Hi folks!

Over the past few months, we have started seeing a significant amount of new user sign-ups. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all of our new members, and to share some useful resources and info about lemm.ee.

First, some stats

Here is a bar chart of daily new users (this is only counting users which have been approved by our admins):

As you can see from the chart, for most of 2024, we were accepting roughly around 10-20 new users every day. Then, from the start of this year, the daily numbers have been constantly growing. Yesterday, we approved a massive 609 new users on lemm.ee.

The increase in sign-ups is significant enough that I have been taking several steps to improve our monitoring & anti-bot measures, but so far, it seems the vast majority of the new users are completely legitimate real humans! (Thank you all for not being bots 😅)

About lemm.ee

This Lemmy instance is turning 2 years old very soon. It was initially created around the time of the Reddit API changes, when existing Lemmy servers were getting overloaded with new users - lemm.ee was intended to help spread the load. We’re now the second largest Lemmy server when it comes to monthly active users.

Our core philosophy for this instance has always been to treat it as a generic gateway to the Lemmy network. I want to provide our users a stable and reliable home for their Lemmy account, so that they can have easy access to all of their communities, regardless of what instance the community is actually hosted on.

We run on some decently beefy hardware, and our setup is fairly customized in several ways in order to ensure a smooth experience for our users (most of the time, this has worked out quite well!). Our servers are currently hosted in Finland.

Our infrastructure has been funded by the community almost from the start through GitHub sponsorships and Ko-Fi donations. I am sure I speak on behalf all of our users when I say that I am extremely grateful to all supporters - you are really responsible for the continued existence of this instance!

Lemmy itself is open source software, and while it has improved massively during the time I have been using it, it definitely still has some rough edges. Please be patient when using Lemmy, and remember that it is being built collaboratively by humans (not corporations), without any intent of ever turning it into a business.

Useful resources

Don’t forget to participate!

Communities on Lemmy only work if people actively use them. Even upvoting/downvoting based on quality of content is a great start, but I would really like to encourage you all to comment and even write posts, because that’s really the best way to build communities.

If you have any questions or thoughts about lemm.ee or Lemmy in general, feel free to post a comment below this post, and myself or one of our veteran users will definitely respond.

I hope you enjoy your time on lemm.ee, and I wish you all a great week!

  • CringeWaffle@lemm.ee
    56·
    1 month ago

    Hello lemm.ee!

    I’m one of the 609 new users who joined yesterday 🎉

    At first, I didn’t know much about Lemmy, I just found lemm.ee through join-lemmy.org (filtered by “All topics - english - most active”) and joined because it was the most popular instance…

    Initially, I thought I needed to create an account on every instances I wanted to join to access more content, but after reading a lot of posts (in particular in this community!), I finally understood how federation works.

    Now that I know more about Lemmy and lemm.ee itself, I’m actually really happy with my (uneducated) choice!

    As for the “why now?”, I think like many Reddit users, I’m getting tired of the ongoing ensh*ttification, especially with the recent issues around upvotes… And yesterday was a rainy day, so I took the time to finally understand how Lemmy works, and here I am.

    Thanks everyone for the warm welcome!

    • abobla@lemm.ee
      10·
      1 month ago

      I just love when reddit makes crappy decisions, haha.

      Welcome to Lemmy, hope you enjoy!

    • Psythik@lemm.ee
      9·
      1 month ago

      Lemmy.world is bigger but they also have a bit of a reputation. Nothing wrong with that instance, but they’re often disliked by other instances for the same reasons why people from other websites don’t like redditors. Lemm.ee doesn’t have that same stigma from what I’ve seen.

      • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
        5·
        1 month ago

        I use to dislike lemmy.world, because I kept seeing divisive posts from them trying to stir up hate against other instances. I find that kind of unprovoked unnecessary shit-stirring to be ugly.

        But then I realised that these negative posts were always coming from the same couple of users, every time. So it wasn’t because lemmy.world had that attitude, but rather there were a couple of zealots who happen to be on that instance.

        And I think of that whenever someone says bad stuff about other instances; because it’s probably a similar situation - just a couple of people giving the instance a bad rep.

  • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works
    44·
    1 month ago

    Remarkable growth in the past week, and indeed past 3 months. Thank you for providing the stats.

    Lemm.ee and sh.itjust.works had been similar in size for most of 2024 (2500-3500 MAUs), but you’re now nearly twice our size!

    It’s really nice to see this kind of growth because it’s decreasing the overall share of the Lemmy userbase on lemmy.world and therefore increasing the stability of the network. There had been worries that lemmy.world would steadily increase its share of the userbase and become a single point of failure, but that seems increasingly unlikely.

    Lemm.ee has always been a well-run server with great performance and an excellent admin and it’s great to see that new users are choosing an option that will give them the best possible version of what Lemmy can offer.

    • AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee
      9·
      1 month ago

      One of the reasons I use this snippet below to promote Lemmy is that it defaults to lemm.ee and users don’t run into descision fatigue when picking an instance

      Try out the European-Hosted Reddit alternative, Lemmy It also has a Mobile-App

      I use it alongside Reddit, and I’m enjoying it more and more, slowly switching over

      It would be nice if it could also default to eg. sh.itjust.works and other generalist instances

  • lakemalcom10@lemm.ee
    36·
    1 month ago

    I’m a sponsor and I’m not saying this to get thanked or something, I just want to say that I kick in $2 a month. It’s not a ton but if I can help keep this place running then I’m happy to toss a coin to my admin 🙂

    • sunaurus@lemm.eeOP
      30·
      1 month ago

      Thank you very much for the support!

      Our infrastructure costs are currently quite stable at around 200€ per month, and considering that the instance is right now quite decently supporting nearly 6000 monthly active users, you could say that you are indeed relatively contributing a ton - you are effectively covering server costs for 60 people!

      The fact that it’s a monthly amount is particularly great, because with recurring income, we will get advanced warning if there is danger of funds starting to run low.

    • pixelpure@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      1 month ago

      I’m using the Voyager app. Do I donate through the website? I want to cover some costs too.

  • barneypiccolo@lemm.eeEnglish
    21·
    1 month ago

    You can thank Reddit for your new success, and I hope it continues. I was a 12 year member, with nearly a million Karma, and i was perma-banned for an opinion that I had stated numerous times with no problem. After the election, the same opinion got me permanently banned.

    That was their excuse anyway. In reality, Im sure it was 12 years of resistance posts against the rising treason, corruption, and oppression of the Republican/MAGA/Nazi party. Now they are deleting any mention of Luigi, even in legit Mario Bros/Videogame discussions, and banning people just for upvoting. They are kicking out old, loyal, active members, just for using Reddit for what it was supposed to be used for. Kind of like what the FBI is doing to their agents who investigated HitlerPig’s corruption and treason. Its the MAGA way, and Reddit is on board.

    I wondered why Reddit would have so obviously made the choice to voluntarily join the Conservative Propaganda Machine, then I saw that Ohanion wants to buy TikTok. So does Zuckerfuck, and probably a lot more (Bezos? Musk?). They all know that it will be HitlerPig who will choose, and he will choose the guy who smooched his ass the most, and paid the biggest bribe. So turning Reddit into a MAGA propaganda mouthpiece was Ohanion’s show of good faith.

    I hope Reddit goes the way of Digg, and Lemmy takes over. The decentralization seems like a massive improvement over Reddit.

    • Jsilverhand69@lemm.eeEnglish
      4·
      1 month ago

      My answer recently with the announcements regarding penalizing users who upvote controversial posts has just been to save interesting stuff, comment rarely and post never. Hopefully lemmy can be a new home

  • Da Cap’n@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    20·
    1 month ago

    Welcome! I’m pretty new as well, and came from Reddit when Spez first started to censor for Trump. I had a 13 year account. I deleted that shit, and do not regret it.

    • nibbler@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      12·
      1 month ago

      I had 5 different reddit accounts, deleted them all a week ago. Of course I forgot to have a look at the saved comments, but well… old news are old anyway. I’m just blown away by lemmy, so much better ux, sadly way less content. But those numbers indicate that this is about to change, too :-)

      • Da Cap’n@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        6·
        1 month ago

        Yes, this platform is way better in every way. Do what I do and add as much good content as you can. It helps! Welcome :)

        • chaosharmonic@va11halla.bar
          4·
          1 month ago

          I exported before the API cutoff, wrote a crawler in a drunken all-nighter to delete my posts and overwrite my comments, and have only lurked a small handful of specific subs since

          Only recently got to using Lemmy at any scale though. It still isn’t quite the fix old reddit used to be, but seeing threads like this gives me a bit of hope that maybe the Internet is healing a bit

          At some point I should finally get to deleting the various accounts…

  • PeteWheeler@lemmy.world
    18·
    1 month ago

    Hi, just joined today. Already love it! I somehow get more interaction on here than I do on reddit.

    Definitely looking forward to small communities again.

  • despicable@lemmy.todayEnglish
    18·
    1 month ago

    When people start getting banned for anti-billionaire statements you’re bound to have an exodus of people who were there for this message being spread in the first place. I just hope this place does a better job dealing with bots.

  • TheLoneMinon@lemm.ee
    18·
    1 month ago

    Been here since the reddit API changes two years ago, and until this post didn’t realize I had joined a brand new instance. Lemm.ee is the only instance Ive used and I love it.

    I’ve never seen drama about or by this instance, it’s just a place to get your Lemmy, no judgement or gatekeeping like on some others. Welcome all!

  • Foni@lemm.ee
    16·
    1 month ago

    I carry here as a year and a half (before I was in another instance that closed) and I can say that the increase in traffic, participation, comments, vows etc. For a couple of months it is remarkable.

    I don’t know if it’s for Trump pushing Europeans and Candadia outside their products, for Reddit turning its platform into shit full of bots and unpopular standards or a combination of both, but I think that the network and community is doing really good (we even have a community of conservatives, half a year ago something like that would be unthinkable)

      • Foni@lemm.eeEnglish
        5·
        1 month ago

        I guess everyone has their own turning point, but Reddit seems to have a new controversy every two weeks, so I suppose things will just keep escalating here.

        Personally, I jumped ship during the API controversy, not because it directly affected me, but because ever since I discovered federated networks with Mastodon, I’ve thought it’s the perfect idea (in fact, I had an account on the server that disappeared even before that). I have accounts on all the federated networks, even though I don’t use them much, and I’d love to see them replace the traditional ones.

        In any case, welcome

  • pixelpure@lemm.eeEnglish
    15·
    1 month ago

    I’m excited to be part of this growing community! The increased censorship of Reddit and breaking away from U.S. services were the biggest reasons for me trying Lemmy out.

  • Swarfega@lemm.eeEnglish
    14·
    1 month ago

    I gotta say. Lemmy is really coming along. I’ve been here since the whole 3rd party API stuff and tired of seeing the same crappy content here. I know there’s the whole, “be what you want to see” theory but the truth is I have never really posted new content on Reddit either. I’ve always been a lurker and commenter.

    Anyway I just wanted to say that content seems to be a lot better recently.