jointhefediverse.net - Why was Lemmy removed from the list of fediverse alternatives?

Point 1 and 2 really need to be addressed.

It would be so much better if lemmy wasn't developed by genocide white-washing tankies.

https://piefed.social/ is catching up
- Any way to migrate a self hosted lemmy instance to piefed?
  
  No, it's not geared up for that. There's a platform called sublinks where the intention is to be initially compatible enough with Lemmy that it can be a drop-in replacement, but they haven't released anything yet.
  
  but they haven’t released anything yet
  And with their current pace, it seems likely they never will. There's been no major development on it for months as far as I can see.
  
  Yes, same feeling
  
  Oh interesting, thanks for sharing!
  
  just run both!
  
  Unfortunately migrating from one fediverse application to another on the same domain is actually basically impossible, due to the way ActivityPub works. It's very unfortunate.
  
  We built this whole place from scratch 18 months ago. We can do it again, especially when Lemmy instances would still be around and help to redirect people to the Piefed instances.
  
  Well, in theory sure. But you always lose people during migrations, it's inevitable. And it's cumbersome for users. It's not a nice experience. The fediverse has enough bad UX as it is, I'd prefer if we didn't pile on more.
  If the fediverse actually held true to the promise of easy migrations, then maybe it wouldn't be a big deal. But unfortunately it's still not really that easy.
  
  I see it happening gradually.
  There might be a start with another Piefed instance (e.g. Piefed.zip, managed by Lemmy.zip admins). People who really don't want to use Lemmy would register on that instance, but would still be able to interact with the communities on Lemmy, the way Mbin and Piefed alreay do now. They start hosting a few communities onn Piefed.zip, locking other on lemmy.zip and redirecting people there.
  Then over time some other admins want to give it a try. After a while a few Piefed instances make it to the top 10 most active instances, while the rest is Lemmy.
  It doesn't have to happen overnight. We have time, people are not going anywhere.
- Python based: I was looking for that
  
  Yeah, I don't expect it to scale well. Certainly not as well as Rust.
  
  In terms of incoming federation, PieFed sites are dealing with as much activity as any general Lemmy instance. It's not happened yet, but I suppose it's possible that problems will become apparent if the amount of local users gets over a certain size. A limit on the amount of users per instance isn't necessarily a bad thing though (it's cheap, and hopefully easy enough, for someone to spin up another one).
  
  What's going to cause problems? Python, the db, redis or other?
  
  It uses postgres for the DB - I think that and redis are designed to operate at very large scales, so it wouldn't be them.
  My guess would be that it's something in the interpreted nature of Python - this seems to be why a familiar dismissal of PieFed is a concern about how it will scale.
  That said, this site shows that Python is the most popular language for Fediverse apps (just), the likes of Mastodon are written in another interpreted language (Ruby), and I think there are more big websites running Python (with Django or Flask) than people realise. So I don't know, really, I'm just following other people's lead on this. I don't imagine that any problems would be insurmountable though: an admin could restrict the amount of signups, or if new users mean a few more donations, they could just throw money at the problem (more cycles for one server, or splitting up tasks across multiple servers).
  
  If you consider all AI-chat sites are running on python, I guess python scales with no issue at all
Have you checked how muh software do you use that is enabled by capitalism?
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDF_Public_Access_Unix_System
  wow that's interesting :D
  
  SDF is pretty rad.
  
  Yee
  
  Yup! I should make more use of the awesome infra (and the much better payment model than $ocial Media) but alas, I'm like a cat: lazy.
- You should ask it on lemmygrad.ml :D
  
  I mean, it would be one way to get them stuck chasing their own tail on an endless task...
- Excuse me?
- Linux Foundation survives on Microsoft's financing. Firefox main source of income is Google's money. That's like pointing out that we breathe nitrogen. Yes, it is almost impossible to avoid capitalism because we live immersed in it as a society. But it's not an reason to stop pointing it out and trying to find more ethical and sustainable alternatives.

I hate it when people try to gatekeep like this. I don't need to be handheld. If there's a Fediverse alternative to something and it mostly works, it should be on the website. Anything less is not useful at best.

Edit: I say this as someone who has historically criticized the behavior of the devs as well as multiple Lemmy communities BTW.

I agree 100% with this. The developers or the operators of lemmy.ml may be assholes, but the beauty of decentralization is I can simply not use their instance. I do not. Thus, while a warning label is necessary, I think more good is done by making people aware of the alternative to Reddit than by sweeping the whole thing under the rug.
As for user privacy, I'm not sure Lemmy is any worse than any other Fediverse app. There were a couple of bad things like being unable to delete a hosted image, but that has been fixed. Once again, warning label, not rug sweep.
I mean the person maintaining this site just chose to not recommend it themself based on valid concerns. Nothing is stopping you from looking into lemmy and using it anyways.
Well, since you've vocally criticised the developers and they haven't bothered changing their ways, wouldn't you agree they deserve to be gatekept?
On the other hand, it's not for you to decide the criteria for what is included on jointhefediverse's curated list. I personally think it is a perfectly reasonable judgement call they've made.
- No, I don't. If it's about instances I'd understand it a bit more, even though I wouldn't entirely agree with that either (I'm a free speech stan), but this is a page listing Fediverse alternative software. The software is fine and relatively untainted from the intentions of the Lemmy devs from what I can tell (although that was not originally the case). They deserved to be criticized, but not censored from Fediverse articles listing alternatives to big tech platforms.
  
  It's not "censorship" when somebody decides to omit a software from a curated list over the developers' horrible takes. See also Soapbox.
  Edited to add: Free speech does not obligate anybody to boost or acknowledge subjects that they disagree with.
  
  Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments and private institutions. When an individual such as an author or other creator engages in censorship of their own works or speech, it is referred to as self-censorship. General censorship occurs in a variety of different media, including speech, books, music, films, and other arts, the press, radio, television, and the Internet for a variety of claimed reasons including national security, to control obscenity, pornography, and hate speech, to protect children or other vulnerable groups, to promote or restrict political or religious views, and to prevent slander and libel.
  Wikipedia
  They are suppressing information about the fediverse based on political views. They had it up and then they took it down. Please explain how this is not censorship. I don't know where people get the idea that censorship is an inherently negative thing.
  
  Yeah you're right of course, it is censorship. It just happens to be positive. Although, I'd argue that maybe it isn't based on political or religious views, rather on not wanting to give someone a bad impression of the fediverse and make them leave again? As in, self-serving interests?
  
  I'd argue that maybe it isn't based on political or religious views
  The main argument I see against Lemmy devs is that they're "tankies", which is most certainly political. And I agree. Except that there's nothing in the software itself that is political. Only the devs, and many of the .ml communities and users.
  
  In the encyclopedic sense, you're right. In this context that I replied to, however, censorship had a negative connotation, and my response spoke to that rather than the formal meaning.
  I don't know where people get the idea that censorship is an inherently negative thing.
  Right, and I do note that you talk about jointhefediverse "suppressing" Lemmy — another negative connotation.
  I'll maintain that, no, they are just leaving it out. Again, that is the privilege of a list curator. Nobody else have a say in what and why is included on the site. Choosing what to publish, and the omissions that entails, are also protected by free speech.
  
  that is the privilege of a list curator.
  It can be their privilege and also be censorship. You seem to imply otherwise.
  
  Do I? You seem to enjoy pedantic hairsplitting, but I fail to see where you're going with this.
  
  Yes you do
  
  Good talk. Get lost.
  
  over the developers’ horrible takes
  Is that really what all this protest is over? Someone's 'horrible takes'?
  
  Well, horrible genocide apology takes, TBF. I didn't mean to downplay the gravity of the points they bring up in the archived mastodon thread.
  
  Yea, but that kinda nails the pettyness of it, doesn't it? They don't even gain anything by having people adopt their software, nor do they suffer a loss by a boycott - and it's all because they have some questionable (to put it charitably) opinions about an entirely unrelated political issue.
  The thing that gets me is that launching this diatribe over the developer's political opinions on an open sourced project that's built specifically so that no one group or person has control over the platform - that you have complete control over the instances you federate with - ends up looking an awful lot like protesting public libraries over providing access to 'woke' books.
  
  Generally fair point. My issue though is that most people will just go to this website and won't consider other lists or websites, viewing this as the definitive list of Fediverse alternatives. Someone not putting someone's software on their website isn't technically censorship, true (this is the other coin of free speech), it does effectively censor Lemmy from the general conversation about Fediverse alternatives.
  
  Lemmy is bigger by a LOT (LIKE A LOT) than mbin and piefed. So don't see how Lemmy is losing the strong grip it already has on this type of fediverse. Heck, google reddit alternatives and Lemmy is also king.
  This change on that site was in 2023. It's 2025. So it has not impacted Lemmy's user base.
  
  Another good point 👍🏾
  
  Do most people go to jointhefediverse, though? Honest question, I don't know the site's traffic stats vs fediverse.to or fediverse.party (which both show up way above jointhefediverse in my duckduckgo search). It's not like an authoritative index or search engine blackballed Lemmy, it is literally about a single grassroots site.
  
  It's the first one I always see whenever I look up lists of Fediverse alternatives and I always end up on the site. I use fedidb.org but I don't use it to find Fediverse software.
  
  How is this censorship though?
  You can always start joinfediversefreespeechstan.io or whatever. The code is even available, no?
  I could never understand american-style preference for "free speech" themed theatrics.
  
  Because as the leading "Fediverse alternative" website, it essentially tells the viewer that Lemmy doesn't exist, which I think does a disservice to prospective Fediverse users.
  But yes good point, anyone can make an alternative website, I think right wing people made like a fuckgab.com site back in the day to recommend Gab alternatives on the Fediverse.
  
  Where does it say "Lemmy doesn't exist"? The admins of the site are well within their right to curate what service they include. I say this as someone who uses Lemmy a lot and really wants there to be a non-corporate, competition-focused alternative (instances, UIs) to reddit specifically and oligarch run social networks in general.
  I don't understand how "censorship" plays into this (beyond shallow polemical grandstanding). Where is the censorship?
- Well, since you've vocally criticised the developers and they haven't bothered changing their ways, wouldn't you agree they deserve to be gatekept?
  No. In fact, I strongly dislike that whole attitude of 'do what I want or else I will cancel you'. I am not the arbiter of what is ultimately right and wrong and neither are you and neither is parent commenter.
  I believe people have the right to make their own choice. And since Lemmy has significant user base and significant active discussion and thousands of communities, I think the users have the right to make that choice for themselves. Make them aware of the situation, make them aware of the potential downsides, make them aware that lemmy.ml is run by tankie assholes, maybe recommend some better instances, and let them choose for themselves.
  That is why I like Lemmy and the fediverse as a concept. I can choose the instance that has the policies that I want. Among those policies is which other instances to defiederate from.
  
  I believe people have a right to make their own choice.
  And yet you argue against the jointhefediverse curator's choice not to list whatever goes against their convictions?
  As mentioned in another reply, Soapbox is an example of a Fediverse server software that often goes unmentioned because the developer is a giant MAGA hat. As the meme goes, they're the same picture.
  
  Of course it's their choice. But I also think some people in some situations should recognize a broader responsibility. Because we get into a larger question of, what happens when the public square is privately owned?
  With a website like joinfediverse, that domain becomes a primary resource for people looking to get into decentralized platforms. By not including something, the maintainer is not just making the choice for himself but for every new user who visits the site. That responsibility should be taken seriously and the choice not just made based on personal opinion.
  Think of it this way, imagine I made a site called whoshouldIvotefor.com and it would ask you questions and then recommend a political candidate. Sounds like a good idea, right? Now what if I make it so the site always recommends a Republican candidate, and only justifies why the answers you gave to the questions indicate that vote? I'm certainly allowed to do that. Free speech and all. But it could be argued that I also have a responsibility to the voters who come to my site who don't realize it is biased, in that I am pushing my personal opinions on them and causing them to make a decision that they wouldn't have made if they had all the facts.
  (Disclaimer- I'm not a Republican, I consider myself liberal-libertarian. I'm using that as an example.)
  I am just saying that a site which sets itself up as an authoritative on ramp to the fediverse should try to be unbiased and not based on personal opinions of its editor.
- It's kind of a tradeoff. As much as I like Mbin, it's not at feature parity with Lemmy yet, having only one mobile app is probably a deal breaker to a lot of users.
  
  People keep saying mbin is not good enough but I bang out hellva work on it.
  What does it actually miss for this criticism to be valid?
  
  I think it might help if you advertise it more too. I haven't heard of mbin in months and partially assumed it stopped existing
  
  Posts not being marked as read and lack of app support.

No, they're not.

how the developers handle certain types of content

Doesn't matter if you stay away from .ml.

the behavior of its creator

Kind of valid, but open source and open license negates a lot of that.

how the sotware itself handles users’ privacy.

You think anything else on the Fediverse is better? When you post something publicly, it's public. Doesn't really matter what the software does. If you don't have End to End encryption, it's not private.

Doesn't matter if you stay away from .ml.
And they are. They have delisted Lemmy as a recommendation.
Kind of valid, but open source and open license negates a lot of that.
It's really bad PR. I don't recommend Lemmy to people because of this shit.
You think anything else on the Fediverse is better?
If their servers delete content you want deleted, yes.
- If their servers delete content you want deleted, yes.
  It's the case for Lemmy
  Unfortunately there was some miscommunication in this issue and we failed to get to the root cause. In fact the Lemmy backend has an option to delete all content when an account is deleted. This used to be the default behaviour but was changed in 0.19 so you need to set a parameter delete_content. We failed to add a checkbox for this parameter to lemmy-ui.
  However the checkbox is added now in #2385 and will be included in the next Lemmy release. Other frontends and clients may also need to adjust the delete_account api call.
  https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/2384#issuecomment-1978857727
  
  Gotcha.

To me the first one is an instance problem (ml, hexbear?), and not a lemmy problem. It has looked like they've been trying to separate the two as much as possible.

But the Lemmy project and specific instances are not so easily separated. From the archived mastodon thread:
lemmy.ml (the official Lemmy instance) resolves to the same IP address as lemmygrad.ml (the instance that contains the most disturbing material).
Lemmy.ml also federates with lemmygrad, and the devs advertise lemmygrad on their "join lemmy" site.
Do the Lemmy developers themselves run the lemmygrad.ml site? (Its main logo is a tank, incidentally.)
So yeah, newcomers are presented with a join-lemmy site that promotes Lemmygrad and Lemmy ML, both of which appear to be run by the Lemmy devs.
That pretty much makes it a Lemmy problem.
- On what basis can anyone declare one instance to be the 'main' one? I've seen a number of people claim the same thing about .world, but none of them need to be considered the 'main' ones. The entire motivation for the creation of the fediverse is to allow segmentation.... I think people simply want to make it an issue because without these little cross-community spats things get boring.
  
  I agree that ideally the concept of "main instances" is beside the point in a federated network. Let's call them "flagship" or "onboarding instances" then, the initial ones set up by developers as proof of concept that usually get the most traction by way of being open for registrations the longest.
  I think it's disingenuous to classify the decision to omit Lemmy from a list of fediverse software as "a spat", though. Bringing it up again 1½ years later probably fits the bill better.
  
  that usually get the most traction by way of being open for registrations the longest.
  But lemmy.ml isn't the most active, nor does it host the most active communities
  https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy
  https://lemmyverse.net/communities?order=active_month
Unfortunately, .ml is a default instance and the main devs instance, what happens there reflects on all of us
- Default where?
  
  https://join-lemmy.org/
  
  I don't see it on that page. Going to "See all servers" lists "lemmy.ml" at a random position in the list. Looking at "Join a server" and using "Generic" or "All topics" also lists it in a random position. Am I missing something?
  
  If you use "Most active", it will shows up after lemm.ee and the other big instances. So not default, but would still be recommended to new joiners
  
  Well to me that doesn't fit the "it's default" description.
  While looking at that, I couldn't see lemmy.world on that page. I found that join-lemmy.org now excludes instances with >30% user share in order to dampen centralisation. Which makes sense I guess.
- It was made very clear from the start that .ml was not meant to be a 'default instance'.
  
  Too bad for all of us that it is though.
  
  How was it default? I've been here for years and in all that time, it was never default. It was one of the most popular, and the most widely shared, but that's not the same at all.
  
  If anything is too bad, it's .world being so prominent.
  Half this comm's activity is spreading FUD about the platform and being a gathering place for all the people developing their alternatives to huddle and advertise those.
  
  But lemmy.ml isn't the most active, nor does it host the most active communities
  https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy
  https://lemmyverse.net/communities?order=active_month
  
  I didn’t say it was the most active. I said it was the default. Which has been proven already by many others here.
  
  Where? the comments dismiss that statement, saying that it's just an instance among others
  https://lemmy.ca/comment/13804330
  If there is anything as a default instance, it's Lemmy.world
- To me, the only solution to this is to do a hard fork. Take the code (It's AGPL), rename it if Lemmy is trademarked, and encourage admins to use it and contributors to target it. Maybe start a non-profit or LLC while we're at it.
  
  Good luck finding Rust devs interested in link aggregators. That fork would probably fall behind, and people would switch back to Lemmy as they keep delivering features.
  Mbin and Piefed use more popular languages and haven't caught up yet
  
  Instead of trying to fork, maybe we try and go the Gotosocial way and make a MVP smol version. Something that can house 10 or so users. People can spin up whatever they want.
  Honestly what I wouldnt give for a reddit theme on mastodon that uses their hashtags as the communities themselves. That would be cool in my opinion.
  
  To be honest, at this point forking the jointhefediverse website would probably be easier
  
  This seems like the better idea and way easier lol.
  
  Sublinks is doing a rewrite

What is the issue with user privacy? These do not sound like valid concerns to me.

This is all quite old drama, and the issue itself is fixed now, but at one point someone kicked off about how if you uploaded a picture to Lemmy, there was no easy way to delete it (you could delete your post, but the image would still be there at whatever URL was created for it, and it wasn't even that easy for admins to find and remove it) - so I'm guessing that it stems from that.
- Its older than that, and still ongoing. The devs doubled down on how GDPR (and user data privacy rights in general) do not matter to them
  
  Source? I did a cursory search for "GDPR" on the GitHub issues and can't find anything like that.
  Anyway, this seems to be their more recent stance:
  For the future, any GDPR compliance advice needs to come from a lawyer, not from random non-lawyers interpreting what they think is correct.
  https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4540#issuecomment-2018920191
  
  I dont know what you mean. If you search for GDPR (including closed tickets) in both the Lemmy and lemmy-ui repos, you'll see lots of bugs that make running Lemmy illegal for instance admins.
  Here's one particularly egregious example
  https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/2384#issuecomment-1978679289
  
  Uhh... The other dev. Yeah, he's obviously wrong.
  
  He admitted it at the end of the ticket
  Unfortunately there was some miscommunication in this issue and we failed to get to the root cause. In fact the Lemmy backend has an option to delete all content when an account is deleted. This used to be the default behaviour but was changed in 0.19 so you need to set a parameter delete_content. We failed to add a checkbox for this parameter to lemmy-ui.
  However the checkbox is added now in #2385 and will be included in the next Lemmy release. Other frontends and clients may also need to adjust the delete_account api call.
  
  That's pretty much it
  
  Wait, what? Can you elaborate?
  
  See the other comment
it's federated. It's the only way it can work. Everything still on that ist must suffer from the same thing. Federation means handing stuff to someone else. Once that's done, it's out of your hands forever.
- Once that's done, it's out of your hands forever.
  Correct but fedi is supposed to be the public forum of the future.
  Social media worked the same... you handed your shit posts to faceberg or sundar the creep, do people think when they deleted their "creation" it was removed?
- That cant be the issue because the site is called joinfediverse and everything it lists is federated.
Yeah, seems like it's just how ActivityPub works / how federated networks are.
Recently came across this very interesting writeup: https://gitlab.com/spritely/ocappub/blob/master/README.org (via https://social.coop/@cwebber/113639985634239856)
- No that cant be why they do not list lemmy. The other services there federate in the same way.

The linked post given on the second point is a bit flimsy. It's basically saying that if you use evidence published by a person with shitty views, you must have them too. To me, that's absurd as claiming that referencing FBI statistics makes someone a federal agent.

The links from the github in case anyone wants to learn more (in order of the list):

https://web.archive.org/web/20210901023138/https://mstdn.social/@feditips/106835057054633379

https://raddle.me/f/lobby/96713/heads-up-the-tankie-behind-lemmy-ml-got-banned-from-r

https://raddle.me/f/lobby/155371/warning-lemmy-doesn-t-care-about-your-privacy-everything-is

First link is completely unviewable for me on mobile, the entire thread is a chain of posts that say “Please don't use Lemmy :( Human rights, oppression” with a show more button that doesn’t work, and the original thread is gone. Could you(/someone) paste what it says? I’d try on desktop but our internet has been out since the fires started in LA
- since the fires started in LA
  Sorry to hear
  
  Thanks, fortunately I’m not in any evacuation zones, it’s just really bad air quality here
- Entire thread, all from the same user:
  
  Thank you!

These concerns, and more, are why just today, during a conversation with some friends looking to get off traditional social media, I advised them to join pixelfed, peer tube, mastodon, and loops, but suggested they strictly avoid Lemmy.

The communities aren’t right for anyone who isn’t seeking something exactly like Lemmy or leftie-Reddit-lite. I don’t even really like it here all that much anymore. Not the content; the interactions… across all my accounts.. even joining “nicer” spaces is not a particularly nice or pleasant experience, plus the more interested is a woman, and Lemmy is a horrible sausagefest echo chamber not at all suited to a normal average woman person who isn’t techie. I’m techie, so I’m used to the vibe, but for your average cis-woman, Lemmy is a very very bad fit.

Bring on the downvotes if you like (the echo-chamber anti-voice sentiment is part of why people shouldn’t be recommended this platform, after all) but these are legit concerns for people who may want to join, and those of us already here can and do steer people elsewhere as a result.

Lemmy is a horrible sausagefest echo chamber not at all suited to a normal average woman person who isn’t techie.
Far be it from me to point out this is exactly how reddit started.
The foundational promise of lemmy and the fediverse writ large is freedom from proprietary software and closed-protocols; the kind of people who are going to be interested in seeking out those types of alternatives are going to gravitate toward techy men.
It takes time for new social media sites to fan outward from their initial adopters, that's just how it goes.
Fair points, to be honest. We can all do better.
Same honestly. I never discussed politics on Reddit, but it's all the content that's here. Partly why I don't recommend it to anyone i know who uses Reddit. Most content just isn't normie-friendly here.
- It’s so depressing and aggressive, honestly. I can’t do that to my friends who don’t do that already.
  
  Have you been on Reddit lately? It's insanely depressing and aggressive, too. Even more so in my opinion. I used to be reddit addicted but it's so bot infested, mean-spirited, and kind of vapid and shallow that I get bored after the first page or two. Lemmy still has a long way to go but I've been having more fun and interesting conversations on here.

Wait wait.....what's that last one?

This is why I'm looking forward to Sublinks launching.

Piefed is more promosing. Sublinks has been on hold for a while now

deleted by creator

No they're not, go back to school & relearn what FediVerse is