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Lemmy is
free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...
,
social news A social news website is a website that features user-posted stories. Such stories are ranked based on popularity, as voted on by other users of the site or by website administrators. Users typically comment online on the news posts and these com ...
aggregation software for running self-hosted discussion forums. These hosts, known as "instances", communicate with each other using the
ActivityPub ActivityPub is a Communication protocol, protocol and open standard for Decentralised system, decentralized Social networking service, social networking. It provides a Client–server model, client-to-server (C2S) API for creating and modifying c ...
protocol.


History

Lemmy was created by the user Dessalines on
GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...
in February 2019 and licensed under the
Affero General Public License The GNU Affero General Public License (GNU AGPL) is a free, copyleft license published by the Free Software Foundation in November 2007, and based on the GNU GPL version 3 and the ''Affero General Public License'' (non-GNU). It is intended for ...
. In a 2020 post, Lemmy's co-creator Dessalines wrote about the origin of the name Lemmy. "It was nameless for a long time, but I wanted to keep with the
fediverse The Fediverse (commonly shortened to fedi) is a collection of social networking services that can communicate with each other (formally known as Federation (information technology), federation) using a common protocol. Users of different websites ...
tradition of naming projects after animals. I was playing that old-school game
Lemmings A lemming is a small rodent, usually found in or near the Arctic in tundra biomes. Lemmings form the subfamily Arvicolinae (also known as Microtinae) together with voles and muskrats, which form part of the superfamily Muroidea, which also incl ...
, and
Lemmy Ian Fraser Kilmister (24 December 1945 – 28 December 2015), better known as Lemmy Kilmister or simply Lemmy, was a British musician. He was the founder, lead vocalist, bassist and primary songwriter of the metal band Motörhead, of which he ...
(from Motorhead) had passed away that week, and we held a few polls for names, and I went with that." According to the Fediverse statistics website the-federation.info, there were less than 100 instances of Lemmy prior to June 2023, increasing to 1521 instances of Lemmy with a total of 66,000 monthly active users . The most popular instances were lemmy.world and lemmy.ml, with 27,000 and 4,000 monthly active users respectively, .


Description

Lemmy is made up of a network of individual installations of the Lemmy software that can intercommunicate. This departs from the centralized, monolithic structure of other social media platforms. It has been described as a federated alternative to
Reddit Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...
. Users on individual instances submit posts with links, text, or pictures to user-created forums for discussion called "communities". Discussion is in the form of threaded comments. Posts and comments can be upvoted or downvoted though the ability to downvote can be disabled by the admins of each instance. Communities are local to each instance, however users may subscribe to communities, create posts and leave comments across instances. Moderation is conducted by the administrators of each instance and moderators of specific communities. Community names begin with c/ in the URL (e.g lemmy.ml/c/simpleliving) and are mentionable using the !community@instance format. On each instance, a front page presents the user with popular posts from several communities. These posts can then be filtered according to origin: posts from the instance the user is on, or from all federated instances. It can also be made to only show posts from communities the user has subscribed to. Lemmy instances are generally supported by donations.


Relations with other social networks

ActivityPub ActivityPub is a Communication protocol, protocol and open standard for Decentralised system, decentralized Social networking service, social networking. It provides a Client–server model, client-to-server (C2S) API for creating and modifying c ...
is the protocol used to allow Lemmy instances to operate as a federated social network. It allows users to interact with compatible platforms such as Kbin and
Mastodon A mastodon, from Ancient Greek μαστός (''mastós''), meaning "breast", and ὀδούς (''odoús'') "tooth", is a member of the genus ''Mammut'' (German for 'mammoth'), which was endemic to North America and lived from the late Miocene to ...
. In June 2023, following the announcement of Reddit API service changes intended to reduce the use of third-party Reddit clients, community members discussed relocating to Lemmy and other Reddit competitors. Reddit banned a user for promoting switching to Lemmy along with the r/LemmyMigration
subreddit Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...
as a whole, leading to a
Streisand effect The Streisand effect is an unintended consequences, unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or Censorship, censor information, where the effort instead increases public awareness of the information. The term was coined in 2005 by ...
after it garnered attention on sites like
Hacker News Hacker News (HN) is a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship. It is run by the investment fund and startup incubator Y Combinator. In general, content that can be submitted is defined as "anything that gratifies one' ...
. The ban was reversed a day later.


Third-party software

Prominent third-party Reddit clients ''Sync'' and ''Boost'' which had shut down due to changes to the pricing of Reddit's API began working on Lemmy clients, with them later relaunching as ''Sync for Lemmy'' and ''Boost for Lemmy''. Multiple other apps and browser clients have also been developed.


References

{{Authority control 2019 software Aggregation websites Community websites Free software programmed in Rust Software that federates via ActivityPub Software using the GNU Affero General Public License Web applications