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
The OP has comments disabled and it didn’t seem right to not say thank you and goodbye.
To the entire team past and present at lemm.ee- Thank you for the time and resources you poured into this platform. You will undoubtedly be missed.
why are comments even disabled in the first place?
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… They are literally saying they don’t have admins/mods enough. You want to strain your mods? Allowing comments on that sort of post is how you do that.
it could have been a cool free 4 all like in the good old internet times xD
Yeah sure its all fun and games until people start posting csam.
then block them with your user power. i dont see the problem?
The problem, besides that just being gross, is that hosting csam is a very serious crime in most places. Leaving that unmoderated can very easily end with alphabet agencies from around the world shutting down lemmy instances.
CSAM stands for Child Sexual Abuse Material (child porn under its old moniker).
I’m going to assume you didn’t know what the acronym meant because saying “just block them I don’t see the problem” to CSAM posts is very idiotic.
its probably because its just an important announcement post they plan to pin for the whole month and they dont want it to get filled with people talking in it which could led to the comment derailing the discussion
Holy shit, that was unexpected.
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. :/
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.
I can help with that, if needed. I’m going to have to migrate my own communities in the coming weeks, so I can help with yours too.
Thanks, fellas! I guess the first need would certainly be to fully archive the community in question, i.e.: https://lemm.ee/c/eurographicnovels.
Yes, I understand it’s already and naturally backed up across the FV as a whole, but I would think that having direct backups would help for any number of reasons, especially when it came to running a new sub somewhere, being able to edit previous content as needed.
As part of that, backing up the community’s many images specifically hosted at .ee would be another priority I should think.
Also, just want to point out that the community is indeed archived at Archive.Org, but last I checked, that tends to only preserve the post / comment text.
Anyway, that’s for starters. Me, I have absolutely no idea at the moment if I’m going to be able to help run the place after migration, but at the very least I can hopefully find someone willing to do that. Anyway, I guess that’s good for starters!
Hm, if you need to migrate all of the content to a new community, that might require quite some work indeed.
What about gradually moving content over? https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected] content is still there, and lemmy.film went down more than a year ago
Also, have a look at this post: https://piefed.social/post/667044
Sad to hear of your problems, but thank you for the time you did put into it! Nothing lasts forever but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worthwhile.
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.
Blaming the community for that is not fair. It takes only a few rotten fruit to spoil the whole basket. Even if 99% of your userbase are model netizens who are supportive and only make positive contributions, the whole system can be brought down by a few dedicate trolls/losers.
We need to build effective filtering mechanisms to get rid of abuse/spam and we need to maybe bring back the idea of Web of Trust. It’s too easy to create an account and start polluting the fediverse.
Blaming the community for that is not fair.
I’m not blaming the community. Things are what they are, including human behavior.
What I did was to state what I think is and was necessary for the FV to survive robustly in the long term, and in my opinion it just wasn’t happening adequately, at least for .ee, and maybe it’s a problem for the FV as a whole, too. You’d have to see what other major instance admins had to say, I guess…
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.
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.
I’m sorry to hear about your health issues. I don’t know shit about dick, but if there’s some way a 10 yr sysadmin could do to help out, please let me help! I’m a big hoarder of data and don’t believe information should be gatekept or lost if it can be saved.
For posterity’s sake, please don’t abandon hope in keeping your labor of love alive!
Thanks for the offer and kind words! I’ve tagged you in the comment above…
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I don’t think reddit is necessarily doing anything better in that regard,
I’d say the big, honking difference with Reddit is that there’s a team of paid admins and staff to handle so much of the chores and unsavory occurrences that the volunteer admins & mods on the Lemmysphere have to do on their own. Also, their software is years ahead, and I strongly suspect has many more out-of-the-box tools than Lemmy has on the admin side. It’s certainly that way for the mod side, I can attest.
handle so much of the chores and unsavory occurrences that the volunteer admins & mods on the Lemmysphere have to do on their own.
Reddit was known for years to leave the moderation tasks to the volunteers admins. I’m still a mod in a quite active sub, the mod queue is around 2600 items now.
We hav sub mods here too. The difference is the admins
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When I looked through the list of lemm.ee communities I was subbed to, my first thought was: omg I hope JohnnyEnzyme takes this ok…
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.
Yea, I’m really surprised as well. Was there any build up to this? Any calls for help?
Yes, actually. I probably could have stepped up to be an admin, but tbh, my plate is already overfull.
Yes, actually.
Link? Just out of curiosity.
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
a comment tree with the same confusion as you (and me lol) https://lemm.ee/comment/20911153
Lemm.ee is recruiting new admins!, from four months ago.
Ahh, this is really sad. Lemm.ee was always an instance that shined brightly, and @[email protected] has helped me out a couple of times.
Sad day indeed.
This instance will live on. Definitely understand the burnout and hope @[email protected] and the other volunteers here stick around.
Really nice that they’re doing a sunset period with advance warning instead of just randomly going dark. As Lemmy’s first major “shutdown” we need to accept that this sort of thing seems inevitable from time to time, maybe this can set an example and open a conversation on how to handle this sort of situation in the future. I’d hope this creates some pressure to Fediverse developers to improve portability for users (and communities!) moving between instances, maybe even some kind of immigration/emigration mode for people or communities who want to apply to transfer their account and history rather than simply sign up a new account while posting a link from their old account. Federation should be able to do better than that.
Mastodon handles it pretty decently where it automatically gets your followers to follow your new account, there’s no reason why communities/groups couldn’t do the same thing
Individual users’ follows are not very useful in the threadiverse compared to backlog of content.
The historical backlog isn’t going anywhere. It will still be viewable on other instances.
For example here’s an old thread from a community on vlemmy.net, an instance that disappeared more than a year ago.
Yes, but people can no longer engage with that content. It creates the appearance of relatively dead communities.
feddit.de disappeared a while back. As did the original UK one. (Both have been replaced)
It reminds me of DMV.social’s shutdown, and for similar reasons (admin feeling overwhelmed). I don’t recall how big that one was though.
Sad to see it go, one of the biggest instances. But I totally get it from the admins’ point of views.
Sail into the sunset lemm.ee
You will be missed
Definitely
First thank you for the work (always keeping server up to date, fixing issues quickly, blocking spam,…).
Now time to think about migrating, any advices for another great instance?
General instances:
Sopuli.xyz is a great medium sized general purpose instance. Good admins that update to the latest Lemmy release consistently.
Lemmy.cafe could be another option if you’d prefer a smaller general purpose instance (to help spread the load and prevent the burnout that lemm.ee experienced) that’s also run by a solid admin.
Themed instances:
Retrolemmy.com - a cool place for retro tech/game enthusiasts
Literature.cafe - For book lovers and readers!
lemmy.dbzer0.com - fantastic instance for Anarchists and those who like to go Yarr! 🏴☠️
Programming.dev - For techies interested in programming and linux
Mander.xyz - Focused on Science and Nature
Lemmy.zip - PC Gaming and Tech focused
You can find more over at Lemmyverse.net
Piefed:
If you’re willing to try an entirely new way to interact with Lemmy and the threadiverse, consider giving Piefed.social a try, a completely independent project from Lemmy. It’s still a little behind in some ways, but also has a bunch of features that lemmy doesn’t.
Thank you!
Lemmy.cafe could be another option if you’d prefer a smaller general purpose instance (to help spread the load and prevent the burnout that lemm.ee experienced) that’s also run by a solid admin.
Some feedback on lemmy.cafe: it used to be my alt for a few weeks end of 2024. I liked the idea of the instance, and the them, and Illecors (the admin) was indeed quite nice to talk too.
That being said, there was an issue that lasted from 22th of November to 18th of January with the thumbnails not loading, while other instances running the same version didn’t have those issues: https://lemmy.cafe/post/9986198
I know that Illecors did his best, and people should definitely give the instance a try if they are interested, but this is just a warning to keep in mind that this is an instance mostly run by one person, so troubleshooting can take a bit of time.
That’s a good point. On a similar note, Programming.dev had pretty severe database breakage that took quite some time to fix, but thankfully both instances seem to be healthy and working well nowadays. :)
Oh yeah, that was quite something too 😅
I chose lemmy.zip at the end. I hope this one will stay longer (I started on vlemmy.net which was put offline without notice and then I switched to lemm.ee…).
Tagging so I have this pinned. I need to find a new instance
Many thanks for that curated list
I’m migrating to lemmy.zip, at least for the short term. They also have public instance reports, which was the major reason I joined lemm.ee. Transparency and accountability is essential. I guess the fact that those reports got more and more sparse at lemm.ee was a canary in the coal mine here…
Enjoy lemmy.zip, it’s great!
These days, join-lemmy is pretty good at narrowing down instances to match your likes.
I disagree. Some of its top recommendations include lemmynsfw.com (I have nothing against NSFW but go there and read their admin posts - they have been struggling for a long time so like lemm.ee not stable), beehaw.org (a fantastic instance but I feel like one not to be casually recommended to people without explanation), hilariouschaos.com (are you fucking kidding me with this neonazi shit?), lemmy.ml (certainly nothing ever controversial can be said about that one - at least not while on that platform!😜😞), and all of this is just what I noticed today but in the past iirc multiple times even it has suggested hexbear.net to me.
So no, I don’t recommend the recommendation of this site to people.
::shudders:: hexbear…yikes!
I may be biased, but lemmy.ca is pretty great
I may be biased
So far everyone has recommended their home instance. 😆
I recommend… Wait, shit
I moved over to piefed.social - it’s another platform, but federated with lemmy, and has some nice features like subscribing to whole topics instead of individual communities.
I’m very happy with infosec.pub. If I had to pick a different one, then I would choose lemmy.dbzer0.com.
I need a recommendation as well. Lemm.ee was my gateway to Lemme.
Me too. I’m wondering where to go next. I can’t really search until I get home later.
Discuss.Online has fantastic admins. The uptime rate there is breathtaking. I hopped across many instances before I settled there.
PieFed is also pretty fantastic too, with so very many features that Lemmy lacks - like flairs (post and user), voting polls, categories of communities, which are user customizable and shareable, etc.
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
the great movies/television migration starts again
What are some good mobile clients for piefed?
Thunder is coming, but for now only Interstellar is official iirc (last I saw Thunder support was only available as a fork of the code).
The web interface is great though.
Yeah hope ppl remake them quickly
What a loss. =(
It’s a strange quirk of lemmy that we will continue to be able to see content from lemm.ee even after they’ve shut down. It’ll feel like seeing ghosts.
A lot of the internet has been lost to time already so I actually appreciate this place having this kind of permanence.
For lemm.ee users who will be migrating to new instances: You can export your subscriptions and blocks to import them to your new instance! You can export that info in your profile settings panel, and import it from the same page on your new instance.
yep, if you’re a lemm.ee user then your Export button will be here: https://lemm.ee/settings
the bottom of the right column
Also PieFed can import those exports that Lemmy makes.
Thank God I don’t have to reblock all the furry communities.
Is transferring it to someone else in the cards? I have an LLC intended for my own future instance plans, but I’d be more than happy to take over .ee under it to prevent the loss of another good Lemmy-verse instance
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.
but just handing it over isn’t really appropriate.
Well I would hope, if they were open to it, they would have internal discussions with the main mods and maybe some sort of vote amongst their user base and/or giving those who’d rather not time to delete their data before anything changes hands
Huh. One of the least expected instances I thought would shut down :(
Wow. This is by far the biggest loss I’ve ever witnessed on lemmy.
I totally understand it. It’s a shame it has to happen. Sending much love to the lemm.ee admins.
Also, generally, lemmy can feel very gloomy, there are a lot of fights and stuff as well. I know we can’t prevent this. But whatabout fostering a slightly less cynical culture? Lets compliment more, be slightly less snarky in our replies. Don’t only comment to criticise. Also comment to praise when you see something you like. :)
I’ve certainly seen some toxic .ee users which jives with your theory.
I think a big part of it is because they defeded basically no one. Made it a great instance for modding from but also great for being an alt for people in undesirable instances.
The rare time I venture to reddit to talk about Lemmy I saw lemm.ee posted the most.
We get trolled a lot, that’s mostly what you’re seeing. They seem to be off schedule lately or the admins are handling them better, not sure which. I agree with being better commenters though, it would help the atmosphere.
That’s just what critical discourse looks like. If people agreed on everything, we wouldn’t need these discussions to begin with.
I don’t think it has to be like that. We can discuss things while still being positive. Ideally discussions aren’t about disagreements only, but understanding, seeing things from other’s perspective, finding middle grounds and so on.
I agree on principal, but in reality it would feel like chatting to tech support or chatgpt.
Besides, bitter sweet, the bitter makes the sweet so much more sweeter.
Sad to hear, had a very inspired name and the admin was very strong with hosting tech. Unfortunately however a generic instance with lax federation rules and no solid ideology, is a recipe for burning out your admins. The owner seemingly losing interest in lemmy also didn’t help.
Well that was super painless. Downloaded my .json settings, imported, and it’s like nothing even happened. All sublemmy communities I was subscribed to before have migrated successfully.
Although defederations are an issue. Sopuli for instance blocks both Hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml - which imho is very much a good thing.:-)
