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 [email protected]. You can also ask about communities in places like [email protected].
We also encourage you to check out [email protected], so that others can help you / learn from your questions.
Welcome to Lemmy :)
You must log in or register to comment.
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 😄
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 😄
Make yourselves at home!
Please check out [email protected] and [email protected]
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: [email protected] – 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.
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.
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
Here are some more tips, put together by @[email protected] 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/[email protected]. Mentioning the community similar to this form: [email protected] 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.
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 :)
We’re in the process of getting pixelfed together :)see Shadow’s commentI love it.
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.
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.
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!
I promise to take a look a Friendica after we get Pixelfed up =)
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!
That’s exciting news!
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! :)
fwiw I would join a friendica instance in a heartbeat and lobby for people I know on fb to sign up.
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 😊
Good on you. Most OGFT canucks fit right in here. 🍁
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.
🫶 happy to be here
Welcome new users! You’ve made an excellent choice.
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 any of the providers via the standardized protocol.
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)
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
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 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!
Wow, you guys have really done a terrific job on those guides!
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!
Woo! I’m from .world but wanted to make an account here too :D
Ditto!
Glad to be here! As Reddit keeps enshittifying, and the boycott USAmerica movement gains momentum, hoping more folks migrate over.
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. 😊
Shucks
Lurking has been my primary activity on Reddit. I shall try to contribute more.
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
