lemm.ee is shutting down at the end of this month
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It really wasn't, sadly.
The site founder put in an incredible amount of work setting the place up (something like 10 support servers at US$200/mo), but also tried to be lead admin for a year+, and that's typically an extremely tough double-job to do well on a big, popular site / place. In his various posts he sometimes talked about all the vile content and destructive users the sub-admins had to deal with on an ongoing basis, and it certainly sounds like that burned out the whole volunteer staff in the end.
From my own POV, and something I noticed from the beginning here, is that in the wake of Reddit (and other places) treating its users as assets, it was important to grow a userbase across the Lemmysphere and Fediverse with a strong community spirit. To me that means more participation, more content-creation, and more willingness to be civil and cooperate. Not that these things didn't happen to a significant extent, but it seems like a lot of .ee users and visitors, while willing to hang out at the place, were moreso just willing to soak up the content without putting in much effort to help make the place work. Or even just being toxic and destructive, as above.
A lot more could be said and debated about the whole situation, but sites like Reddit, as draconian as they might be at times, and whatever their other flaws, have proven that they've been able to establish a system that works stably over the long haul.
Me, I love the idea of the FV, and for that very reason have put in almost two years of hard work in to my own project on .ee, but I'm very unsure about the long-term healthy function of the Lemmysphere in particular. More specifically, trying to migrate my project to another instance before .ee shuts down would be a herculean task AFAIK, especially with my having significant new health issues recently.
So, yeah.
I think somebody shoukd do an academic study on Lemmy, how it differs from Reddit, its weaknesses, and why it might be failing. So that there is a definitive cause to its weakness that can be pointed to for anyone willing to give it another shot.
Secondly, I think it might be a good idea for the admins of the servers to have a video call. This will make the (at least admin) community feel much more personal in a way that comment threads cannot and will lead to a stronger sense of community. Actually I'm impressed that Lemmy as a project has made it this far without the developers having ever been able to plan the project together in a group.
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My 2nd cake day was going to be a few days after shutdown
Lemm.ee was a fantastic instance, it will be greatly missed. Huge thanks to the admins and owner that made it happen for so long.
A shame the communities will be lost in the transition, the movies/television communities are genuinely cursed. This is the 4th or 5th time people moved that community.
I guess now would be a good time to give Piefed another shot. I love Lemmy and all, but new features have stalled for too long and I'm ready for some change.
So long, lemm.ee
Yeah hope ppl remake them quickly
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If you see a community for the first time, and then see harassment and insults everywhere, you're probably not going to block every offender, you're just going to not visit that community again.
Libertarians envision a system where everyone takes care of their own trash without regulation or municipal waste services.
Normies come in and see neighborhoods with rubbish everywhere, overrun by bears and racoons.
Not just a metaphor, it really happened.
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My 2nd cake day was going to be a few days after shutdown
Lemm.ee was a fantastic instance, it will be greatly missed. Huge thanks to the admins and owner that made it happen for so long.
A shame the communities will be lost in the transition, the movies/television communities are genuinely cursed. This is the 4th or 5th time people moved that community.
I guess now would be a good time to give Piefed another shot. I love Lemmy and all, but new features have stalled for too long and I'm ready for some change.
So long, lemm.ee
A shame the communities will be lost in the transition, the movies/television communities are genuinely cursed. This is the 4th or 5th time people moved that community.
It's okay, it's routine now
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A shame the communities will be lost in the transition, the movies/television communities are genuinely cursed. This is the 4th or 5th time people moved that community.
It's okay, it's routine now
the great movies/television migration starts again
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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/65824884
Hey everyone
We’re really sorry to say this, but lemm.ee will be shutting down on June 30, 2025.
What you need to know
As of now:
- New user registrations are disabled
- Creating new communities is disabled
What you should do:
- You can export your settings at https://lemm.ee/settings to take them with you to another instance.
- If you're moving to another instance, consider adding a note to your lemm.ee profile with your new username. Your old profile will still be visible from other instances even after we go offline.
- Alternatively, if you want to delete your lemm.ee profile, now is the best time to do it, so the deletion can federate out before we go offline.
- If you're one of the folks supporting us with a recurring donation, please remember to cancel it (Ko-Fi donations should have been cancelled automatically already). Our leftover funds are already enough to cover our bills for next month, so we can keep things running without any more support.
Because of how Lemmy is built, everything posted on lemm.ee will still be accessible from other instances, even after we go offline.
Why this is happening
The key reason is that we just don’t have enough people on the admin team to keep the place running. Most of the admin team has stepped down, mostly due to burnout, and finding replacements hasn’t worked out.
The sad reality is that while there are a lot of great people on Lemmy, there are also some who use the platform to attack others, stir up conflict, or actively try to undermine the project. Admins are volunteers who deal with the latter group on a constant basis, this takes a mental toll. Please understand why our admins chose to step down, and be kind to the admins on whatever instance you decide to join.
We know this sucks. We're genuinely sorry it’s ending like this. Thank you to everyone who spent time here and helped make it better.
– lemm.ee team
Idk how viable it is, but I wish they had asked if someone wanted to take over and let them
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That's four months ago. Unfortunate that they didn't call for more urgent help after that. But I suppose it's too late now.
I always just assume there are hella ppl clamoring to do it and I wouldnt be picked
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im more than a decade on the web. i think i can take it. if you cant, then dont do it?
the last decades been heavily moderated lol
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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/65824884
Hey everyone
We’re really sorry to say this, but lemm.ee will be shutting down on June 30, 2025.
What you need to know
As of now:
- New user registrations are disabled
- Creating new communities is disabled
What you should do:
- You can export your settings at https://lemm.ee/settings to take them with you to another instance.
- If you're moving to another instance, consider adding a note to your lemm.ee profile with your new username. Your old profile will still be visible from other instances even after we go offline.
- Alternatively, if you want to delete your lemm.ee profile, now is the best time to do it, so the deletion can federate out before we go offline.
- If you're one of the folks supporting us with a recurring donation, please remember to cancel it (Ko-Fi donations should have been cancelled automatically already). Our leftover funds are already enough to cover our bills for next month, so we can keep things running without any more support.
Because of how Lemmy is built, everything posted on lemm.ee will still be accessible from other instances, even after we go offline.
Why this is happening
The key reason is that we just don’t have enough people on the admin team to keep the place running. Most of the admin team has stepped down, mostly due to burnout, and finding replacements hasn’t worked out.
The sad reality is that while there are a lot of great people on Lemmy, there are also some who use the platform to attack others, stir up conflict, or actively try to undermine the project. Admins are volunteers who deal with the latter group on a constant basis, this takes a mental toll. Please understand why our admins chose to step down, and be kind to the admins on whatever instance you decide to join.
We know this sucks. We're genuinely sorry it’s ending like this. Thank you to everyone who spent time here and helped make it better.
– lemm.ee team
RIP. Thanks for all you've done.
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They still shut down the instance.
Only the users on lemm.ee are affected by it, in this scenario. It is bad, but the current scenario is much worse.
Drama still happens involving lemm.ee users.
User-only instances are less dependent on each other, defederation is not as big of an issue, so a lot of the drama would go away.
Admins still get burnt out.
Less communities on their instances means less traffic, less activities, less moderation reports (they would have to deal only with users on their own instances) and if even then they are overloaded with work, they could decide to scale down the operation before reaching burning-out point: close the instance for new registrations, make user registration conditional on payment/donation, etc.
Less communities on their instances means less traffic, less activities, less moderation reports (they would have to deal only with users on their own instances)
Those users are the same as in our universe for lemm.ee as a user instance. They stir the same dramas, create the same number of alts, violate rules in a similar way.
if even then they are overloaded with work, they could decide to scale down the operation before reaching burning-out point: close the instance for new registrations, make user registration conditional on payment/donation, etc.
That was available to the lemm.ee admins in our scenario as well. They preferred to shut the instance down rather than reduce.
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Less communities on their instances means less traffic, less activities, less moderation reports (they would have to deal only with users on their own instances)
Those users are the same as in our universe for lemm.ee as a user instance. They stir the same dramas, create the same number of alts, violate rules in a similar way.
if even then they are overloaded with work, they could decide to scale down the operation before reaching burning-out point: close the instance for new registrations, make user registration conditional on payment/donation, etc.
That was available to the lemm.ee admins in our scenario as well. They preferred to shut the instance down rather than reduce.
That was available to the lemm.ee admins in our scenario as well.
It is a lot more difficult to get out of burn out than it is to avoid getting there in the first place.
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Uh so where am I gonna go?
https://join-lemmy.org/ can help you find an instance based on your interests.
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That was available to the lemm.ee admins in our scenario as well.
It is a lot more difficult to get out of burn out than it is to avoid getting there in the first place.
Indeed, but that's true in both scenarios
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We can not change "human behavior", so I don't see how/why we should expect things to "be different at .ee" compared to anywhere else.
Unfortunately, that's not what I'm talking about, either.
What I'm talking about is something like a sufficient, critical mass needed to help .ee (and any other place) survive in the long run. Two years ago I thought there was a real opportunity and possibility based on what the Reddit execs were publicly doing... how many users it both pissed off and motivated. That in turn brought about a burst of user energy, directly reflected by the significant migration to FV, which of course included participation, and at best, valuable content-creation, curation, useful posts & comments, and responsible moderation. That was a significant, known movement, and IMO a positive one, even if it wasn't going to last indefinitely.
As a personal example of a 'motivated user,' I saw the need for a certain community which was nowhere-else present across the FV, and decided to create it. Over the past two years I've populated it with 400+ posts, most of them in the form of mini-articles. Other people also chipped in here and there, and there have been healthy comments and subscribers to sort of flesh the whole thing out over time.
For the most part it's been a fun (if sometimes extremely frustrating) little hobby, but it's still basically a one-man show, despite almost 2yrs and 1,210 subscribed accts. Point is-- at the end of the day it's been a small project that I thought worth maintaining as both a thank you to .ee and a tribute to the FV as a whole. Lemm.ee didn't necessarily need that kind of contribution from more than a handful of users, but as said above, it needed a certain critical mass to make it work across the server as a whole, and a minimum of posters contributing vile content or simply being disruptive assholes.
At one time I thought community spirit (for what that's worth) would kind of tilt things in a long-term sustainable direction. But it seems I was mistaken, and thus we have the announcement today. IMO I'm not pointing fingers; I'm observing.
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Unfortunately, that's not what I'm talking about, either.
What I'm talking about is something like a sufficient, critical mass needed to help .ee (and any other place) survive in the long run. Two years ago I thought there was a real opportunity and possibility based on what the Reddit execs were publicly doing... how many users it both pissed off and motivated. That in turn brought about a burst of user energy, directly reflected by the significant migration to FV, which of course included participation, and at best, valuable content-creation, curation, useful posts & comments, and responsible moderation. That was a significant, known movement, and IMO a positive one, even if it wasn't going to last indefinitely.
As a personal example of a 'motivated user,' I saw the need for a certain community which was nowhere-else present across the FV, and decided to create it. Over the past two years I've populated it with 400+ posts, most of them in the form of mini-articles. Other people also chipped in here and there, and there have been healthy comments and subscribers to sort of flesh the whole thing out over time.
For the most part it's been a fun (if sometimes extremely frustrating) little hobby, but it's still basically a one-man show, despite almost 2yrs and 1,210 subscribed accts. Point is-- at the end of the day it's been a small project that I thought worth maintaining as both a thank you to .ee and a tribute to the FV as a whole. Lemm.ee didn't necessarily need that kind of contribution from more than a handful of users, but as said above, it needed a certain critical mass to make it work across the server as a whole, and a minimum of posters contributing vile content or simply being disruptive assholes.
At one time I thought community spirit (for what that's worth) would kind of tilt things in a long-term sustainable direction. But it seems I was mistaken, and thus we have the announcement today. IMO I'm not pointing fingers; I'm observing.
Niche topics were always going to be dependent on numbers.
I'm the single contributor to [email protected] , one of the most popular toys on the planet. And I didn't expect another regular poster to appear before we reached 60k monthly active users.
"Build it, and they will come" isn't really true nowadays. We're competing with Reddit, but also TikTok and Discord, where people seem to spend most of their time.
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Indeed, but that's true in both scenarios
One scenario is hypothetical. The other really happened. It makes no sense to say "they are both true".
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Unfortunately, that's not what I'm talking about, either.
What I'm talking about is something like a sufficient, critical mass needed to help .ee (and any other place) survive in the long run. Two years ago I thought there was a real opportunity and possibility based on what the Reddit execs were publicly doing... how many users it both pissed off and motivated. That in turn brought about a burst of user energy, directly reflected by the significant migration to FV, which of course included participation, and at best, valuable content-creation, curation, useful posts & comments, and responsible moderation. That was a significant, known movement, and IMO a positive one, even if it wasn't going to last indefinitely.
As a personal example of a 'motivated user,' I saw the need for a certain community which was nowhere-else present across the FV, and decided to create it. Over the past two years I've populated it with 400+ posts, most of them in the form of mini-articles. Other people also chipped in here and there, and there have been healthy comments and subscribers to sort of flesh the whole thing out over time.
For the most part it's been a fun (if sometimes extremely frustrating) little hobby, but it's still basically a one-man show, despite almost 2yrs and 1,210 subscribed accts. Point is-- at the end of the day it's been a small project that I thought worth maintaining as both a thank you to .ee and a tribute to the FV as a whole. Lemm.ee didn't necessarily need that kind of contribution from more than a handful of users, but as said above, it needed a certain critical mass to make it work across the server as a whole, and a minimum of posters contributing vile content or simply being disruptive assholes.
At one time I thought community spirit (for what that's worth) would kind of tilt things in a long-term sustainable direction. But it seems I was mistaken, and thus we have the announcement today. IMO I'm not pointing fingers; I'm observing.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]At one time I thought community spirit (for what that’s worth) would kind of tilt things in a long-term sustainable direction.
Community is not enough. I wrote that in 2022 with Twitter and Mastodon in mind, but the same principle still applies for Reddit vs Lemmy.
Lots of people say they want to "stick it to the man" but very few are actually going to put in the work and/or money required to actually succeed.
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One scenario is hypothetical. The other really happened. It makes no sense to say "they are both true".
Then let's stop discussing hypothetical scenarios altogether if we can't assess them?
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I can't comment on whether the admins are likely to be open to this, but it's definitely more drama than simply shutting down.
The data users provided to lemm.ee was entrusted to the admins of that instance. It might not seem like a big deal, but just handing it over isn't really appropriate.
The first thing they'd do would be to defed ml, grad and hexbear anyway.
Although I wouldn't blame them for the later two, but the whole point of .ee was it's reluctance to defed.
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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/65824884
Hey everyone
We’re really sorry to say this, but lemm.ee will be shutting down on June 30, 2025.
What you need to know
As of now:
- New user registrations are disabled
- Creating new communities is disabled
What you should do:
- You can export your settings at https://lemm.ee/settings to take them with you to another instance.
- If you're moving to another instance, consider adding a note to your lemm.ee profile with your new username. Your old profile will still be visible from other instances even after we go offline.
- Alternatively, if you want to delete your lemm.ee profile, now is the best time to do it, so the deletion can federate out before we go offline.
- If you're one of the folks supporting us with a recurring donation, please remember to cancel it (Ko-Fi donations should have been cancelled automatically already). Our leftover funds are already enough to cover our bills for next month, so we can keep things running without any more support.
Because of how Lemmy is built, everything posted on lemm.ee will still be accessible from other instances, even after we go offline.
Why this is happening
The key reason is that we just don’t have enough people on the admin team to keep the place running. Most of the admin team has stepped down, mostly due to burnout, and finding replacements hasn’t worked out.
The sad reality is that while there are a lot of great people on Lemmy, there are also some who use the platform to attack others, stir up conflict, or actively try to undermine the project. Admins are volunteers who deal with the latter group on a constant basis, this takes a mental toll. Please understand why our admins chose to step down, and be kind to the admins on whatever instance you decide to join.
We know this sucks. We're genuinely sorry it’s ending like this. Thank you to everyone who spent time here and helped make it better.
– lemm.ee team
Well now I feel awful for not helping when they needed admins
I don't manage servers or even have experience managing communities.
