We have gotten a lot of new signups over the past few days, and we’re all very excited to have you joining us! You’ll find that people are more than happy to help you get started and learn how to use the site.
If you feel up for it, you can introduce yourself or ask questions below!
We have put together some resources to help new users get started:
You can also read:
- A quick overview of Lemmy
- A detailed guide on how Lemmy works
- A quick overview of ‘the Fediverse’
- Learn about the non-profit that runs this site
These guides were published very recently, and we will be updating them over time. If you find that something is confusing or missing, please let us know and we can improve them further.
For an organized list of Canadian communities (provinces/territories, Cities / Local , Sports, Schools, BuyCanadian, CanadaPolitics etc.), see this post on [email protected]. You can also ask about communities in places like [email protected].
We also encourage you to check out [email protected], so that others can help you / learn from your questions.
Welcome to Lemmy :)
You must log in or register to comment.
New user question; why is it that I cannot upvote? am I missing something? I tap the arrow and get ‘invalid_bot_action’ I can assure you I am a real human - I can pass most captchas 😆
You are currently labeled as a bot. You can change that in your account settings, there should be a checkbox “Bot account”, uncheck it :)
That was very fast, thank you for responding so quickly 😄
Hi, I found this post in a search. I don’t think it’s possible, but I hope it is as this site is otherwise borderline unbearable for me unfortunately. Is there a way to block all users of a particular instance?
Here are some more tips, put together by @[email protected] in this post
Quick FAQ:
Q: I am not getting my registration email/can't log in after submitting application, what do I do?
A: Check your spam/junk box, gmail and outlook can be very finicky. Applications are vetted by each server’s admins, but the applications are only visible when the email is verified. If no success after 24 hours, try another instance.
Q: I signed up on one server (e.g. lemmy.ca), I can't login to another server to post/comment there (e.g. lemmy.world), what do I do?
A: You can actually post on that server without leaving the site you are logged in on. The URL syntax to visit a remote community is [your instance]/c/[community name]@[remote instance]. Example to visit https://lemmy.ca/c/canada with a lemmy.world account, go to https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]. Mentioning the community similar to this form: [email protected] in Lemmy will create a link that takes you directly there.
If you are visiting this post from another server, paste this link, https://lemmy.ca/post/39118714 into lemmyverse.link, set your home server, and it will automatically find the same post on your server so that you can comment. Some apps save you the trouble automatically. The rainbow pentagon is the permalink button to easily get the original link.
Q: There's a lot of noise, how do I curate my feed?
A: Two ways: 1. stay on All or Local and use blocks. Block users, communities and instances that post content you don’t want to see. 2. Find communities you are interested in, subscribe to those, and use the Subscribe feed to see posts exclusively from those communities.
Q: Lemmy's interface looks ugly, is there anything better? And can I use it on my phone?
A: Have a look at https://lemmyapps.com/, these include web interfaces, android, iOS and PC apps. On lemmy.ca you have a couple alternative web frontends, try https://old.lemmy.ca/ (for old.reddit.com users), https://alex.lemmy.ca/, https://photon.lemmy.ca/.
Q: Can I trust you, or the admins more than RedditInc, gallowboob, Shittymorph or Steve Huffman?
A: That’s for you to judge. Reddit is run as a for-profit publicly traded company, intent on scraping, hoarding and monetizing your data for itself, showing you ads, and getting every nickel they can siphon out of you. Lemmy is open source, and while the admins of lemmy.ca have control over its accounts in a similar way and have generously contributed significant resources, this server is run by Non-Profit Fédécan. Other servers will have their own admins, each with their own strengths and faults. The organization and the Lemmy developers will always appreciate your support, but isn’t interested in monetizing your data or ads. Friendly reminder when using public forums: what you post here will be open and publicly available for everyone, freely and equally.
A couple of notes and unsolicited advice as someone who is almost an old hand already…
(1) Your front-page will be more interesting as you subscribe to more things. You can subscribe to things from other Lemmy servers and they will be pulled into your feed here.
(2) Communities that are hosted on this server will show up under “Local”.
(3) “All” shows all of the local content from (2), but also any content that this server had to fetch from other servers for others. Basically, when you subscribe to stuff, it’ll end up in All for everyone else on this server as well. If no one on the server has subscribed to specific content from another server, it won’t show up in All. As a result, All is sort of a cross section of our users’ interests.
(4) If you were to sign up for another server – say lemm.ee – you would get a different Local and All. But you should be able to subscribe to the same things regardless of the server you chose.
(5) Some servers are not connected to others, for reasons. This is called defederation. It’s basically a means to block an entire server who has a community not behaving in a way that doesn’t jive well on your local server. Lemmygrad.ml is blocked from this server, for example. You probably won’t notice, but on rare occasions you can’t subscribe to a community on a blocked server.
(6) You can help the quieter communities grow by shitposting. Throw your backlog of old saved memes into them. There isn’t as much traffic here as reddit, and the niche communities often don’t exist (or are silent).
(7) Find a larger community to post to for engagement. For example, on Reddit I would subscribe to the WinnipegJets team sub, but on Lemmy it is too quiet. So instead I post my Jets content to the more general Hockey community so we can have some discussion. This will change over time.
(8) A good place to find communities to subscribe to is: https://lemmyverse.net/communities – copy and paste the community name – eg: [email protected] – into the search bar and then subscribe.
(9) Meow
(10) Try different sort options. New or Scales are my favourites.
Tip: sort by “Top 12 hours or 24hours”. This is equivalent to reddit’s “hot”
Ah ha! Perfect. This is what I was missing. Thank you.
(11) Also don’t be afraid to curate the feed the block button is your friend, don’t like certain users, communities or instances baaam block, there’s your peace of mind.
Yes! I have so much anime softcore blocked in my feed haha.
(12) A great way to find new communities: when you see a user who posted something interesting, click on them and see which communities they’re in. Then subscribe to those :)
The block button is key to curating your general daily experience on Lemmy. Obviously block anything you don’t like, but also use it if you’re not interested in a specific scene or topic. You can always remove the block later if you want. I think of the block button more like the “Not Interested” button on Youtube.
I’ve been here for awhile and have a pretty good understanding of how federation works. Number (3) was a very concise way to explain how the All feed works. I sort of knew but that really helped me understand.
Number (7), I will suggest the use of the cross-posting feature. Post to the larger community for engagement but also cross-post to the smaller communities to help them grow. Quiet communities are a cat-and-mouse game where people don’t post or comment because no one else is. The more people start to engage, the more others will start to engage.
What I like doing is posting to the small community first, and then cross posting from there
That way people in the larger community can follow the link back and learn about the community if they’re interested. It also helps to mention the community at the start of the cross post since Lemmy doesn’t do that automatically
Hello! Coming over from Reddit and I’m new to Lemmy. So happy to easily find a Canadian Community!
Glad to have you here!
Thanks!
Welcome 😊
Thank you! And thank you @[email protected] for the manual verification, much appreciated!
Welcome aboard!
🫶 happy to be here
Thank you for Lemmy.ca :) Go #TeamCanada
Hello! Still mostly hanging out at Reddit but I see the writing on the wall and am trying to at the very least diversify, and hopefully make a full switch soon. Very grateful that this is here - both Lemmy and this particular resource.
Welcome!
Still mostly hanging out at Reddit but I see the writing on the wall and am trying to at the very least diversify, and hopefully make a full switch soon
This is true for a lot of the new users, despite what the memes may suggest 😄
Is there a particular community on reddit that you’d like to see more of on here?
Established users, too. I’m still active on Reddit, just much less so than I used to be. And a lot of the biggest promoters of the Fediverse are still active there, doing what they can to promote Lemmy- and Mastodon-based sites.
Hey so as a Canadian, we are about to get attacked by our long time ally and the worlds military superpower. We are probably going to be steamrolled, and then become second class citizens in the Trump dictatorship cult. Am I allowed to say violent things about how that makes me feel? Or will I get banned, like on reddit?
Purchase a long rifle and shoot it often. I say this as a staunch pacifist. Having a weapon and using it are two different things. For a thousand reasons, if a genuine war broke out it would likely destroy America. Unfortunately, likely taking Canada with it.
Regardless, be armed and be prepared. It is not as bleak as you may think, even in the worst case scenario. Best case scenario nothing happens and you take up hunting or target shooting as a hobby!
There’s one way to find out.
Just save it… and when the time comes… we do what we gotta do
We’re pretty reasonable with moderation here. The way Lemmy works, mod actions are recorded publicly for transparency. You can access those record here, but as a warning before you open the page, “Some deleted posts may contain disturbing or adult material”: https://lemmy.ca/modlog
So far we’ve only banned users site wide when it was a consistent problem (ex. spam bot, harassing other users). However, we do need to remove comments that are clearly against the law in Canada, else we couldn’t keep operating.
It really comes down to what the comment is. If you look through the threads on here, a lot of people are already expressing how they feel, or what Canada’s/Canadians’ response should be. Where it might be a problem is if someone says they’re going to do something violent/illegal, or call for someone else to do it
Hopefully that makes sense?
“don’t get the admins subpoenaed” is probably a good rule of thumb.
(You folks do a great job, I appreciate the community you’ve fostered and tended to here)
You will be less likely to be banned. Still, be reasonable, tactful and don’t be a dick about it, even if I get that you came here to express your genuine feelings.
“Kill [person of interest]” is off limits here and on many other servers, but there are ways you can describe how your frustration in ways that aren’t illegal or personally charged. “Fuck [person of interest]” is nearly universally allowed here. Even if not banned, the outcome of whether you are upvoted to heaven or downvoted to hell will depend on the person and the context.
I can totally relate to you in those regards.
New here, looking to move from redd it also. Got recommended lemmy by my brother this morning and I like what I see so far. Keep up the good work.
Welcome!
It’s nice to see the word of mouth working, I’ve seen a lot of mentions recently of people being recommended here by friends and family members
absolutely new to here (and to Lemmy, just learn that this exist today from… well … reddit) Glad to be here and glad to move on from there. Thanks to all the folks who host this, setting this up, and making this happen!
Welcome 😊
Definitely check out the guides above, and drop by in [email protected] if you have any issues!
A quick hello from a new community member. Thank you to the folks who set this up, and to participants in this community generally. You give me hope.
Welcome, glad to have you here! 😊
Thanks for having me! I’m glad to have finally made the switch over from Reddit and other conventional platforms. I’ve always been mostly a lurker but hey, maybe this time will be different. Looking forward to the fresh start!
Welcome 😊
Hello. I don’t usually make personal posts but I am glad this site exists. I left reddit after 5 years. It was on reddit that I was pointed here. The Fediverse sounds like a beneficial collective and I am excited to see it grow.
Usually I just post stupid puns (which are very clever in my head) and topical quips which offer nothing (but are very genius in my head). I hope to have fun, get informed, and learn something from the pack along the way. Goodbye.
Thank you for posting!
Hello Lemmy.ca,
Super new here, but super happy to find this exists. I hope it grows and keeps gaining in popularity despite the clunky nature which I think is inherent to the Fediverse (am I saying that right?).
My story is probably like a lot of people here. Reddit was my only actual social media account. Never did the Twitter/Facebook/Instagram, whatever else. Reddit was how I got my news and I was fine with that.
But back in January when this whole Tariff thing was first winding up, I decided to go hard and start my American boycott. I cancelled Netflix and Disney+ (I haven’t missed them for one second, which makes me wonder why I was paying for them anyway), I cancelled my Xbox Gamepass. I was already boycotting all things Amazon and Wal-mart. You get the idea. Reddit though, it didn’t feel like a betrayal - r/onguardforthee was my Canadian politics news source of choice and I wasn’t giving them any money.
But it occurs to me, when engagement numbers is how these guys convince investors to prop them up with no sustainable business model - I sort of was doing some damage. So, I set off looking for an alternative and here I am.
We have so little power to influence things these days it can feel pointless to make changes. Changes to our social media site of choice. Changes to our buying habits. How much does it really add up? But my father taught me, and I bet yours did too, you don’t do the right thing because it guarantees the right outcome. You do it so you can look in the mirror at the end of the day. Thanks for helping me look in the mirror.
Good on you. Most OGFT canucks fit right in here. 🍁
Welcome! I think you’ll find that the clunkiness dissolves into the background pretty quickly. Peoples’ biggest stumbling block after signup is often that you can find communities with the same name on different websites, and that kind of offends some folks’ sensibilities. Coming from OGFT, though, I think you can already appreciate that Reddit had multiple communities fighting over names anyway.
The admins here have been absolute power houses, so I know they’ll be only too quick to provide any help that you need, or answer questions about the site or nuances about the underlying tech. And some of us regulars have been around here for a few years now, and even predate the site, thanks to the way federated services can communicate across site types (I started on Mastodon, for instance, and have been kicking the tires on nodeBB).
It’s a fun little experiment in internet anarchism.
It made me happy to read that, thank you for writing it. Especially this part:
But my father taught me, and I bet yours did too, you don’t do the right thing because it guarantees the right outcome. You do it so you can look in the mirror at the end of the day. Thanks for helping me look in the mirror.
Welcome to lemmy.ca, please let us know if there’s anything we can help with 😊
