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Welcome New Users!

1y 4mon ago by lemmy.ca/u/otter in main@lemmy.ca from lemmy.ca

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:

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 :)

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.

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 :)

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.

Thank you for this. I'm done with Reddit and looking forward to having Lemmy as my new home. I can't imagine why they never implemented the block feature over there. I spent my days using RES to "Filter" subreddits to curate my feed. Glad to be here!

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.

What I like doing is posting to the small community first, and then cross posting from there

That way people in the larger community can follow the link back and learn about the community if they're interested. It also helps to mention the community at the start of the cross post since Lemmy doesn't do that automatically

Tip: sort by "Top 12 hours or 24hours". This is equivalent to reddit's "hot"

Ah ha! Perfect. This is what I was missing. Thank you.

Welcome!

A social network is created by our collective social interaction. We're still small, so your posts, comments and upvotes matter. Don't just lurk, if you can. Every upvote counts! 😊

This one's ours.

Lurking has been my primary activity on Reddit. I shall try to contribute more.

Shucks

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!

Well, well, ah fuck it, we'll probably rejoin in a few years with fewer concessions and I'll have to listen to even more nonsense.

You should ditch the freedom units for KM/h too... If not, pretty soon it'll be color, neighbor, trunk, etc.

Lost redditor?

No, just a joke.

It is clearly a joke.

From what I see, you get at least 50% of the jokes you read.

🤔

@BeardedGingerWonder said it best, folks!! Join the community, stay for the sex!!

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.

First of all, thanks for all the work you do. I lived almost 10 years in Canada and having an account here makes me feel warm inside (not on the outside :-) ).

Any idea why the recent influx of new users? May it have anything to do with Reddit planning to put some subreddits behind a paywal?

Thanks again!

Welcome! :)

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

All of the above for me!

Glad to be here. I wanted to get off Reddit for obvious reasons.

Hey so as a Canadian, we are about to get attacked by our long time ally and the worlds military superpower. We are probably going to be steamrolled, and then become second class citizens in the Trump dictatorship cult. Am I allowed to say violent things about how that makes me feel? Or will I get banned, like on reddit?

We're pretty reasonable with moderation here. The way Lemmy works, mod actions are recorded publicly for transparency. You can access those records here, but as a warning before you open the page, "Some deleted posts may contain disturbing or adult material": https://lemmy.ca/modlog

So far we've only banned users site wide when it was a consistent problem (ex. spam bot, harassing other users). However, we do need to remove comments that are clearly against the law in Canada, else we couldn't keep operating.

It really comes down to what the comment is. If you look through the threads on here, a lot of people are already expressing how they feel, or what Canada's/Canadians' response should be. Where it might be a problem is if someone says they're going to do something violent/illegal, or call for someone else to do it

Hopefully that makes sense?

"don't get the admins subpoenaed" is probably a good rule of thumb.

(You folks do a great job, I appreciate the community you've fostered and tended to here)

You will be less likely to be banned. Still, be reasonable, tactful and don't be a dick about it, even if I get that you came here to express your genuine feelings.

"Kill [person of interest]" is off limits here and on many other servers, but there are ways you can describe how your frustration in ways that aren't illegal or personally charged. "Fuck [person of interest]" is nearly universally allowed here. Even if not banned, the outcome of whether you are upvoted to heaven or downvoted to hell will depend on the person and the context.

Just save it.. and when the time comes... we do what we gotta do

There's one way to find out.

Purchase a long rifle and shoot it often. I say this as a staunch pacifist. Having a weapon and using it are two different things. For a thousand reasons, if a genuine war broke out it would likely destroy America. Unfortunately, likely taking Canada with it.

Regardless, be armed and be prepared. It is not as bleak as you may think, even in the worst case scenario. Best case scenario nothing happens and you take up hunting or target shooting as a hobby!

I can totally relate to you in those regards.

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

Welcome!

Welcome :)

First off, this is great... thanks to everyone who's helped put all this together! It's a relief to finally have a Canadian alternative! And then can someone please explain to me (like I'm 5) what an "instance" is exactly?

If you think of the "fediverse" as being like email, an instance would be like an email provider. So you can get an email address from google, protonmail, microsoft, etc, but you can still communicate with other accounts from any of the providers via the standardized protocol. In the same way you can join any particular instance and communicate with other instances.

Perfect, I get it now, thanks!

For sure! If it helps, we put together this page on what the word means more generally (for all types of fediverse websites, and not just Lemmy). The infographic style images might be helpful

https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/get-started

For lemmy.ca specifically, you can think of the entire website as being one 'instance' of a larger network of similar websites. It is possible to shut down the 'federation' and just exist as our own isolated forum (similar to Reddit), but that defeats the purpose of running this kind of website.

This page should also help you see how it affects a Lemmy website like ours

https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/lemmy/for-users/detailed-overview

Wow, you guys have really done a terrific job on those guides!

Thanks, that helps! Sorry if this is a stupid question or not worded correctly: In this larger network, of which lemmy.ca is one "instance", are all instances Canadian?

Nope, lemmy.ca is Canadian and so is another big Lemmy instance called sh.itjust.works. There are also lots of smaller instances that are by Canadians. Since anyone can set up an instance, more technical users (with a background in that kind of thing) have set up instances for themselves or their friends / family. A university or local government could also set one up.

But the rest of the network is vast. A lot of the other Lemmy instances (ex. feddit.uk, jlai.lu) are European, aussie.zone is Australian, etc. Many of the instances are generalist instances not focusing on any location (lemmy.world, lemm.ee, etc) or topic specific (programming.dev is focussed on that).

I hope that's not too much information, I'm excited is all :)

Lol, not too much info at all... I'm excited too! I mean, this really is amazing. I'm still using Reddit right now, but weaning myself off by the day... it always takes me a bit of time to adjust to new websites. But Reddit's been a big one lately... with everything that's going on, I couldn't figure out where else we could all meet to continue organizing or even just chat... and suddenly here it is, lemmy! Anyhow, thanks for that explanation, well put and understood! Go lemmy! :)

You don't have to quit cold-turkey either. I still use reddit for a few communities that don't have traction anywhere else (niche game mods or similar). But I try to mostly create content here and not on Reddit. Things take time :)

Thanks. I'm finding the change surprisingly easy... it normally takes me much longer. I didn't start using Reddit even until a year after I first visited the site. But now, for the last couple of days, I've checked in only because of notifications I'm still getting. There's something about Lemmy I'm taking to really fast... has a more intimate feel or something... definitely much more pleasant!

Hello! Coming over from Reddit and I'm new to Lemmy. So happy to easily find a Canadian Community!

Welcome 😊

Thank you! And thank you @Shadow@lemmy.ca for the manual verification, much appreciated!

Glad to have you here!

Thanks!

Glad to be here! As Reddit keeps enshittifying, and the boycott USAmerica movement gains momentum, hoping more folks migrate over.

'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.

Welcome :)

Thanks!!

Welcome aboard!

Thank you!

Hi, I'm new to Lemmy Greetings from the Netherlands 🇳🇱🇨🇦🇪🇺

Welcome!

Welcome! Hope you like it here.

FYI, feddit.nl exists too. You could create an alt account on that site if you ever find the ping times to Canada too slow for your liking :)

Thank you for hosting and for all your work! I am excited to see this community grow. I have already seen a couple of posts on Canadian reddit communities where people name dropped lemmy.ca. It'd be interesting to maybe do a census once the signups stabilize to see how much the demographic changed. (I saw that there was one made in 2023).

Totally!

We were planning to do another census this winter, but we got busy with the new servers and spinning up new platforms.

You might have seen other comments asking about Pixelfed and Friendica. Pixelfed is to instagram in the way that Lemmy is to Reddit, and we're in the process of setting up a Canadian instance of Pixelfed right now. If all goes well, we may get more new people joining through there

Hello. I don't usually make personal posts but I am glad this site exists. I left reddit after 5 years. It was on reddit that I was pointed here. The Fediverse sounds like a beneficial collective and I am excited to see it grow.

Usually I just post stupid puns (which are very clever in my head) and topical quips which offer nothing (but are very genius in my head). I hope to have fun, get informed, and learn something from the pack along the way. Goodbye.

Thank you for posting!

🫶 happy to be here

Learned about Lemmy recently and I immediately wanted to join so I can get out of Reddit

Good to be here.

Welcome! Glad to have you here

Welcome :)

Thanks :)

Hello All. I'm another new user hopping over from Reddit. Breaking the ice with this post.

*waves vigorously*

Heya, neighbour!

Welcome :)

👋

You guys are awesome.

Any updates on when Pixelfed and Friendica will be ready? I’m waiting for the fedecan instance before I sign up for those :)

Pixelfed soon. We have a domain registered and I've started provisioning the infra.

Friendica isn't on our todo list yet, not sure if it will be or not since none of us are regular Facebook users.

Edit: Enough people are asking about friendica that I promise to investigate more after pixelfed is up.

A Friendica server would be amazing!

I feel like the similarity to Facebook is way overstated. I wonder how much that association hurts Friendica since even people who use FB a lot think it's super lame. It's the most similar to FB compared to others but it's really the Swiss Army knife of the Fediverse -- and the most powerful tool for accessing it. Coming from Mastodon, and even the Misskey forks, it's crazy what you can do with Friendica.

A Canadian server would be incredible but it'd also be such a benefit to Friendica to have more servers run by people who know what they're doing.

I promise to take a look a Friendica after we get Pixelfed up =)

If you have time, could you share more about what speciically makes Frendica so powerful.

Im only just dipping my toes into fediverse and I'm super curious.

Rather than list features, I think the best place to start is this incredible article by Elena Rossini. She's just such a great communicator and approaches it as a new user, covering many of the biggest features. There are other great resources linked in the article too.

I'd be happy to help with any other Qs you might have too if I can.

Yeah can't argue with that. That's pretty compelling. Thanks for sharing!

Actually I am ashamed to tell that I am on Facebook, but more out of necessity and to keep in touch with relatives 😬

I deleted FB from my life a few years back, but I'm like >< this close to trying to set up a domain and my own friendica just for family. Back in the days of chronological order, FB was really nice for sharing photos and life event stuff. Now, saying that out loud (so to speak), maybe Pixelfed would satisfy that too - no idea because I never used it's corpo cousin!

fwiw I would join a friendica instance in a heartbeat and lobby for people I know on fb to sign up.

Thank you!

I want to join Pixelfed, I joined a server but it isn't even updated to work with the app yet.

So I've been eagerly anticipating the fedecan one because I'm sure you guys will do a great job.

I couldn't see converting a lot of friends over to lemmy, but Pixelfed and loops is something I can see my friends being interested in.

I posted about Fedecan and the fediverse on Facebook a few weeks ago. Might just be my friend group, but a lot of people seemed interested in ditching Facebook in the wake of all the Trump stuff.

I know it takes time and resources, but I would love to see you hosting an instance for each alternative to the major platforms.

Anyway, great work! I appreciate you. Keep it up! :)

That’s exciting news!

We're in the process of getting pixelfed together :) see Shadow's comment

I love it.

Hello Lemmy.ca,

Super new here, but super happy to find this exists. I hope it grows and keeps gaining in popularity despite the clunky nature which I think is inherent to the Fediverse (am I saying that right?).

My story is probably like a lot of people here. Reddit was my only actual social media account. Never did the Twitter/Facebook/Instagram, whatever else. Reddit was how I got my news and I was fine with that.

But back in January when this whole Tariff thing was first winding up, I decided to go hard and start my American boycott. I cancelled Netflix and Disney+ (I haven't missed them for one second, which makes me wonder why I was paying for them anyway), I cancelled my Xbox Gamepass. I was already boycotting all things Amazon and Wal-mart. You get the idea. Reddit though, it didn't feel like a betrayal - r/onguardforthee was my Canadian politics news source of choice and I wasn't giving them any money.

But it occurs to me, when engagement numbers is how these guys convince investors to prop them up with no sustainable business model - I sort of was doing some damage. So, I set off looking for an alternative and here I am.

We have so little power to influence things these days it can feel pointless to make changes. Changes to our social media site of choice. Changes to our buying habits. How much does it really add up? But my father taught me, and I bet yours did too, you don't do the right thing because it guarantees the right outcome. You do it so you can look in the mirror at the end of the day. Thanks for helping me look in the mirror.

It made me happy to read that, thank you for writing it. Especially this part:

But my father taught me, and I bet yours did too, you don't do the right thing because it guarantees the right outcome. You do it so you can look in the mirror at the end of the day. Thanks for helping me look in the mirror.

Welcome to lemmy.ca, please let us know if there's anything we can help with 😊

Welcome! I think you'll find that the clunkiness dissolves into the background pretty quickly. Peoples' biggest stumbling block after signup is often that you can find communities with the same name on different websites, and that kind of offends some folks' sensibilities. Coming from OGFT, though, I think you can already appreciate that Reddit had multiple communities fighting over names anyway.

The admins here have been absolute power houses, so I know they'll be only too quick to provide any help that you need, or answer questions about the site or nuances about the underlying tech. And some of us regulars have been around here for a few years now, and even predate the site, thanks to the way federated services can communicate across site types (I started on Mastodon, for instance, and have been kicking the tires on nodeBB).

It's a fun little experiment in internet anarchism.

Good on you. Most OGFT canucks fit right in here. 🍁

Woo! I'm from .world but wanted to make an account here too :D

Ditto!

Bonjour, fellow Canadian Lemmies! I'd deleted my Reddit account in November, and was only lurking, so it's nice to have a voice in the conversation once more.

Welcome 😊

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

Elbows up!!!

I challenge every newbies to create 1-3 posts over the first 72 h here : what do you enjoy in social media usually? It doesn’t have to be perfectly new if it’s new on Lemmy: your favourite Reddit group isn’t represented here or silent for a while : show us a glimpse of what you like and see how much engagement you receive.

Well I challenge every newbie to create 72 new posts over the first 1 to 3 h here!

Not a new user but I'm actually finally deleting my Reddit acct. Just updating all my comments and posts now using redact. The recent news about Elon getting them to massage their content was enough. Fuck them.

edit - 15 years of comments takes a fucking long time to update humourously I've been banned from multiple communities because of using redact.dev

I deleted my reddit account a while ago. Sometimes I still lurk, but it hasn't been the same lately. I was a redditor since 2010.

Welcome to lemmy! I hope you like it here!

Well, now I must give it a try!

Thanks for having me! I'm glad to have finally made the switch over from Reddit and other conventional platforms. I've always been mostly a lurker but hey, maybe this time will be different. Looking forward to the fresh start!

Welcome 😊

I'm not new. This is my second post already.

Welcome nonetheless 😄

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!

Also, assuming this is a Canadian small town, comment in this thread and I'll add it to the big list

https://lemmy.ca/post/2890824?scrollToComments=true

Thanks Otter! It is a Canadian small town (Okotoks). I'll try getting it set up via web this week if I have time! Appreciate the guidance.

With that said, if there's no activity in the small community, I'd post directly in Canada. As we grow and we get more people, I think we'll naturally break out into the smaller geographical communities. I think this is valid even for provinces at this point.

That's fair. It's probably too small of a user base to warrant it's own community today.

Can still make it but if you want people to see things related to it, dump 'em in Canada. It's what I do for Toronto.

Welcome!

If you open the website in a web browser, you should see a 'Create Community' button.

A more detailed step by step:

Name: ex. 'vancouver'

  • it will appear in the link (c/Vancouver), and can't be changed

Display Name: ex. Vancouver or Metro Vancouver etc.

  • you can keep changing this, but keep it relatively short

Icon & Banner are recommended

Sidebar for a description of the community and any rules are recommended

Under languages, select whichever languages users should select from when posting (ex. Undetermined, English, French)

Then you can post in places like communitypromo@lemmy.ca and newcommunities@lemmy.world so people know about the new community

Then keep posting to it till it gets rolling :)

A quick hello from a new community member. Thank you to the folks who set this up, and to participants in this community generally. You give me hope.

Welcome, glad to have you here! 😊

Elbows up, hosers!

Hello. I’m new here ✌🏽

Welcome 😊

👋

Hello. Nice to see a Canadian alternative to reddit.

Welcome :) Let us know if you need help with anything!

@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

Hi thanks for welcoming. I joined this community because I was looking for a non u.s based social platform, that was like a reddit/message board, while being close to. Seems like a great social community on the Fediverse.

Happy to have you here 😊

Glad to have you. Enjoy your time here!

New here, looking to move from redd it also. Got recommended lemmy by my brother this morning and I like what I see so far. Keep up the good work.

Welcome!

It's nice to see the word of mouth working, I've seen a lot of mentions recently of people being recommended here by friends and family members

Bonjour all.

Beinvenue!

Bonjour, et bienvenue 😊

Welcome new users! You've made an excellent choice.

Salut/Hi there!

Welcome! 😊

Is there any interest in taking donations on Librapay or Open collective again?

We haven't revisited our donation methods yet, but we will at some point.

If you have a moment, could you share why you'd prefer to have Librapay / Open collective over the existing options? No wrong answers, I just wanted to copy it into our notes for when we revisit all that

I think I’d like those options for a couple of reasons. First would be recurring payments in Canadian dollars. Second would be more visibility for financial contributions, help to see you’re apart of community of donors, and lastly I think these two institutions seem aligned with the values of federation, and bottom up community driven initiatives.

Thanks! I've noted that down

Hello, this place is kinda old school interwebs, I like it

Welcome!

We also have a few custom front ends, one of which is https://old.lemmy.ca/

Since it's developed by a third party, it's likely not as stable as the main interface, but it's fun to look at 😄

Just joined after being recommended on Reddit. The straw for me was a recent 7 day ban because I stated a historical fact on guerrilla war and America. Not sure when Americans got so delicate and all snowflake like but whatever. Glad to be here.

The techno-authoritarians are making their play for absolute power now. They're going to suppress opposition in general. They spent years getting everyone to use their tools, and this is why.

Another question: My email notifications take me to lemm.ca... is there any way to be directed to https://alex.lemmy.ca/lemmy.ca? Something in my settings maybe?

Oooh, that's a good feature request but not something we could easily do.

No worries, I was just wondering if it was already available and I couldn't find it.

If you're on desktop, it might be possible to set up a JavaScript bookmarklet for that. I can take a look tonight.

You would still open the lemmy.ca link first, but you wouldn't need to modify the URL manually. You would click on the bookmarklet

Thanks, but I don't want to put you through all that trouble. I'm guessing you're busy enough already. I'm also getting used to lemmy.ca... starting to feel more at home :)

That's very considerate, thank you :)

I've played with bookmarklets before, so it wasn't too much trouble. I don't normally use Alexandrite, but from my quick exploration it seems that Alexandrite URLs are very similar to the default ones, where it just appends alex.lemmy.ca/ to the start. If that is the case, the following steps should work. The steps are for Firefox, but it should be similar on other browsers:

  1. Right-click on the bookmark bar and click Add Bookmark
  2. Put anything you want in the name
  3. In the URL field, paste in this block of code:
javascript:(function(){
    let currentURL = window.location.href;
    if (currentURL.startsWith('https://lemmy.ca/')) {
        window.location.href = currentURL.replace('https://lemmy.ca/', 'https://alex.lemmy.ca/lemmy.ca/');
    }
})();

When you are on any lemmy.ca page, clicking on the bookmark should take you to the corresponding alex.lemmy.ca page. You can also make one to go in the opposite direction, with this block of code:

javascript:(function(){
    let currentURL = window.location.href;
    if (currentURL.startsWith('https://alex.lemmy.ca/lemmy.ca/')) {
        window.location.href = currentURL.replace('https://alex.lemmy.ca/lemmy.ca/', 'https://lemmy.ca/');
    } else if (currentURL === 'https://alex.lemmy.ca/lemmy.ca') {
        window.location.href = 'https://lemmy.ca/';
    }
})();

Hopefully that works!

Wow, thanks so much, that was really nice of you! :)

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/canadawith 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/39118714into 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.

absolutely new to here (and to Lemmy, just learn that this exist today from.. well .. reddit) Glad to be here and glad to move on from there. Thanks to all the folks who host this, setting this up, and making this happen!

Welcome 😊

Definitely check out the guides above, and drop by in newtolemmy@lemmy.ca if you have any issues!

Hi everyone!

Welcome 😊

Welcome new folks!

Bonjour, all! 🙂

Bonjour! 😊

Hello everyone, nice to e-meet you :D

Welcome :)

Hello! Still mostly hanging out at Reddit but I see the writing on the wall and am trying to at the very least diversify, and hopefully make a full switch soon. Very grateful that this is here - both Lemmy and this particular resource.

Welcome!

Still mostly hanging out at Reddit but I see the writing on the wall and am trying to at the very least diversify, and hopefully make a full switch soon

This is true for a lot of the new users, despite what the memes may suggest 😄

Is there a particular community on reddit that you'd like to see more of on here?

Established users, too. I'm still active on Reddit, just much less so than I used to be. And a lot of the biggest promoters of the Fediverse are still active there, doing what they can to promote Lemmy- and Mastodon-based sites.

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. 😁

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.

This is a great comment, but I do want to correct this statement; Jerboa is developed by the same people who created Lemmy.

Kichae did a good job of explaining some of the limitations, and I also agree with you that there's more we can do for user-friendliness while still respecting decentralization.

One of the things we've done is put together the guides above, which I'm hoping can help reduce confusion on how this new platform works and what the differences / benefits are. If they DO help, then one solution could be to share the guides around and hope that it acts as the first introduction for people. There are a lot of confusing resources out there (ex. that infographic that gets posted around), so I'm hoping that over time we can improve these guides over time to be as helpful as possible.

We'd love some feedback on the guides if you have a chance to go through them! In particular, these seem relevant to the areas you were confused about:

In addition, if you have any thoughts on the order of the guide pages and areas that are still confusing

The Lemmy software itself is also open-source, and there's often discussion about what can be improved. Similarly, there are a few other Lemmy compatible projects in the works that are doing things slightly differently, such as Piefed and Mbin. As you get settled in and familiar with things, these communities might be of interest to you:

Welcome to lemmy.ca / the fediverse 😊

Thank you so much for your perspective. I'll be sure to check them out as soon as I can, and as I increasingly integrate myself in this platform. Cheers! 😄

I use both iOS and Android to access lemmy, I think Boost on Android is the best app, and I use mlem on iOS.

I had issues with jerboa when I switched over, I don't think I would recommend it to newcomers.

That's great to know, and will try to compare. Can't say I had yet trouble with Jerboa, but then again only today did I start to nuke my reddit history - initiating the full switch to Lemmy. Any info is always welcome, stay well! 😁

Just dumped Reddit as well. Using the Mlem app, seems quite similar to the Reddit iOS app.

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

Bonjour amigos!

Hi hello. Just got my Lemmy account today. A refugee from Reddit. I had been a reddit user for over 11 years. Apparently I pissed off an admin saying something. I'm not sure exactly what because the comment was deleted and they banned me. I assume the comment was related to Canada and Trump nonsense. Whatever.

This is actually great timing because I didn't want to use a social media company in the US given the state they are in now and the direction they're heading.

Being a left leaning Canadian, getting banned from reddit was probably just a matter of time anyway.

Welcome 😊

Welcome friend the server is hosted in Canada!

Make yourselves at home!

Please check out taneggs@lemmy.ca and modelparliament@lemmy.ca

So, Lemmy is software that lets you build an off-the-shelf content aggregation website, similar to how Wordpress lets you build an off-the-shelf blog. There are dozens of moderate to large websites running Lemmy, and hundreds of small or tiny ones running it.

Each one of these websites can, if the users and admins enable it, subscribe to communities hosted on other Lemmy-based websites, which lets them comment on posts in those communities, or even make their own posts to them.

Because this intercommunication allows users to treat remotely-hosted communities as if they are local to the user's website, it's common for people to think of the network of Lemmy-based websites as a signular entity. In this model, each of the independent websites running Lemmy gets called an "instance".

The same terminology is used for Mastodon-based websites, and other websites that allow for similar auto-syndication of content that creates a simulacrum of a centralized content environment. So, a "Lemmy instance" is a "website running Lemmy that is participating in active content syndication", a "Mastodon instance" is "a website running Mastodon that is participating in active content syndication", etc. You can replace "Mastodon" or "Lemmy" with "mbin", "Friendica", "PieFed", "Misskey", "Hubzilla", "PeerTube", "PixelFed", "BookWyrm", "FunkWhale", "nodeBB", or any number of other website engines that are participating in this type of ecosystem.

That message behavior is more or less what happens in Boost for Lemmy. Whichever app/website you're using can implement that differently.

Welcome!

I'd recommend looking through these two guides / infographics as they are a good introduction

What is the fediverse

How does Lemmy work, in detail

If you consider the network of email providers, then "gmail" could be considered one "instance" of the network. You can use it as a self-contained service, but the strength comes from being a part of the wider network.

So you can use lemmy.ca as if it was an isolated Canadian version of reddit, but the strength comes from being able to access communities from all over

Welcome! 😊

If you have any questions while getting settled, feel free to post in newtolemmy@lemmy.ca

Hello and welcome!

Elbows up!

Since Blaze's answer is comprehensive, I'm linking it here as well for anyone that comes across this: https://lemmy.ca/post/40668574/15756000

New user question; why is it that I cannot upvote? am I missing something? I tap the arrow and get 'invalid_bot_action' I can assure you I am a real human - I can pass most captchas 😆

You are currently labeled as a bot. You can change that in your account settings, there should be a checkbox "Bot account", uncheck it :)

Dang that was quick! Thank you! I am definitely not a bot, I enjoy human things like walking bipedally on my 2 legs and breathing oxygen rich air with my very human lungs!

That's what a bot would say. A human would complain about their microplastics-filled brain. 😂

That was very fast, thank you for responding so quickly 😄

Accounts and anonymity?

For social media, I don't mind using my real name and email to register as long as only my username shows on posts or image uploads.

When I upload an image, what can other users see?

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.

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!"

There's actually no harm in commenting on communities from another instance!

Often there will be one large community for each topic, on some random instance, rather than individual communities on every instance. The diagrams on this doc might help to see how it works: https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/lemmy/for-users/detailed-overview

It is possible that a community is intended for a certain group of people, and ideally the community name will indicate that. If not, you can open up the community and check the sidebar. For example, medicine@lemmy.ca is named 'Medicine Canada', and it is intended for Canadian medical professionals / Canadian medical news, while medicine@mander.xyz is named 'Medicine', and it is the general community for the topic.

We didn't have to make 'Medicine Canada' on lemmy.ca, and in fact, there are many non-Canadian communities on lemmy.ca. It all comes down to what the community mods want the community to be about. The instance is just where they chose to set up shop.

In your case, the sidebar at aliexpress@programming.dev says:

An unofficial English-speaking channel for discussing Aliexpress and Alibaba, interesting products you find, asking for product recommendations, and any scams by the sellers.

When in doubt, just check the community sidebar :)

Can you please add Liberapay as a donation option? I don't see it on your donation page.

It's not currently there, but it's on our list of things to look into when we revisit our donation options.

Recently another user checked in about Librepay, and I asked for more thoughts. If you have any additional points, we'd appreciate them! I'll copy them into our notes alongside the previous comments

https://lemmy.ca/comment/14581793

Is anyone else here because Reddit kicked them out for spurious reasons? I was told that I was banned because I had "promoted hate", but the link to the post where I supposedly did this didn't have anything of mine in it. When I appealed they just doubled down.

We ban spammers and remove all their content fairly quickly once we get a report, sometimes within minutes if we're online at the time. Could you report the post/message so we can deal with it?

For what it's worth, once in a while I'll search the spam URLs and the same junk is posted across Reddit and other sites. Worse, some of those posts have been up for months

Definitely coincidental, we don't do anything with your email except send registrations / notifications. It never goes anywhere other than lemmy's db.

There's a big fat red delete button at the bottom of your settings page - https://lemmy.ca/settings

Can you please forward it to us? Ideally as an attachment so I can see the mail headers. Support@fedecan.ca