What is Lemmy?

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Let's get back to talking about fediverse and we do it with what we believe to be one of the most interesting alternatives of the last period, that is Lemmy. But what is Lemmy? To put it very briefly, it is a free alternative, Open source and federated to Reddit and to similar sites like Lobste.rs (Gambe.ro in Italian ¹) And Hacker News.

Lemmy it is still in beta version software, therefore with problems and bugs. However, it seems ready for an initial phase of collective testing. If you decide to use it, bring a little healthy patience 🙂

As was the case with the article What is Mastodon and how does it work? and for that up Matrix, let us try to briefly explain what it consists of. First, however, a premise is important. We are making this article on the wave of enthusiasm and to publicize a little the fact that we have decided to integrate the our Telegram channel Le Alternative | Fresh 🍃 right with Lemmy. In fact, recently every post created on Feddit (our Lemmy server) will be automatically shared on the channel by anyone, effectively creating a sort of great unique sharing trying to avoid the so-called lock-in as much as possible.

Vendor lock-in

Yes, the lock-in. In economics, lock-in is defined as the entrapment of the user within an ecosystem ². In the field of information technology for example WhatsApp literally locks its users into its ecosystem and there's no way (ok, except Element One but that's another matter) to chat with a person who has WhatsApp without installing or signing up for WhatsApp. This is, unfortunately, a general rule for everything the modern internet. All Big Tech have understood that in this way they can trap users without giving them any way out. It has not always been like this: in different historical moments, open protocols such as for example have been created and above all used by large companies those used for email. We wrote that Big Tech they understood Why it hasn't always been this way: for example Google ³ And Microsoft ⁴ for a period they used and supported the open protocol XMPP for their messaging applications, before realizing that there was a real risk that people would even have the power to use applications other than the ones they wanted.

What is Lemmy? And what is the fediverse?

The fediverse was born precisely for this reason. Being able to connect different realities using the same identity and common protocols, in this case called Activity Pub and others like Diaspora And OStatus. The software that is part of the fediverse is all free and uses at least one of these protocols. It means, always to try to explain it in the simplest way possible that a Mastodon user can follow and reply on a Lemmy community, That a Pleroma user can talk to a Mastodon user, That a PixelFed user can follow a Friendica user and so on.

Before you ask, a mini summary (absolutely not exhaustive but just to have a starting point) could be this:

• Mastodon And Pleroma –> Twitter;
• Friendica –> Facebook;
• PeerTube –> YouTube;
• Pixelfed –> Instagram;
• Diaspora –> Blog;
• Lemmy –> Reddit.

Obviously they are all different software and absolutely not just banal clones. But it's just to make you understand a little conceptually what we're talking about and, above all, there are many others.

After seeing this mini-summary, perhaps the possible power of the federation and open protocols is a little clearer: try to imagine being able to write to a person who is present on WhatsApp through the Reddit message system or reply to your aunt's post on Facebook thanks to your Twitter account.

In addition to this there is the whole discussion about decentralization, which we have already talked about here and which we will try to summarize. There is not just one Mastodon or Lemmy site to sign up to but there are potentially infinite ones. Each of these has its own rules and its own users but, importantly, as a rule, anyone can interact with anyone. This may lead to a bit of confusion but let's remember the teaching we have always received from emails because the concept is really very similar: it's not that since there are so many email providers no one uses them anymore, on the contrary.

So in the fediverse it is total anarchy without rules?

No, on the contrary. There is no total anarchy, moderation is a fundamental point to allow each server to maintain consistency in its principles.

Furthermore, all the servers are connected to each other (so, for example, those of mastodon.one they can talk to those of poliverso.org) but on some occasions it may happen that administrators decide to block aInstance (the various servers are called this) for any reason: perhaps its users were out of control or because moderation management was not shared.

The two most striking cases: Gab and ByoBly

It has already happened, at least on two occasions famous, that some Mastodon servers came completely isolated from all the communities present. It is the case of Gab, a social network that Wikipedia defines “Widely described as a haven for extremists including neo-Nazis, white supremacists, white nationalists, the alt-right, and QAnon conspiracy theorists" that is to say: "Widely described as a haven for extremists including neo-Nazis, white supremacists, white nationalists, alt-right and QAnon conspiracy theorists“.

The entirely Italian case is that of ByoBlu And This of Carlo Gubitosa (among other things manager of theInstance Mastodon sociali.network) is a good summary of what happened.

So, what is Lemmy?

But let's get back to talking about Lemmy, sorry for the long digression but we think it is important to first understand the fundamental prerequisites in order to be able to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

What is Lemmy? As mentioned, it is a free and federated alternative to Reddit. It's in phase beta and the fediverse was only added in version 0.14 ⁵. Now we're just there 0.16.1, so let's talk about fresh and recent news. With this milestone Mastodon and Pleroma users can:

• see the communities of Lemmy, user profiles, posts and comments made;
• follow the communities of Lemmy to receive new posts and new comments in their feed;
• respond in both directions (Mastodon->Lemmy, Lemmy->Mastodon And Pleroma->Lemmy, Lemmy->Pleroma), notifications included.

Generally, software that is at least at version is considered stable 1.0, being at version 0.16 therefore means being in its infancy (and for this reason, as we were saying, it is certainly not free from bugs).

Our Lemmy server: Feddit, the alternative to Reddit

As you have understood, we are particularly enthusiastic about Lemmy, so much so that we have decided to create our own server, together with Polyverse. Feddit is the name of our project, you can find us on feddit.it and it is, as far as we know, the first Lemmy server where only Italian is spoken!

Anyone can open a community: just ask in the appropriate section (this) and manage it independently. We hope many of you will come! 🧡

Lemmy and financing

We are therefore talking about something that was born very recently but which is running quickly, especially now that the main developer has received funding from the NLnet foundation to work full time. Small parentheses curiosity: the NLnet it finances a lot of free software on a non-repayable basis ⁶. In this regard, we leave you with the interesting interview with the developer (Italian, therefore interview in Italian). NoScript which also talks about the financing received from NLnet (from minute 35, approximately): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_SKk9uEhhI (link Piped).

The fact that you already receive funding does not mean that there is no need for other funds, on the contrary! Software development is only possible thanks to funding because the developers' work is precious and must be paid for (in addition to the cost of the individual instances to maintain, but those are funds that each Instance must be able to obtain it. Here for example you can help us maintain Feddit). So here find the donation page for the development of Lemmy.

However, minus the bugs absolutely present at this stage, the federation works reasonably well and it is possible Really comment on a Lemmy community through your Mastodon profile! This, in our opinion, it's a real revolution and it's the reason why we only chose Lemmy now and why it seems so important to us to be able to bring people to this federated social network.

Criticism of Lemmy

Obviously Lemmy it is not perfect and is not free from criticism.

One of the criticisms made of Lemmy is that of having a one-way connection towards the fediverse: anyone on Mastodon can read posts about Lemmy but the opposite is not currently possible. This criticism is understandable but is mainly due to the fact that, as explained, Lemmy is still a very young product and all these implementations could simply come later. For example, on Lemmy it is already possible to follow accounts PeerTube but the videos can't be seen yet (and the developers are probably working on this) ⁷. In a LOVES (TOsk MAnd TOnything) from last year, one of the developers says: “In the far-future, we'll support user following, so that user's toots / posts show up in your front page feed, but for now, we're focusing on federated communities.” ⁸.

Another problem, again almost certainly due to their tender age, is that communities are not possible export. So if you open one up lemmy.ml or up feddit.it you cannot then transfer it elsewhere (except by redoing it from scratch). This is however possible with Mastodon ⁹ therefore it does not mean that it cannot be done in the future.

Data protection

Since the most important migration occurred on Lemmy due to (or thanks to) the new Reddit rules there was inevitably a wave of questions and interest but also a lot FUD, that is, negative and vague information, often unsourced and untrue, to instill fear and doubt in people.

Some doubts that have been raised concern the management of personal data, accusing Lemmy's developers of not caring, in short ¹⁰. This is clearly not entirely true and the issue of personal data is a bit of a whole different thing. Not because the developers clearly don't care but because the way the fediverse is designed, it is currently complex to find a solution: what is posted on federated social networks is in fact replicated on the various servers and also on different software such as Mastodon and Friendica.

Surely things could and will be done better, the fediverse is developing and things can certainly improve in this aspect too. However, we are certain that even in the current situation things are definitely much better than how our data is treated and used by private companies.

We also tried to give some longer answers above Feddit come on Telegram and we leave you the links so you can form your own idea.

The communist developer

Other criticisms that we have been able to observe are mainly aimed at one of its developers, Dessalines, for his political ideas and not so much about the software itself. The last time we saw his profile he had Lemmy as his avatar Che Guevara and as a “background” Mao Zedong ¹¹ and neither he nor other collaborators hide their ideologies ¹². But the software they are developing, which is what we are really interested in, does not seem to us to be negatively influenced by political ideas and in this case, exactly as for Brave, we tend to give account of objective results and nothing else. As the developers themselves admit, in fact: “Lemmy is run by a team of people with different ideologies, including anti-capitalist, communist, anarchist, and others. While @dessalines and I are communists, we make decisions collectively, and don't demand that anyone adopt our views or convert to our ideologies.“. Translated: “Lemmy is run by a team of people with different ideologies, including anti-capitalists, communists, anarchists and others. Although @dessalines and I are communists, we make decisions collectively and do not ask anyone to adopt our views or convert to our ideologies.“

On this topic we add, for example, that the developers have offered a year of Hosting free for any Instance including a possible one Instance political and liberal ¹³.

Initially we had chosen lemmy.ml for our community, but having now opened our own server you can find us on feddit.it/c/lealternative.

But why not use Reddit?

Reddit, although yes act like a revolutionary and despite the fact that there are several privacy-friendly communities on Reddit, even very numerous ones (such as r/privacy), is a company that attempts to profile registered users in any way. Just take a ride on them Privacy Policy to realize for yourself the amount of data processed and resold. The only real advantage of Reddit, compared to other famous platforms, is that until today allows the creation of more or less anonymous accounts without therefore asking for mobile numbers but only an email address, even a disposable one. This is a huge plus compared to other platforms, however Reddit is and remains a centralized and private platform and starting tomorrow this rule could change without giving new users any choice.

Furthermore the entirety of the information to be shared with Reddit it is active by default when you sign up for the service and only by looking through the settings, within the section dedicated to privacy, you can remove some ticks to try to maintain a minimum amount of privacy using the service. By the way, according to some users ¹⁴, using the official Reddit application occasionally turns these settings back to “on” without warning.

Finally, in the latest changes to the policy it was clearly stated that: "we will no longer support the option to disable the personalization of ads based on your activity on Reddit" ¹⁵.

We, as you well know, are up there Reddit but as we are above Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and company. Shall we because we want to speak to the widest possible audience and not just a niche but we constantly invite you to follow us on alternative channels.

What is Lemmy and how does it work?

Lemmy it resembles Reddit in every way and wants to be a bit like its free clone Open source. This is why we like it and why we hope to be able to create an alternative community to that of Reddit.

Warning: the part below (writing comments from Mastodon to Lemmy) currently has some problems on some servers such as those of mastodon.uno and massimosegreto.it. However, we know that the bugs are being fixed, so if you try to comment but don't see the comment on Feddit, the problem is known and should be resolved in a few weeks. If you have a Mastodon account on Bida or mastodon.social you shouldn't have any problems.

If you already know Reddit so it will all seem very intuitive and familiar to you. If you just want to follow and participate in a community, like ours, as we have seen You don't need to sign up for Feddit but just take advantage of your Mastodon membership, for example. Doing it is really simple and we leave you a short video below of how it works:

In practice, as you have seen, all you need to do is write from your Mastodon account @loyal alternatives (i.e. @communityname@lemmyinstance) and you can see the community on Lemmy and interact with it. You can also follow her to see new posts on your Mastodon homepage!

If you want to create a community of your own, or have a separate account for any reason, just search for aInstance suitable for you and sign up. We dream and we are trying to realize aInstance Italian with different realities. In this regard, if you have a site in Italian a privacy theme, Open source and similar and would like to participate we invite you to write to us to talk about it together!
Thanks also to your donations we managed to set up our own Lemmy server: Feddit!

We would like that this map get even bigger!

And what does Le Alternative have to do with it? Fresh 🍃 in all this?

As you well know The Alternatives it is an open-air experiment. We are always looking for new things and we don't like to sit idle. Telegram gave us a huge hand in creating a community, the one present on Telegram is in fact the largest Le Alternative community: at the time of writing over 1600 users in the channel and especially almost 1000 members in the main group.

However TelegramIt is worth remembering that it is a centralized and proprietary system, although currently an excellent compromise. From today to tomorrow, however, it could be bought by Facebook (it's a joke, but it's clear) and it is absolutely a huge problem in our opinion to centralize the whole community in one place. In fact, our goal is not to become bigger than others, but to be able to distribute alternatives and awareness as much as possible.

This is why we have created the Matrix community (what is the Matrix?) which works very well and is synchronized with the Telegram group. Now we want to try to do something similar with Lemmy.

Basically for a few days any post created on our Feddit community will be shared automatically On the canal Le Alternative | Fresh 🍃 which has over 500 users. In this way we hope to be able to involve people to come and talk about it Feddit. On Fresh 🍃 we will therefore continue to post news and news regarding Le Alternative only that instead of publishing them exclusively on Telegram they will first be published on Feddit and will then automatically move to Telegram.

So basically, how do I read and comment in the Le Alternative Feddit community?

We have given a lot of information, so let's try to summarize briefly to tidy up the ideas a bit. If you already have a Mastodon, Pleroma and in theory also Friendica account (for now only these two, certainly others later) you can search on the platform on which you are the user @lealternative@feddit.it. From there you can read the posts and also follow the community. Read and respond, therefore, directly with your account without having to create new ones.

Don't have Mastodon or any other accounts in the Fediverse? No problem. You can sign up for any Instance by Lemmy, like ours. But there are many. For example we know that this Solarpunk server Lemmy's is run by Italians (although the communities speak mainly in English).

And why is he called Lemmy?

The reason why he's called Lemmy explains it to us directly its main developer:

• Lemmy, as the leader of the Motorhead;
• like the old 80's game called Lemmings (of which we have also proposed an alternative Open source: Lyx);
• Lemmy Koopa, from Super Mario;
• the lemming (lemmas, or lemmini), small rodents.

Is there an app for Lemmy?

Update July 5: after Lemmy's boom due to theReddit update that kills third-party apps a lot of applications and web apps have been released to use Lemmy. We tried to group some of them together, if you know others don't hesitate to tell us!

TO this address you will also find a review of all the applications available (Open source and closed code).

However, keep in mind that Lemmy is very fast and very light so you can very well open the site with the Browsers and use it as a simple webapp.

One last note: given the nature of Lemmy the list below will only present applications Open source.

Android applications

• Jerboa for Lemmy ¹⁶, until recently was the only application available and is created by the same developer as Lemmy. Available on Play Store And F-Droid;
• Liftoff for Lemmy ¹⁷, very nice recent application with a simple but effective design. Graphically it's very reminiscent Infinity for Reddit. Available on Play Store;
• Slides ¹⁸, based on Slide for Reddit and adapted to work with Lemmy. It is not available on the Play Store or on F-Droid but only through APK or using Obtainium;
• Thunder ¹⁹, another essential application and still in beta which however promises well. Available via APK or up IzzyOnDroid;
• Voyager ²⁰, is an application in the style of the famous Apollo for Reddit. You can take advantage of the version web or download the application on Android or iOS.

iOS applications

• Memmy ²¹, one of the few and one of the first applications Open source for iOS;
• Mlem ²², other application Open source for iOS still in beta;
• Voyager ²⁰, is an application in the style of the famous Apollo for Reddit. You can take advantage of the version web or download the application on Android or iOS.

Webapp

As mentioned, Lemmy works great as a simple webapp, but various webapps with captivating and really interesting graphics are growing.

• Alexanrite ²³, a beautiful alternative graphic to transform Lemmy;
• CreateLab ²⁴, still in full production but usable and very nice graphically;
• Mlmym ²⁵, for all old.reddit nostalgics, here is a site that presents the Lemmy servers with the same graphics as old.reddit;
• Slemmy ²⁶, another webapp that literally transforms and improves the use of Lemmy;
• Wefwef for Lemmy ²⁷, if you are a veteran of Apollo for Reddit then you absolutely must try this webapp for Lemmy!

Now we feel like we've really said everything, we hope we've intrigued you enough.

1. The Gambe.ro experience ends[↩]
2. Vendor lock-in on Wikipedia[↩]
3. Google Talk[↩]
4. Windows Live Messenger[↩]
5. Release v0.14.0 Release · LemmyNet/lemmy[↩]
6. Current projects – NLnet[↩]
7. Why does the instances list have peertube sites?[↩]
8. We are the devs behind Lemmy, an Open source, Federated alternative to reddit! LOVES![↩]
9. Moving or leaving accounts[↩]
10. Archive And Raddle[↩]
11. Dessalines profile[↩]
12. Statement on Politics of Lemmy.ml[↩]
13. Free Hosting for liberal/mainstream political instance[↩]
14. Reddit has once again reset all my privacy settings on the Android app after interface update. Check your settings now! – Teddit link[↩]
15. Update to user preferences – link Teddit[↩]
16. source code Jerboa[↩]
17. source code Liftoff[↩]
18. source code Slides[↩]
19. source code Thunder[↩]
20. source code Voyager[↩][↩]
21. source code Memmy[↩]
22. source code Mlem[↩]
23. source code Alexanrite[↩]
24. source code CreateLab[↩]
25. source code Mlmym[↩]
26. source code Slemmy[↩]
27. source code Wefwef[↩]

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