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

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!

  • AugustsKaifs@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    It’s so cool being here. Actual people being people with a certain hint of joy because of being here.

  • PeteWheeler@lemmy.world
    0·
    4 months ago

    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.

  • Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee
    0·
    4 months ago

    Hey! Any idea on why this wave is happening? Also, how does it compare to the initial Reddit “refugee” wave?

    • sunaurus@lemm.eeOP
      0·
      4 months ago

      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.

    • Flummoxx@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      I saw a r/YSK (You Should Know) post about Lemmy today and was curious and had some time . I’m intrigued.

      • Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee
        0·
        4 months ago

        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!

        • Flummoxx@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          4 months ago

          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.

    • SwizzleStick@lemmy.zipEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      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.

      • CallateCoyote@lemmy.world
        0·
        4 months ago

        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.

        • vaguerant@fedia.io
          0·
          4 months ago

          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.

          • CallateCoyote@lemmy.world
            0·
            4 months ago

            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.

    • AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee
      0·
      4 months ago

      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-App

      I use it alongside Reddit, and I’m enjoying it more and more, slowly switching over

      • karel3s@lemm.ee
        0·
        3 months ago

        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 😉.

      • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
        0·
        4 months ago

        You are safe to express ur self in this here social media dear…

        They hate the idea that internet loves Luigi haha

    • LinPing1976@lemm.ee
      0·
      4 months ago

      Some people are currently looking for European and more private alternatives to traditional social medias. Hopefully more will follow.

    • samus12345@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Redditors are feeling the rise of corporate sponsored censorship and are looking for alternatives.

    • CrimsonDawn@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      boycott of American products and support for a European increased independence movement

  • Nicker44@lemmy.todayEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    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.

  • Foni@lemm.ee
    0·
    4 months ago

    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)

      • Foni@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        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

  • Anthon@lemm.eeSvenska
    0·
    4 months ago

    Just joined a few days ago, trying to get the hang of how the federation system works! Happy to be apart of the growth though!

    Nice post!

  • Basic Glitch@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    Is there a community for asking a question about the existence of other communities related to a specific topic?

    I want to find out if anyone knows about any communities regarding a political topic, but the ask community rules state no politics.