyone create a reddit-like content aggregator service. There are a thousand "Lemmys" out there, each one owned and operated independently from each other. Most of them are just engaged in an implicit content free-trade agreement.
So, how do you streamline that?
The apps are also made by whoever wants to make them. And none of them are made by the development team behind the Lemmy software.
How do you streamline that?
And, importantly, do you want to? Because stream-lining means centralizing ownership of it all, which leads us right back to the kind of situation that every major social platform is currently experiencing: taking away control from the user.
The tech isn't the barrier. It's the communication. People keep saying "join Lemmy!" as if it's a place you can go to, and not 1000 different places.
Thank you for clarifying! Now I understand a bit more how it works. 😁
Thank you. I'm in, I need something that doesn't feed me an algorithm.
Welcome :)
If anyone is curious, the post sorting calculations are also public (the code is open source). As a summary:
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/contributors/07-ranking-algo.html
- Active uses the post votes, and latest comment time (limited to two days).
- Hot uses the post votes, and the post published time.
- Scaled is similar to Hot, but gives a boost to smaller / less active communities.
No more hidden algorithms was a big one for me. I personally use 'Scaled', and sometimes flip to the other ones to take a peek
'morning! I'm in. Though I scrubbed my reddit content back in the 'strike' my eyeballs still regularly contributed to their site. I guess I'm stopping that now too. Small steps, as they say. Looking forward it.
Just joined today! Deleted all my posts on Reddit (thank you Shreddit) deleted my account, and now I’m here! The US can go to hell, well, it’s half way there already. Thank you Lemmy.ca
Hello All. I'm another new user hopping over from Reddit. Breaking the ice with this post.
Hi Everyone! I joined today. Have used Lemmy briefly in the past but never got into it fully.
Only question I have right now is - how does one create a Community? I'd like to start one for my small town to post news, events and open discussions for others to find and join as the server grows.
Thanks in advance!
A couple of notes and unsolicited advice as someone who is almost an old hand already...
(1) Your front-page will be more interesting as you subscribe to more things. You can subscribe to things from other Lemmy servers and they will be pulled into your feed here.
(2) Communities that are hosted on this server will show up under "Local".
(3) "All" shows all of the local content from (2), but also any content that this server had to fetch from other servers for others. Basically, when you subscribe to stuff, it'll end up in All for everyone else on this server as well. If no one on the server has subscribed to specific content from another server, it won't show up in All. As a result, All is sort of a cross section of our users' interests.
(4) If you were to sign up for another server -- say lemm.ee -- you would get a different Local and All. But you should be able to subscribe to the same things regardless of the server you chose.
(5) Some servers are not connected to others, for reasons. This is called defederation. It's basically a means to block an entire server who has a community not behaving in a way that doesn't jive well on your local server. Lemmygrad.ml is blocked from this server, for example. You probably won't notice, but on rare occasions you can't subscribe to a community on a blocked server.
(6) You can help the quieter communities grow by shitposting. Throw your backlog of old saved memes into them. There isn't as much traffic here as reddit, and the niche communities often don't exist (or are silent).
(7) Find a larger community to post to for engagement. For example, on Reddit I would subscribe to the WinnipegJets team sub, but on Lemmy it is too quiet. So instead I post my Jets content to the more general Hockey community so we can have some discussion. This will change over time.
(8) A good place to find communities to subscribe to is: https://lemmyverse.net/communities -- copy and paste the community name -- eg: !technology@lemmy.world -- into the search bar and then subscribe.
(9) Meow
(10) Try different sort options. New or Scales are my favourites.
(11) Also don’t be afraid to curate the feed the block button is your friend, don’t like certain users, communities or instances baaam block, there’s your peace of mind.
The block button is key to curating your general daily experience on Lemmy. Obviously block anything you don't like, but also use it if you're not interested in a specific scene or topic. You can always remove the block later if you want. I think of the block button more like the "Not Interested" button on Youtube.
Yes! I have so much anime softcore blocked in my feed haha.
(12) A great way to find new communities: when you see a user who posted something interesting, click on them and see which communities they're in. Then subscribe to those :)
Tip: sort by "Top 12 hours or 24hours". This is equivalent to reddit's "hot"
I've been here for awhile and have a pretty good understanding of how federation works. Number (3) was a very concise way to explain how the All feed works. I sort of knew but that really helped me understand.
Number (7), I will suggest the use of the cross-posting feature. Post to the larger community for engagement but also cross-post to the smaller communities to help them grow. Quiet communities are a cat-and-mouse game where people don't post or comment because no one else is. The more people start to engage, the more others will start to engage.
Here are some more tips, put together by @Rentlar@lemmy.ca in this post
Quick FAQ:
Q: I am not getting my registration email/can't log in after submitting application, what do I do?
A: Check your spam/junk box, gmail and outlook can be very finicky. Applications are vetted by each server's admins, but the applications are only visible when the email is verified. If no success after 24 hours, try another instance.
Q: I signed up on one server (e.g. lemmy.ca), I can't login to another server to post/comment there (e.g. lemmy.world), what do I do?
A: You can actually post on that server without leaving the site you are logged in on. The URL syntax to visit a remote community is [your instance]/c/[community name]@[remote instance]. Example to visit https://lemmy.ca/c/canada with a lemmy.world account, go to https://lemmy.world/c/canada@lemmy.ca. Mentioning the community similar to this form: !canada@lemmy.ca in Lemmy will create a link that takes you directly there.
If you are visiting this post from another server, paste this link, https://lemmy.ca/post/39118714 into lemmyverse.link, set your home server, and it will automatically find the same post on your server so that you can comment. Some apps save you the trouble automatically. The rainbow pentagon is the permalink button to easily get the original link.
Q: There's a lot of noise, how do I curate my feed?
A: Two ways: 1. stay on All or Local and use blocks. Block users, communities and instances that post content you don't want to see. 2. Find communities you are interested in, subscribe to those, and use the Subscribe feed to see posts exclusively from those communities.
Q: Lemmy's interface looks ugly, is there anything better? And can I use it on my phone?
A: Have a look at https://lemmyapps.com/, these include web interfaces, android, iOS and PC apps. On lemmy.ca you have a couple alternative web frontends, try https://old.lemmy.ca/ (for old.reddit.com users), https://alex.lemmy.ca/, https://photon.lemmy.ca/.
Q: Can I trust you, or the admins more than RedditInc, gallowboob, Shittymorph or Steve Huffman?
A: That's for you to judge. Reddit is run as a for-profit publicly traded company, intent on scraping, hoarding and monetizing your data for itself, showing you ads, and getting every nickel they can siphon out of you. Lemmy is open source, and while the admins of lemmy.ca have control over its accounts in a similar way and have generously contributed significant resources, this server is run by Non-Profit Fédécan. Other servers will have their own admins, each with their own strengths and faults. The organization and the Lemmy developers will always appreciate your support, but isn't interested in monetizing your data or ads. Friendly reminder when using public forums: what you post here will be open and publicly available for everyone, freely and equally.
Reddit has become just an absolute dumpster fire lately. Anything even remotely negative and bam you're banned. Even the gifs i could post got so limited. I'm done with it, and am joining the exodus.
Welcome! 😊
If you have any questions while getting settled, feel free to post in !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca
I'm happy to see new users joining Lemmy and every instance out there big and small.
One thing everyone should consider and think of is .... funding and supporting the Fediverse.
Every new user should consider and think about supporting the fediverse through a donation as they use this new community in order for it to remain free to use, open and freely available for everyone. We all like to believe that these things can be just free to use without any of us having to pay for any of it. We also like to think that people just magically and without reward or compensation just work in the background for free to keep all this software, hardware, equipment and organization running.
We don't have to spend a fortune to keep funding these projects, but we should contribute something to it even if it is a small amount. If thousands of users spend a dollar, then it would add up to thousands of dollars to keep this whole system well funded. I know I've chatted with a few of the instance owners and have read what developers have written in the past ... many of them have well paying jobs and have commercial work themselves that they do and they enjoy doing the work on Lemmy as either a hobby or passion project. However, I also know that as the popularity of these platforms grow, expenses add up for more hardware requirements, new hardware requirements, software management, security management and even having people monitoring everything online around the clock. Eventually, no matter how you cut it ... work, time, effort, equipment all ends up costing money to someone at some point. And those costs only increase as popularity grows. And those payments have to come from somewhere.
Donating a little bit and funding even just a little from everyone should be a new norm we should all accept. Otherwise, any new social media we create, no matter how open source we want it to be will slowly just be affected by corporate rot and get taken over again by those who would like to lock everything behind a wall and make the most money from it.
Donating to Lemmy.ca (run by the non-profit Fedecan)
https://fedecan.ca/en/donate
Donating to the Lemmy Software developers
https://join-lemmy.org/donate
Donating to The Fediverse Foundation
https://fediverse.foundation/en/spenden/
But also ... Donate to the instance you are on and support the people who maintain your instance.
I had no idea that communities had taken off on Lemmy since 2 years ago! I didn't even realize I still had an account on here.
Really excited to see where this goes, and to support a Canadian server. Fingers crossed that this gains more traction in Canada and can act as strong shield against misinformation and bad faith actors.
I'll be certain to spread the word about this community more to fellow Canadians. I think with current events this could be the lightning in the bottle to see more usage here.
Any communities worth looking at?
Welcome back 😊
Any communities worth looking at?
If you're looking for communities related to those recent events, then !buycanadian@lemmy.ca and !canada@lemmy.ca come to mind as being relevant.
Otherwise a lot of new communities have emerged (or migrated) from 2 years ago. We have this guide now on finding communities, you could try the lemmyverse suggestion with topics you're looking into
https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/lemmy/for-users/how-to-find-communities
🫶 happy to be here
I find it way more easy to have civil interactions with people here. On reddit, I would either get ignored or discussions would turn to shit. Lemmy is actually way more fun to use, it just need a bit more of content.
Yeah, well, fuck you
Oh yeah?!? Well, brexit!
@otter@lemmy.ca, do you know what the catalyst was for the recent influx? It’s great news!
I'm not sure if there was a particularly viral post (aside from a few mentions of r/BuyCanadian), but I know we've also been mentioned in comment sections all over. Copying from another comment:
Going off of what people have mentioned in the registration applications, it is a combination of
- wanting to support Canadian, and avoiding American tech companies (due to tariffs and other concerns)
- concerns with how big tech has changed for the worse these past few months
- Reddit's recent actions, such as banning (and then reversing) a bunch of communities and the recent paywall announcement
- learning about it for the first time and being excited about the concept
The first point is why lemmy.ca has seen more relative growth this week than the others, but a lot of fediverse instances have seen growth recently