Getting Started on Lemmy

Getting started on Lemmy can be a bit confusing. There is a learning curve to it, so we have created this to get you up and going on your journey. It will click at some point, if you keep at it one day it will seem as simple and obvious as email.

Background

Lemmy Is Software

Lemmy isn't a single social media website like Twitter or Reddit - it's a piece of software that anyone can install at a domain on the internet. On an instance of lemmy like like lemmy.world things work pretty much like Reddit. Instead of subreddits you have communities, you can create an account, share links, comment and vote on things. Easy!

Other Instances

An instance of Lemmy like lemmy.world can also talk "federate" with another instance of Lemmy like lemmy.ca. In the same way that a gmail account can email with a hotmail account. A user on one of these instances can upvote, comment and even create posts on a totally different instance.

Getting Started

Creating An Account

The first thing you will need to do is create an account on an instance that will be your home.

A Large General Instance

Generally lemmy.world is a safe bet or lemmy.ml which is run by the developers of Lemmy.

By Geography

You can always look for one that matches your geography or interest. Countries like Canada and regions like Europe have mature and popular Lemmy instances. Just make sure that it has been around for a few years and has a large enough user base. If the instance were to go down, you would lose your account and Lemmy is still missing an account migration feature with no plans to implement one. Lemmy does allow you to import and export settings, followed communities and bookmarked posts.

Subscribe to Communities

Just like Reddit it is important to subscribe to the subreddits communities that you are interested in. The communities tab at the top includes communities on both the local instance, and instances that it is federated with.

Sorting Your Timeline

The Lemmy timeline can be sorted different ways. It's actually very important to figure out which one works for you because the default option (Active) is not for everyone.

Options

• Active (default): Calculates a rank based on the score and time of the latest comment, with decay over time
• Hot: Calculates a rank based on the the score but uses the time of post rather than it's comments.
• Scaled: Like hot, but prefers less active communities
• New/Old: Shows most recent or oldest posts first
• Most Comments: Shows posts with highest number of comments first
• New Comments: Show posts with new comments first
• Top (Time Period): Highest scoring posts during the period (Day, Week, Month, Year, All Time)

Setting a New Default

<Your Username> > Settings > Sort Type

You can try out the different options and then change the default on your user settings page.

Hiding Read Posts

<Your Username> > Settings > Sort Type

Unchecking "Show Read Posts" can be a good setting if you find that the feed often has posts that you have already seen.

Install An App

Installing an app makes Lemmy much easier to use. One popular option which works well across both iOS, Android and F-Droid is Voyager.