Hi folks!
Over the past few months, we have started seeing a significant amount of new user sign-ups. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all of our new members, and to share some useful resources and info about lemm.ee.
First, some stats
Here is a bar chart of daily new users (this is only counting users which have been approved by our admins):
As you can see from the chart, for most of 2024, we were accepting roughly around 10-20 new users every day. Then, from the start of this year, the daily numbers have been constantly growing. Yesterday, we approved a massive 609 new users on lemm.ee.
The increase in sign-ups is significant enough that I have been taking several steps to improve our monitoring & anti-bot measures, but so far, it seems the vast majority of the new users are completely legitimate real humans! (Thank you all for not being bots 😅)
About lemm.ee
This Lemmy instance is turning 2 years old very soon. It was initially created around the time of the Reddit API changes, when existing Lemmy servers were getting overloaded with new users - lemm.ee was intended to help spread the load. We’re now the second largest Lemmy server when it comes to monthly active users.
Our core philosophy for this instance has always been to treat it as a generic gateway to the Lemmy network. I want to provide our users a stable and reliable home for their Lemmy account, so that they can have easy access to all of their communities, regardless of what instance the community is actually hosted on.
We run on some decently beefy hardware, and our setup is fairly customized in several ways in order to ensure a smooth experience for our users (most of the time, this has worked out quite well!). Our servers are currently hosted in Finland.
Our infrastructure has been funded by the community almost from the start through GitHub sponsorships and Ko-Fi donations. I am sure I speak on behalf all of our users when I say that I am extremely grateful to all supporters - you are really responsible for the continued existence of this instance!
Lemmy itself is open source software, and while it has improved massively during the time I have been using it, it definitely still has some rough edges. Please be patient when using Lemmy, and remember that it is being built collaboratively by humans (not corporations), without any intent of ever turning it into a business.
Useful resources
- If you’re confused about anything, feel free to check out our F.A.Q.
- We have an instance policy for administration, moderation, and federation - feel free to check it out if you want to understand how admins and mods are expected to act on lemm.ee
- For staying up to date with instance news, feel free to subscribe to [email protected]
- If you ever can’t reach lemm.ee, please check our status page at https://status.lemm.ee/ - I communicate updates on that page when dealing with any unplanned problems.
- You can always find these resources (and some more useful info) in the sidebar of our front page (https://lemm.ee/)!
Don’t forget to participate!
Communities on Lemmy only work if people actively use them. Even upvoting/downvoting based on quality of content is a great start, but I would really like to encourage you all to comment and even write posts, because that’s really the best way to build communities.
If you have any questions or thoughts about lemm.ee or Lemmy in general, feel free to post a comment below this post, and myself or one of our veteran users will definitely respond.
I hope you enjoy your time on lemm.ee, and I wish you all a great week!
Just joined a few hours ago! Still getting used to the format, but i’ll learn! Very excited to see this place grow bigger!
Hi, just joined today. Already love it! I somehow get more interaction on here than I do on reddit.
Definitely looking forward to small communities again.
Right? That was my first experience too, the interactions and community on here feels great
Hello! I joined today
Welcome on lemm.ee!
Ayyy-Ohhh so did I Dude!
Hey friend!
Welcome!
let’s gooooooooo. May I ask what made you interested in creating an account here? I’m curious about the people’s motives.
Yahoooo! The more the merrier.
Welcome new users!
Thank you so much Lemmee Adkins!
welcome!
Hey! Any idea on why this wave is happening? Also, how does it compare to the initial Reddit “refugee” wave?
As for why, it’s probably due to the censorship screws getting tighter at Reddit. Luigi is a bad word. Eating the rich is verboten. Just 2 examples. Interacting/upvoting such content is now also an offense even if you didn’t write it yourself.
For many, it’s their stop to get off the train. Mine was the API boogaloo.
Yep, I’ve been flirting with Lemmy for a year and a half and come here every time Reddit really pisses me off or bans me for something I would have never been banned for 10 years ago.
I’m not flirting with it anymore. This recent batch of censorship is too much. It’s the last straw. Deleted my Reddit account for good. I can still use it as a resource to get answers to questions without needing an account.
If you’re accustomed to using Reddit via Android, you might like the app Stealth (download from F-Droid, source code at GitLab). It’s a privacy-focussed Reddit scraper/client with no account support. I don’t interact with Reddit any more, but on the rare occasion that I want to check on a community there, it does the job. You can bookmark communities you want to follow and get a feed, all the standard stuff you’d expect to do, besides logging in.
I love that idea, thanks. There are smaller communities on there that are going to be hard to replace for information and news on some of my more obscure interests.
We had a few really huge days in 2023, but other than those, it seems like the growth so far in March is definitely outpacing our initial wave of new users in 2023.
a big driving force is r/BuyFromEU with 150k active subs and r/BuyCanadian with 300k
They’re trying to move away from US products, including tech.
Also the Luigi censorship as mentioned.
Now is a good time to comment something like this on those subs to help guide people.
Try out the European-Hosted Reddit alternative, Lemmy
It also has a Mobile-AppI use it alongside Reddit, and I’m enjoying it more and more, slowly switching over
Yeah, same. The whole moving away from US tech products got me on Lemmy amongst other services. Today I learned you can block users, which is an interesting concept to filter out the haters 😉.
I saw a r/YSK (You Should Know) post about Lemmy today and was curious and had some time . I’m intrigued.
My congrats! Hope you enjoy your stay here in the fediverse, and don’t forget to donate to the admin that keeps the server running!
It’s crazy. I loved Digg until I had to go to Reddit to get the experience I loved once Digg began it’s enshitification. Now that Reddit is experiencing enshitification, I’m coming here. I hope this is the next iteration of the pure experience that I’m looking for.
Reddit heard we have a fediverse chick.
!! lol
I have her. What’s all this we stuff. Getting sick of everyone hitting on her.
hi! is there any “default” community or a place where every new user is automatically registered in? or a place where we can see some kind of graph for lemmy users signing up on a daily basis? would be nice for [email protected] datahoarding too haha.
Hey, there isn’t any default community right now. There are a few different databases that track graphs of such things, for example, fedidb.org.
thanks! will check that out. hats off to you for your hard work and effort for lemmy.
thankyou!
FYI, Blaze is the go to for the fediverse. So if you need anything, you know who to ask!
oh wow! didn’t know. thanks a lot!
Anytime, buddy.
Thank you for your kind words
That’s awesome! I don’t know what sparked more people to come over though. Would be great if someone can fill me in since I’m so out of the loop.
Also, PSA to all new users on Desktop: Try Alexandrite - a gorgeous front-end for Lemmy https://alexandrite.app/lemm.ee/
There was a popular post on YSK on Reddit yesterday that sent me here, and at least one other commenter I’ve seen said the same thing.
Not sure about posting Reddit links here, but this guy: https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/1j7g7ju/ysk_the_reddit_alternative_lemmy_has_gotten_much/
That post introduced me to Lemmy as well! Very happy to be here.
My boost for reddit suddenly stopped working last week, so I figured I may as well see what all this is about. Happened to coincide with what seems to be an increase in reddit’s content moderation where even peoples’ votes are being policed.
Pretty much exact same situation as me
Same here. Between blocking all API workarounds and threatening me with a ban for upvotes, it seemed like high time to run a deletion script on my 16-year account and pack it up.
Why the sudden rise? Actually bonkers
Reddit started banning people for upvoting a certain way.
You are safe to express ur self in this here social media dear…
They hate the idea that internet loves Luigi haha
Redditors are feeling the rise of corporate sponsored censorship and are looking for alternatives.
boycott of American products and support for a European increased independence movement
Some people are currently looking for European and more private alternatives to traditional social medias. Hopefully more will follow.
Heyo :D
Such a relief to scroll through posts without having to worry about what’s advertisement, it has a much more genuine and human feeling.
It’s so cool being here. Actual people being people with a certain hint of joy because of being here.
Hello there!
Hello everyone I’m new here and start to understand how it works , but one question Is there a translator as in Reddit ? Thanks
There were just a cumulative collection of Subreddit mods that had banned me over the years.
I made a comment on a subreddit I was banned on and they decided to ban me for life.
Boost for reddit stopped working for reddit. Then I saw they made a boost for Lemmy. Was curious and now I regularly check this platform out.
I carry here as a year and a half (before I was in another instance that closed) and I can say that the increase in traffic, participation, comments, vows etc. For a couple of months it is remarkable.
I don’t know if it’s for Trump pushing Europeans and Candadia outside their products, for Reddit turning its platform into shit full of bots and unpopular standards or a combination of both, but I think that the network and community is doing really good (we even have a community of conservatives, half a year ago something like that would be unthinkable)
I would say getting banned for upvoting a couple of popular memes becoming the official site policy is definitely going to motivate tons of users to leave and I would also include myself in that group as well
I guess everyone has their own turning point, but Reddit seems to have a new controversy every two weeks, so I suppose things will just keep escalating here.
Personally, I jumped ship during the API controversy, not because it directly affected me, but because ever since I discovered federated networks with Mastodon, I’ve thought it’s the perfect idea (in fact, I had an account on the server that disappeared even before that). I have accounts on all the federated networks, even though I don’t use them much, and I’d love to see them replace the traditional ones.
In any case, welcome
