Skip Navigation
Remote View
announcements Announcements @lemmy.ml
Dessalines @lemmy.ml

We're the creators of Lemmy, Ask Us Anything. Starts Monday, 7 Aug, 1500 CEST

This is an opportunity for any users, server admins, or interested third parties to ask anything they'd like to @nutomic@lemmy.ml and I about Lemmy. This includes its development and future, as well as wider issues relevant to the social media landscape today.

Note: This will be the thread tmrw, so you can use this thread to ask and vote on questions beforehand.

Original Announcement thread

363 comments

  • First, just want to say thanks for building and maintaining Lemmy. It's an incredible project, and it provides an incredibly valuable public forum that's completely open. This is the way internet was always meant to work before it got hijacked by corporations.

    The questions I'd like to ask would be whether the platform is developing in the way you originally envisioned, what surprised you in terms of how the platform ended up being used in the wild, and what were the biggest technical and non technical problems that came from the rapid growth after the Reddit migration. And finally, how would you like the platform to evolve going forward, and what your long term vision is.

    • I mostly imagined the slow but steady growth we'd been having, and def didn't anticipate that reddit would mess up so badly that a massive chunk of users would migrate from a multi-million dollar enterprise software, to a hobby project developed by a couple of marxist-leninists 🤣 . But so it goes, with all these late-capitalist social media companies alienating their users, monetizing them in any way possible in search of declining surplus.

      The biggest non-tech problem, is just the overwhelming amount of notifications. Companies have multiple layers between devs and users, to separate, order, and create a more controlled explosion. That doesn't exist here, so we get hundreds of notifications every day, with everyone treating us as their personal issue tracker.... and I basically would get nothing done if all I did was respond to them. Luckily things are calming down a bit now.

      The biggest tech-problem was the performance and security issues of so many users joining the network all at once, and luckily we had so many wonderful community contributions to help stabilize that.

      And finally, how would you like the platform to evolve going forward, and what your long term vision is.

      We should be ambitious, and wantthe fediverse as a whole, on the long term, to replace big-tech. Every user we draw away from them, is one less person exploited for their data and treated as a commodity.

      Technically, I'd just like us to continue making the software better, maintaining the code, and adding features.

      • The point regarding notifications is really important. Managing a popular open source project can be really overwhelming in that regard, and it's easy for individual users to forget that it's only a couple of people dealing with all their issues on the other end.

        People stepping up and contributing is a great development. Community involvement is key for the success of open source platforms in my opinion.

        And love the long term vision, I completely agree that the fediverse replacing corporate platforms would be the ideal scenario in the future. From what I can see, fediverse has already reached the point of sustainability. It's still niche compared to mainstream platforms, but I think it's clear that it can exist in its current form indefinitely. And I think this provides an important advantage over corporate platforms. Commercial companies have to continuously demonstrate profit and growth to their shareholder or die. This means having to constantly chase new ways to attract new users and monetize the platform leading to the sort of behaviors we see happening with Reddit. On the other hand, open platforms can grow slowly and sustainably. This allows the fediverse to evolve on a completely different time scale. I'm optimistic that the fediverse will likely outlive every single corporate platform that's around today.

        Thanks again for all the hard work you're doing, it's very much appreciated!

      • The biggest non-tech problem, is just the overwhelming amount of notifications.

        Is there anything users could do to help mitigate this? I think the recommendation for reporting bugs is to use the GitHub page. But for other issues?

        Maybe a numbering system would help: so if a user tagged a dev, they start with a 1 for urgent, 2 for neutral(?), or 3 for 'ignore if you're busy'. There will be a problem of some users overemohasising their issue but it still might save time/attention overall as most users will likely respect such a system.

        Or maybe a novel use of a dev community, which would allow the user base to help determine which issues are noteworthy?

    • To be honest I never had any long-term vision, and still dont have. I just thought that decentralized software in general and Activitypub in particular is very exciting and lets us take power away from corporations like Reddit, Google, Facebook etc.

      Biggest technical problem was implementing Activitypub, when I started there was no implementation in Rust yet, and it was very hard to find detailed information how everything is supposed to work. Over the years I had to rewrite the federation code at least 4-5 times, each time making it a bit cleaner.

      Biggest nontechnical challenge is dealing with all the people who are suddenly joining and want to contribute, so that it doesnt turn into total chaos. Luckily there are many helpful community members who helped to organize things. Another challenge is with funding, now we dont have as much time to work on the paid NLnet milestones. And its not clear if NLnet will grant us another funding round once this is over. Hopefully the user donations will grow over time so that they can cover our full salaries.

      • Thanks again for all the work you're doing on the project, and hopefully the funding situation will continue being sustainable after the NLnet grants run out. It would be great if community manages to step up and fully cover the salaries through donations. It's been an exciting ride using Lemmy and seeing the community grow. I can't wait to see what the next few years will bring!

  • What's your opinion on app developers making Lemmy clients with tracker-infused ads on their free version? Is it something you ever anticipated when you were first developing Lemmy?

    EDIT: Also a similar one, what about instances potentially deciding to display ads out of nowhere? Could defederation be a tool here to discourage that?

    • I'm personally a hard copyleft developer, so I'd prefer that people making apps and tools for the lemmy eco-system, open source them, to benefit the community as a whole. Nearly all lemmy projects have adopted that standard, and are using the GPL and other hard copy-left licenses, and sharing their code freely with the community.

      One example: various devs of lemmy apps have asked me how we build comment trees. Because lemmy's source code is open, I was able to share the exact code from lemmy-ui (typescript) and jerboa (kotlin). This is not something closed source developers are able / willing to share.

      So I continue to recommend that developers heed calls to open source their applications. I developed my ThumbKey android keyboard, specifically because my requests to the MessageEase developers to open-source their codebase, after development had stopped, went unheeded for years.

      Side note, but I've seen a lot of the discourse around Sync confuse FOSS, with making money. Of course developers deserve to get paid for their labor time! The thing is, FOSS makes no demands on how you monetize your software: "free as in freedom, not free as in beer", is the saying. So its entirely possible to open source your app, and still charge for it if you like. And If someone wants your app for free (say via an unlocked APK), they'll get it, whether its closed source, or not.

      And yes, if an instance decided to insert ads, or becomes full of blog/cryptospam, I'd def recommend other instances defederate from them. I'd rather not lemmy become the ad-machine that other social media has become.

    • I definitely didnt expect it, nor did I expect that there would suddenly be more than a dozen different apps. But its not a problem, the more choices users have the better. Those who like such clients can use them, thout it affecting anyone else. Plus monetization of apps could potentially help to fund development of Lemmy itself.

      For instances with ads its pretty much the same, more choice for users. But I really doubt that model can have any success considering how many free instances are around which are run by volunteers. Defederation should be unnecessary assuming that ads are only shown to local users.

  • Hi! This isn't really a question, but I was a former admin on Lemmy.ml and I just want to say that I really appreciated the opportunity to be on your team and it was a really valuable experience for me! I'm no longer an admin due to inactivity and personal life events causing me to no longer have the time to serve such a role, but I enjoyed the time I was and I really hope I was able to make a positive contribution to the instance!

    Thank you for your continued work developing this project and running your instance comrades! This is still by far my favourite fediverse platform, actually, favourite social media in general. I intend to continue using both Lemmy.ml and Lemmygrad and I hope I can continue to contribute by using Lemmy when I have the chance!

    • Thanks for your help :)

    • I appreciate you a ton comrade, you've been such a great help in getting this instance off the ground. Personal stuff should always be more important, so I hope all goes well. If you ever decide you want to admin again, lmk!

      • Thank you so much comrade! I loved working with you and the other admins and am very grateful for the experience!

    1. Can we get the show context bug fixed? Pretty please? :3 Possibly the most frustrating bug we've ever had.
    2. Also, on crossposted threads can we get the first thread marked as "original post" so it's clear what the originating community is for people that might want to subscribe to it for similar content. The indication of the originating community is a considerable source of subscriptions over on reddit and one of the primary methods that crossposting functions as a growth tool for new communities.
    3. When you started this project did you think it would get where it is now? Was it a sort of daydream thing or a serious belief that it would get this far?
      1. Its fixed in a back-end PR, we'll try to get a bugfix release sometime soon.
      2. Hrm... haven't thought about that. Could you open up an issue in lemmy-ui . I think the cross_posts field is sorted by published, but I'm not totally positive. In that case it'd just be marking it in the UI in some way.
      3. I def didn't anticipate it would get this far this fast... we've become the 2nd most popular fediverse software recently. I'm super-excited about the impact we can have on global media, and getting ppl to break their dependency/addiction to US-tech dominated spaces.

      • Hrm... haven't thought about that. Could you open up an issue in lemmy-ui . I think the cross_posts field is sorted by published, but I'm not totally positive. In that case it'd just be marking it in the UI in some way.

        I can, will do it this evening. I don't think it does sort like that I'm pretty sure I noticed it just being in any old order, maybe alphabetical? Either way a clearly indicated Original post: separate to the Cross posted to: would strongly incentivise community owners to crosspost their content for the community promotion it provides, and reward them with subscribers for doing it. It generates a little bit of "hey stop advertising in our subreddit" from some modteams but it's worth far more than it takes away, and this is an extremely specific little detail of the system that I think only people that have tried to start many different new subreddits will understand.

        I def didn't anticipate it would get this far this fast... we've become the 2nd most popular fediverse software recently. I'm super-excited about the impact we can have on global media, and getting ppl to break their dependency/addiction to US-tech dominated spaces.

        Back in the Digg days Reddit just quietly sat in Digg's shadow as a sort of "dual power" if you will. Its community did its own thing, creating a culturally-unique space with its own community that liked it for its own sake. They just had to exist and Digg would eventually shit the bed. I think one of the major things that community owners here ought to be doing, which sadly the largest - lemmyworld - is not, is to create a space that is not just "we're reddit but without Spez". Better reasons for being here other than just spite are essential for longevity. Hexbear does a good job of this, Lemmy seems to be building that up too, I've recently become fond of the direction lemm.ee appears to be headed but we'll see.

        Ironically lemmyworld won't see this criticism because of their defederation, so their users are missing out on several ama responses.

      • If stuff as well as yours had existed in 2004 when IRC "died" and facebook etc. grew we might still have functioning decentralized boards as default right now.

    • Show context is working on hexbear again.

  • I asked this in the original thread but I’ll repeat it here:

    1. Are there any limitations with the ActivityPub protocol you find limiting? Do you have recommendations for future versions of the protocol?
    2. Do you have any thoughts on the AT Protocol (a potential competitor to AP)?

    • Limitations no, if anything the protocol is too extensive and lets you do too many things (or do the same thing in different ways). But thats somewhat expected for a protocol which can handle all types of social media platforms. I think the protocol is fine as is, but it needs minor changes here and there to keep up with how it is being used in the real world. The FEP process is doing a good job of that.

      From what I know the AT protocol used by Bluesky is entirely centralized, so it doesnt look like a competitor yet. They claim that it will be decentralized in the future, but I will believe it when I see it. For now the decentralization seems more like a marketing gimmick.

      • I’ve been following BlueSky closely for a while and I’ll just add a few points here:

        1. There is currently a federation sandbox for developers, it’s definitely on the way but it is a significantly different model than AP. Severs are really “dumb” and it has an emphasis on using a handful of services to crawl the network and generate a pipeline of all posts.
        2. Moderation and custom algorithms are also a part of the decentralized model. Custom algorithms are out now, and custom moderation services are also under development.

        Having played with both AP and ATP a fair amount they definitely both have strengths and weaknesses, very different approaches to decentralized social networking.

  • Thank you a lot for building such an awesome platform! Here are my questions:

    How did you get into communism? Were there any events that had an influence on you becoming communists and what personally motivates you to keep working on lemmy even though you could earn much more as developers working on proprietary software?

  • Hope multiples are ok ...

    1. As platform developers, do you have any thoughts about ActivityPub? Positive/negative critiques, needed developments (in your opinions), usage gripes or tips for other platform devs, future predictions?
    2. As devs of (now) the second largest platform next to mastodon (by some metrics), which are probably as distinct platforms can be in terms of format, do you have any views on interoperability between platfroms over ActivityPub, where a common critique (AFAIK), from *diaspora devs for example, is that sharing posts/information of different formats just doesn't work well over AtivityPub and so is one of its major flaws?
    3. Arguably the fediverse has so far sought to replicate the corporate big-social platforms ... should new design evolution occur now and if so how?
    4. Much has been made by some of how the lack of user-friendliness of the fediverse really isn't anything to celebrate and should be taken more seriously by users and devs alike (see, eg, Erin Kissane who focuses on mastodon). However much this applies to lemmy (where issues of user mobility probably do apply), do you think the fediverse needs a better story around catering to user needs?
    5. Do you have any thoughts on the server-based architecture of the fediverse (where all user accounts are bound to a particular user) and whether alternative architectures have a future or could be better (p2p, more single-user based for instance)?
    6. Should lemmy and the fediverse seek to grow with any and all users or seek to stay relatively small and limited to ensure a healthy cutlure?
    7. Journalism and journalists ... should they be on the fediverse (like the BBC recently with their own mastodon instance) ... and if so, how?
    8. What are the biggest or proudest moments you've had with Lemmy so far, and the worst or most embarrassing?
    9. How does it feel to have so many users using and developing against your software?!

    • Haha youre a very curious one :D

      1. See https://lemmy.ml/comment/2348893
      2. It sure isnt perfect, partly because Mastodon makes no efforts to be compatible and expects everyone else to cater to their way of doing things. Regardless, the fact that you can interact between different platforms is a huge improvement over current social media platforms. And Im certain that interoperability will only get better over time.
      3. Its already happening, look at Kbin combining the concepts of Reddit and Twitter into one. Or mitra which adds cryptocurrency integrations. There are probably others which Im unaware of.
      4. Sure usability needs to improved, this will happen naturally over time as more users join and suggest improvements.
      5. Its really genius because it combines the best aspect of centralized (simple login with username/password and an admin who manages technical stuff) with those of p2p (no central point of failure). Real p2p is great in theory, but it requires way too much technical knowledge for the average user, so its unlikely to ever gain mass appeal.
      6. Personally I think the Fediverse is really the future of social media, so it will grow whether we want it or not. And its much healthier than the corporate platforms with their tracking, advertising and manipulating algorithms, so the more people leave them behind, the better. I dont see a way to influence this growth, we just need to adapt and deal with it.
      7. Basically my previous reply, I dont know enough about journalism to give a more specific answer.
      8. The biggest and proudest was definitely when tens of thousands of Reddit users suddenly came here, and most of them actually liked it. Cant say there was anything bad or embarrassing, the experience for me is really positive.
      9. It feels great, I never expected this when I started contributing to Lemmy.
        1. ... I never expected this when I started contributing to Lemmy.

        Honestly heart warming to hear!

  • Why is lemmy licensed under the AGPL3? What prompted you to take that decision?

    • Most other Fediverse platforms use the same license. Its the only logical choice if you want to prevent corporations from taking your code and making a profit with it. AGPL is essentially the same as GPL, with the addition that code changes also need to be published if you provide the software on a server and not on a users own device.

      • I love that you guys use AGPL, the best license for networked software. This is exactly how Truth Social (the Donald Trump social site) was forced to release their source code, since it was just Mastodon, which is AGPL. The links to their sources are available here (warning, fash website link), but I do not know if they are actually compliant and up-to-date with whatever code changes they've made to it.

        Of course, as we can see, AGPL is not about disallowing monetization, even by corporate actors. It's about giving back. A thing that reactionaries and big companies are exceptionally bad at doing. The AGPL is anathema to the all-consuming, anti-social goals of silicon valley tech companies. Consider Google's Anti-AGPL policy: https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl-policy. Compare that to how they treat Android, which is Linux (GPLv2) with the entire userland stripped out and replaced with non-copyleft code so as to ensure their continued control over the devices once they sell them to you.

        OK, I'm hopping off the soapbox, now 😆

    • Its a good hard copyleft license, and since its used in a network setting, the AGPLv3 over the GPLv3.

  • I don't really have any questions at the moment, just passing by to thank you for making this great product/service.

    After the Reddit fiasco I felt like my internet life would be empty, then I saw a thread on /r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH about they joining here and making an instance, so that's why I'm here now (not with them at the moment).

    Then I started to be more active here than on Reddit until today which my Reddit account is basically forgotten.

    I have read many of your answers and I can't wait until that "best" sorting comes out!

    I wasn't very active in the biggest communities of Reddit because my likings which are a bit smaller (I don't think niche) than the big masses.

    Thanks again for your hard work!

  • What are the challenges posed by moderation (and admin in general) that you didn't think of when launching the first instance?

    (and: How can things get improved, how can people help?)

    • While we had the ability to remove posts / comments early on, we didn't have a system to report content. That was added much later, and has proved to be absolutely vital.

  • Will lemmy users be able to interact with Mastodon users in future and is there a roadmap for lemmy?

    • They already can, outside of lemmy users not being able to follow mastodon users, since we're a link-aggregator, not a micro-blogging platform.

  • will a search bar exist for searching through comments on a post

  • Is there anything happening in the Fediverse that makes you concerned for its future?

    The whole philosophy of it is to give power back to the users and not be kept in a box, but do you think the current mindset of most people using the typical social media platforms will bring bad habits here and squander what the Fediverse stands for? This is more of a concern of mine, but I'm new here

    • There are certainly people who are only using lemmy, not because its FOSS, but because reddit has closed off API access (not realizing those are interconnected issues). To them it wouldn't matter if lemmy's source code is open or not.

      Its not too big a concern for me, the fediverse isn't going anywhere, and it'll continue to grow, and be resilient to challenges.

    • Is there a plan to improve search and federating communities between instances? My biggest hurdle joining and using Lemmy was without a doubt the search functionality and subscribing to a community on my own instance, it was severely off-putting. Let me walk you through it: you find a community you like, say !vinyl@sopuli.xyz. You paste it into the search of your instance, as instructed. It immediately tells you "No results". If you don't click off, sometimes it changes it's mind within a few seconds. Sometimes it never loads. You try manually creating the URL by going to example.com/c/vinyl@sopuli.xyz but it gives you an error. If you're lucky it works the next day, if you're not then I don't actually know the next step. Not to mention the lack of feedback on subscribing to communities. I have "subscribed" to communities before then realised a week later that despite appearing in my list of subs it didn't actually work and I have to redo, the only feedback you get is "pending". This is the #1 issue that stops me from recommending Lemmy, or at least smaller instances that haven't federated with much yet. Is the search a priority?
    • I know you've been asked about splitting NSFW already, but is there any chance of a specific NSFL tag or a generic spoiler/blur tag? Gore and nudity are such different topics they really don't deserve to be under the same banner.
    • Are proper inline previews something on the roadmap? What I mean is items like YouTube videos, Streamable links, and just about anything that isn't a Lemmy image is not expandable and requires leaving the website. It's one of my most missed features from old Reddit with RES.

    I read as much of the thread as possible, so hopefully these are new questions. Hope I didn't come across too negative here as I've been enjoying my time overall and I know y'all have been swamped these months and never expected this popularity.

  • Thoughts on the use of geographic domains for vanity purposes? I know that's come up recently as a topic of concern (including with lemmy, specifically), and personally, it seems like it's both extremely widespread and also maybe shouldn't have become super widespread given the actual implications.

    • I've talked about this elsewhere, but the whole DNS system seems US-controlled and broken to me, and is essentially a privatization of the commons. A lot of historically free ones now seem to be getting yanked. So far I think lemmy.ml has been safe because its a paid one, but its a concern. Either way, if any of these have to move domain names, it'll be an annoying hassle, but it won't mean the death of lemmy or anything.

  • I'm gonna ask some tough questions, but I am hopeful to get a response. Thank you for all that you do.

    1. Do you envision NSFW content having a place in the federation safely? And if so, would lemmy.ml ever refederate with NSFW instances? What would it take for that to happen?
    2. How do you feel about lemmy.world being the proto "default" lemmy instance right now, especially on Sync app. Some have expressed concern about it causing centralization on the platform, others are hoping that people will spread out.
    3. Do you anticipate making a distinction between NSFW and pornographic content at all? And taking that a step further potentially, is implementing activitypubs content warnings on the road map?

    • Thanks!

      1. There isn't a good way to do it: your All tab will be full of potentially illegal content if you federate with NSFW instances. We want to focus on dev, and not on legal issues, so for that reason we won't federate with NSFW ones.
      2. I'm guilty of this also w/ jerboa, showing lemmy.ml content before you log in. We obvi don't want single points of failure, and want lemmy to be as distributed / spread out as possible. If some of the bigger instances go down, I'm sure people will write premature articles about "the death of lemmy". We're still in the early stages, and I think we'll have to see how things evolve, and what promotes decentralization the best. We've tried to rotate the signup sites at the top of join-lemmy.org , but there are likely other things we could do.
      3. Creating multiple types of NSFW would be possible, its just not something we've implemented yet, and there are also issues with how that would be handled with activitypub, which only has one type of sensitive field.
363 comments