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A message to new users

Hello World!

The last week or so we have seen quite a big 'boost' in the amount of new users signing up so we thought it would be a good time to highlight some things that are of interest to new users.

CODE OF CONDUCT

Lemmy World is not a free speech instance, there are a couple of ground rules that need to be followed. If you're new, I would advise you to read our Code of Conduct.

NEW USER QUESTIONS

If you are new to the fediverse as a whole, it might all be a bit overwhelming. What is Lemmy? What is federation? What even is an instance? For those questions I would suggest you have a look at the getting starting guide. It should cover most of your questions.

STILL HAVE QUESTIONS?

You can head over to the !support@lemmy.world community. This community should be used for questions regarding Lemmy World and is not the support community for the Lemmy software this site uses.

Our Admin @quinten recently made a post covering the most recurring questions there too. Read about that here.

ALTERNATIVE USER INTERFACES

Lemmy World hosts a few custom User Interfaces which give you a completely different experience both on the desktop as on mobile.

THIRD PARTY APPS

There are a lot of Third Party apps available for Lemmy. From Paid to Open Source, you will find something that suits you easily.

For a complete list of apps have a look at https://lemmyapps.netlify.app/ (Thanks Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de).

EDIT: Updated the apps list. Also some more interesting links in @otter@lemmy.ca's post here: https://lemmy.world/comment/3962001

EDIT 2: Instead of https://photon.lemmy.world you can now just go to https://p.lemmy.world. You can thank @Rootiest@lemmy.world laziness for that.

243 comments
  • I feel right at home in the fediverse, it gives me a much more secure feeling than Reddit. Thank you devs for your hard work at creating a suitable alternative.

    • So, on that topic of "security" - just remember that whenever you post, your post is essentially sent to every "instance" that is federated (and listening for the community you posted to). Each instance is it's own server running it's own version of an activitypub implementation (lemmy, mastadon, etc).

      So on lemmy.world that means your post is sent to literally thousands of servers that you cannot directly influence. If you delete a post, a request is made to those servers to also delete the post, but if that instance is modified or unavailable when the request is sent (it'll re-try, but there's a limit how many times), then it's possible your post will not be deleted and you'll never know.

      Keep in mind this also means that anyone, say a government or private company, can establish an instance, federate, and receive the posts of everyone. Their instance may be nearly completely invisible - so you won't know they're collecting that information.

      However, lemmy stores and sends almost no information about any user. A user profile does not contain IP address or country or anything. All of that stays in the server logs of the instance you originate from, and never enters the database. So your "true" personal information isn't shared, but your account name, and a link to your account, and the post content (whatever text you add) is shared.

      Lastly, images tend to be shared. Lemmy uses "pict-rs" which is a FOSS image hosting server, and when an instance receives a federated post, if there is an image in the "URL" field, then it will ask pict-rs to download that image to its server for easier serving to its users.

      • Great point, however, I would rather have my posts be sent to like minded peers than to some walled-garden company like Reddit. Also, what data would any supposed malicious instance get that isn’t already available to the public? As for account names, text and images from posts, etc. aren’t these the very definition of social media? What kind of social media is not sharing text or images anyway?

  • Thanks for making the effort to host and support the community!

    Ps: Boost gang! 🚀

  • I've been here a few months, but still learned quite a bit from this post - thanks for putting this together!

    And welcome aboard to all the newest newbies! ...did Reddit slap its users in the face again?

  • I'm not sure where to post my question, it's more of a general question rather than something specific that belongs in support@lemmy.world so I'll just ask here.

    I have read the guide for new users and similar posts but couldn't find anything that addresses it.

    I somewhat understand the distributed nature of the fediverse, but my question is: how does it differ from reddit in terms of eventually a small handful of people will create all the most popular subreddits (or communities here), consolidate power, and turn it into a dictatorship like reddit.

    That was one of the main problems on reddit, where like 25 power mods ran every single popular sub.

    Apologies if this has been asked before or if it's the wrong place, I did look around and try to find an answer..

    Thanks.

    • However, unlike Reddit, there's alternatives. You might not like the community on @lemmy.world, but you might like the community on @anotherlemmythatmight.exist.

      Because of the federated nature, communities will naturally fracture and focus. Here, a bad faith mod will just kill a community on instance a, and people will move to instance b.

      We've already seen things happen like this under the banner of 'free speech', where people believe that free speech means free from consequences. If you think that, there are plenty of instances out there. Lemmy.world isn't one of them.

      This means that you can find your favourite community in places with different server rules. Which means it will be the community - the people, the mods, the knowledge, that grows one, not just the fact the names taken.

      • Hmm, interesting, thanks for that!

        I only joined lemmy.world because it was the first one on the list in the tutorial I read when setting this up. I'm still brand new here and trying to figure out how this all works.

    • I somewhat understand the distributed nature of the fediverse, but my question is: how does it differ from reddit in terms of eventually a small handful of people will create all the most popular subreddits (or communities here), consolidate power, and turn it into a dictatorship like reddit.

      That's something any community needs to be on the lookout for, I wouldn't assume the worst just yet. Lemmy is entirely community driven, if governance is a concern then get involved in governance and see what you can help with.

243 comments