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Lemmy (social network)

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Lemmy
Developer(s)LemmyNet[1]
Initial releaseMay 5, 2019; 5 years ago (2019-05-05)[2]
Stable release
v0.18.0 / June 23, 2023; 14 months ago (2023-06-23)
Repositoryhttps://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy
Written inRust, Actix, Diesel, Inferno, TypeScript
TypeSocial news
LicenseAGPL3[3]
Websitejoin-lemmy.org

Lemmy is free and open-source software for running self-hosted social news aggregation and discussion forums.[4][5][6]

Creation and funding

Lemmy software was created by the user Dessalines on GitHub in February 2019[7] and licensed under the Affero General Public License. It is crowdfunded by individual donations[8] and also receives funding through NLnet's NGI0 Discovery Fund.[5]

Name

In a 2020 post, Lemmy's co-creator Desalines wrote about the origin of the name Lemmy. "It was nameless for a long time, but I wanted to keep with the fediverse tradition of naming projects after animals. I was playing that old-school game Lemmings, and Lemmy (from Motorhead) had passed away that week, and we held a few polls for names, and I went with that."[9]

Instances and networking

Lemmy instances, with user-generated content and discussions about the content in an internet forum, are run by different individuals or corporations, each with their own content moderation policies.[10]

Users on individual instances submit posts with links, text, or pictures to user-created boards called "communities". Communities are user-created forums for discussions. They are an integral part of Lemmy, as users must post their link, image or discussion to a specific community. Community names begin with c/ in the URL[4] and are uniquely mentionable using the format: !community@instance.[11] Communities are user created and local to each instance, however they may be posted to from other instances. Moderation is conducted by admins of each instance and moderators of specific communities.[12]

Using a system of upvotes and downvotes users can influence what content appears at the top of the main feeds and of each community. A list of communities can be found in the Community-Browser[13] and the Explorer.[14]

Registering an account on any particular instance is free and may require an email address or approval by the admin of the instance. Registering an account allows a user to post to communities and, on some instances, to create new communities. People with accounts on other Fediverse instances (ActivityPub-compatible servers) can respond to Lemmy posts or subscribe to Lemmy communities using their non-Lemmy accounts.[15]

Relations with other online social networks

Lemmy instances are federated with each other, allowing a user on a given instance to participate in a "community" on another Lemmy instance without having to create an account on the other instance;[4] and with other instances in the Fediverse that use different software. ActivityPub is the protocol used to allow Lemmy instances to operate as a federated social network. It allows users to interact with compatible platforms including Mastodon and PeerTube.[16]

In June 2023, during controversy in the Reddit community in response to changes in the Reddit API service, community members discussed shifting to Lemmy as one of the possible alternatives to Reddit.[17] A ban by Reddit on a user and subreddit "/r/LemmyMigration" discussing the possibility of migrating to Lemmy resulted in a Streisand effect attracting attention to Lemmy in online sites including Hacker News, and was reversed a day later.[18] Lifehacker described Lemmy as one of the "best four" alternatives to Reddit.[4]

Usage statistics

According to the Fediverse statistics website the-federation.info, there were less than 100 instances of Lemmy prior to June 2023, increasing to 312 instances of Lemmy with a total of twenty one thousand monthly active users as of 17 June 2023.[19] The most popular instances were lemmy.ml and lemmy.world, each with four and eight thousand monthly active users respectively, as of 17 June 2023.[19]

Third-party software

Client apps for mobile devices include Jerboa for Android,[20] and Remmel for iOS and beta client Mlem available via TestFlight.[21] Lifehacker stated in June 2023 that Sync was expected to become a Lemmy client following changes in the Reddit API.[4] Likewise, Boost for Reddit is being re-factored as Boost for Lemmy.[22]

References

  1. ^ "LemmyNet". GitHub. Archived from the original on December 24, 2022. Retrieved December 24, 2022.
  2. ^ "Release v0.0.5 Release". GitHub. May 5, 2019. Archived from the original on June 6, 2023. Retrieved June 5, 2023.
  3. ^ "License file in source code". February 14, 2019. Archived from the original on December 23, 2022. Retrieved December 23, 2022.
  4. ^ a b c d e Beth Skwarecki (June 23, 2023). "The Four Best Reddit Alternatives". Lifehacker. Wikidata Q119860986. Archived from the original on June 23, 2023.
  5. ^ a b "Lemmy". NLnet. Archived from the original on December 23, 2022. Retrieved December 23, 2022.
  6. ^ "Lemmy Documentation - Introduction". Lemmy. Archived from the original on June 19, 2023.
  7. ^ "Commits". GitHub. February 14, 2019. Archived from the original on June 7, 2023. Retrieved June 5, 2023.
  8. ^ "Lemmy's profile". Liberapay. Archived from the original on November 10, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  9. ^ Cite web |title=Lemmy's origin story. |url=https://lemmy.ml/post/70319
  10. ^ "Top 11 Best Open Source Forum Software to Self Host [2021]". It's FOSS. Archived from the original on November 10, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  11. ^ "Getting started with Federation". Lemmy documentation. Archived from the original on February 4, 2023. Retrieved January 14, 2023.
  12. ^ "Korben.info: Lemmy – Le clone de Reddit libre et fédéré". Korben.info (in French). Archived from the original on November 29, 2021. Retrieved December 3, 2021.
  13. ^ "Lemmy Community-Browser". browse.feddit.de. Retrieved June 16, 2023.
  14. ^ "Lemmy Explorer". lemmyverse.net. Retrieved June 16, 2023.
  15. ^ "Lemmy Introduction". join-lemmy.org. Retrieved July 8, 2023.
  16. ^ "Lemmy - A link aggregator for the fediverse". join-lemmy.org. Archived from the original on December 22, 2022. Retrieved December 23, 2022.
  17. ^ David Meyer (June 15, 2023). "Twitter's inability to pay its rent is more urgent than building 'Twitter 2.0'". Fortune. ISSN 0015-8259. Wikidata Q119626980. Archived from the original on June 17, 2023.
  18. ^ Amaar Chowdhury (June 8, 2023). "Reddit temporarily ban subreddit and user advertising rival platform". VideoGamer.com. Wikidata Q119626864. Archived from the original on June 17, 2023.
  19. ^ a b "the federation - a statistics hub". the-federation.info. Archived from the original on June 17, 2023. Retrieved June 17, 2023.
  20. ^ "Jerboa for Lemmy | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository". f-droid.org. Archived from the original on December 30, 2022. Retrieved December 29, 2022.
  21. ^ "Remmel for Lemmy". App Store. Archived from the original on November 10, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  22. ^ "Boost for Lemmy - Apps on Google Play". play.google.com. Retrieved July 1, 2023.
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