![]() | |
![]() | |
Developer(s) | LemmyNet [1] |
---|---|
Initial release | May 5, 2019 [2] |
Stable release | 0.19.3 / 22 January 2024 |
Repository | |
Written in | Rust, TypeScript |
Type | Social news |
License | GNU Affero General Public License, version 3.0 |
Website | join-lemmy![]() |
Lemmy is a free and open-source software for running self-hosted social news aggregation and discussion forums. [3] [4] [5] These hosts, known as "instances", communicate with each other using the ActivityPub protocol.
Lemmy was created by the user Dessalines on GitHub in February 2019 [6] and licensed under the Affero General Public License.
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 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." [7]
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 as of 27 July 2023 [update] . [8] The most popular instances were lemmy.world and lemmy.ml, each with 27,000 and 4,000 monthly active users respectively, as of 27 July 2023 [update] . [8]
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. [9] It has been described as a federated alternative to Reddit. [10]
Users on individual instances submit posts with links, text, or pictures to user-created forums for discussion called "communities". [3] Discussion is in the form of threaded comments. Posts and comments can be upvoted or downvoted [9] 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. [9] [11] Community names begin with c/
in the URL (e.g lemmy.ml/c/simpleliving
) [3] and are mentionable using the !community@instance
format. [12]
On each instance, a front page presents the user with popular posts from several communities. [13] 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. [9]
Lemmy instances are generally supported by donations. [14]
ActivityPub 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 [9] and Mastodon. [15]
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. [16] Reddit banned a user for promoting switching to Lemmy along with the '/r/LemmyMigration' community as a whole, leading to a Streisand effect after it garnered attention on sites like Hacker News. The ban was reversed a day later. [17]
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, [14] [18] with them later relaunching as Sync for Lemmy [19] and Boost for Lemmy. [14] Multiple other apps and browser clients have been developed since the increase in users after the Reddit API service changes.
The landscape for instant messaging involves cross-platform instant messaging clients that can handle one or multiple protocols. Clients that use the same protocol can typically federate and talk to one another. The following table compares general and technical information for cross-platform instant messaging clients in active development, each of which have their own article that provide further information.
In FOSS development communities, a forge is a web-based collaborative software platform for both developing and sharing computer applications.
Anki is a free and open-source flashcard program. It uses techniques from cognitive science such as active recall testing and spaced repetition to aid the user in memorization. The name comes from the Japanese word for "memorization".
Invidious is a free and open-source alternative frontend to YouTube. It is available as a Docker container, or from the GitHub master branch. It is intended to be used as a lightweight and "privacy-respecting" alternative to the official YouTube website. Many privacy preserving redirecting software as well as YouTube clients use Invidious instances.
OStatus is an open standard for federated microblogging, allowing users on one website to send and receive status updates with users on another website. The standard describes how a suite of open protocols, including Atom, Activity Streams, WebSub, Salmon, and WebFinger, can be used together, which enables different microblogging server implementations to route status updates between their users back-and-forth, in near real-time.
ownCloud is a free and open-source software project for content collaboration and sharing and syncing of files in distributed and federated enterprise scenarios. It allows companies and remote end-users to organize their documents on servers, computers, and mobile devices and work with them collaboratively while keeping a centrally organized and synchronized state.
Friendica is a free and open-source software distributed social network. It forms one part of the Fediverse, an interconnected and decentralized network of independently operated servers.
Distributed social network projects generally develop software, protocols, or both.
mpv is free and open-source media player software based on MPlayer, mplayer2 and FFmpeg. It runs on several operating systems, including Unix-like operating systems and Microsoft Windows, along with having an Android port called mpv-android. It is cross-platform, running on ARM, PowerPC, x86/IA-32, x86-64, and MIPS architecture.
pump.io is a general-purpose activity streams engine that can be used as a federated social networking protocol which "does most of what people really want from a social network". Started by Evan Prodromou, it is a follow-up to GNU social, and is designed to be more lightweight and usable for general data instead of just microblogging. The largest StatusNet instance at the time, Identi.ca, which was the largest StatusNet service and ran by Prodromou, switched to pump.io in June 2013.
Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system for automating software deployment, scaling, and management. Originally designed by Google, the project is now maintained by a worldwide community of contributors, and the trademark is held by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.
Matrix is an open standard and communication protocol for real-time communication. It aims to make real-time communication work seamlessly between different service providers, in the way that standard Simple Mail Transfer Protocol email currently does for store-and-forward email service, by allowing users with accounts at one communications service provider to communicate with users of a different service provider via online chat, voice over IP, and videotelephony. It therefore serves a similar purpose to protocols like XMPP, but is not based on any existing communication protocol.
PeerTube is a free and open-source, decentralized, ActivityPub federated video platform powered by WebTorrent, that uses peer-to-peer technology to reduce load on individual servers when viewing videos.
Mastodon is free and open-source software for running self-hosted social networking services. It has microblogging features similar to X, which are offered by a large number of independently run nodes, known as instances or servers, each with its own code of conduct, terms of service, privacy policy, privacy options, and content moderation policies.
The fediverse is a collection of social networking services that can communicate with each other using a common protocol. Users of different websites can send and receive status updates, multimedia files and other data across the network. The term fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".
ActivityPub is an open, decentralized social networking protocol based on Pump.io's ActivityPump protocol. It provides a client/server API for creating, updating, and deleting content, as well as a federated server-to-server API for delivering notifications and content.
Pixelfed is a free and open-source image sharing social network service. The platform distinguishes itself from other image sharing services through its decentralized architecture, meaning user data is not stored on a central server. It uses the ActivityPub protocol, allowing users to interact with other social networks within the protocol, such as Mastodon, PeerTube, and Friendica. Pixelfed and other platforms utilizing this protocol are considered to be part of the Fediverse. The network is made up of several independent sites that communicate with one another, which is roughly comparable to e-mail providers. The parties involved do not all have to be registered with the same provider, but can still communicate with each other. Thus, users are able to sign up on any server and follow others on the other instances.
Termux is a free and open-source terminal emulator for Android which allows for running a Linux environment on an Android device. Termux installs a minimal base system automatically; additional packages are available using its package manager, based on Debian's.
In April 2023, the discussion and news aggregation website Reddit announced its intentions to charge for its application programming interface (API), a feature which had been free since 2008, causing a dispute. The move forced multiple third-party applications to shut down and threatened accessibility applications and moderation tools.