this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2025
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Lemmy.ca's Main Community

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19 users here now


Welcome to the lemmy.ca/c/main community!

All new users on lemmy.ca are automatically subscribed to this community, so this is the place to read announcements, make suggestions, and chat about the goings-on of lemmy.ca.

For support requests specific to lemmy.ca, you can use !lemmy_ca_support@lemmy.ca.


founded 4 years ago
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submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by otter@lemmy.ca to c/main@lemmy.ca
 

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:

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 !Canada@lemmy.ca. You can also ask about communities in places like !CommunityPromo@lemmy.ca.

We also encourage you to check out !NewToLemmy@lemmy.ca, so that others can help you / learn from your questions.

Welcome to Lemmy :)

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[–] Maximum__Photography@lemmy.ca 4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)
[–] otter@lemmy.ca 2 points 19 hours ago

Welcome! 😊

[–] 2awesome4words@lemmy.ca 4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)
[–] otter@lemmy.ca 3 points 19 hours ago

Bonjour! 😊

[–] EfficientWealth3498@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)
[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago
[–] otter@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago

Bonjour, et bienvenue 😊

[–] toe@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] otter@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 days ago

Welcome 😊

[–] GreenCavalier@lemmy.ca 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Bonjour, fellow Canadian Lemmies! I'd deleted my Reddit account in November, and was only lurking, so it's nice to have a voice in the conversation once more.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 4 points 4 days ago

Welcome 😊

[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Not a new user but I'm actually finally deleting my Reddit acct. Just updating all my comments and posts now using redact. The recent news about Elon getting them to massage their content was enough. Fuck them.

edit - 15 years of comments takes a fucking long time to update humourously I've been banned from multiple communities because of using redact.dev

[–] Maximum__Photography@lemmy.ca 2 points 20 hours ago

Well, now I must give it a try!

[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago

I deleted my reddit account a while ago. Sometimes I still lurk, but it hasn't been the same lately. I was a redditor since 2010.

Welcome to lemmy! I hope you like it here!

[–] Maybe@lemmy.ca 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I'm not new. This is my second post already.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 6 points 5 days ago

Welcome nonetheless πŸ˜„

[–] GlenC@lemmy.ca 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Just joined after being recommended on Reddit. The straw for me was a recent 7 day ban because I stated a historical fact on guerrilla war and America. Not sure when Americans got so delicate and all snowflake like but whatever. Glad to be here.

[–] Kichae@lemmy.ca 4 points 4 days ago

The techno-authoritarians are making their play for absolute power now. They're going to suppress opposition in general. They spent years getting everyone to use their tools, and this is why.

[–] Daryl@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

What exactly is an 'instance'?

[–] Kichae@lemmy.ca 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

So, Lemmy is software that lets you build an off-the-shelf content aggregation website, similar to how Wordpress lets you build an off-the-shelf blog. There are dozens of moderate to large websites running Lemmy, and hundreds of small or tiny ones running it.

Each one of these websites can, if the users and admins enable it, subscribe to communities hosted on other Lemmy-based websites, which lets them comment on posts in those communities, or even make their own posts to them.

Because this intercommunication allows users to treat remotely-hosted communities as if they are local to the user's website, it's common for people to think of the network of Lemmy-based websites as a signular entity. In this model, each of the independent websites running Lemmy gets called an "instance".

The same terminology is used for Mastodon-based websites, and other websites that allow for similar auto-syndication of content that creates a simulacrum of a centralized content environment. So, a "Lemmy instance" is a "website running Lemmy that is participating in active content syndication", a "Mastodon instance" is "a website running Mastodon that is participating in active content syndication", etc. You can replace "Mastodon" or "Lemmy" with "mbin", "Friendica", "PieFed", "Misskey", "Hubzilla", "PeerTube", "PixelFed", "BookWyrm", "FunkWhale", "nodeBB", or any number of other website engines that are participating in this type of ecosystem.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 4 points 4 days ago

Welcome!

I'd recommend looking through these two guides / infographics as they are a good introduction

What is the fediverse

How does Lemmy work, in detail

If you consider the network of email providers, then "gmail" could be considered one "instance" of the network. You can use it as a self-contained service, but the strength comes from being a part of the wider network.

So you can use lemmy.ca as if it was an isolated Canadian version of reddit, but the strength comes from being able to access communities from all over

[–] TheMadChatter@lemmy.ca 8 points 5 days ago

Elbows up, hosers!

[–] DeskReference@lemmy.ca 10 points 6 days ago

Elbows up!!!

[–] gprime@lemmy.ca 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Hello. Nice to see a Canadian alternative to reddit.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 7 points 6 days ago

Welcome :) Let us know if you need help with anything!

[–] orins@lemmy.ca 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Hello everyone, nice to e-meet you :D

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 3 points 6 days ago
[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 61 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

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: !technology@lemmy.world -- into the search bar and then subscribe.

(9) Meow

(10) Try different sort options. New or Scales are my favourites.

[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 36 points 1 month ago (2 children)

(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.

[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 22 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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 :)

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[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 31 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I'm happy to see new users joining Lemmy and every instance out there big and small.

One thing everyone should consider and think of is .... funding and supporting the Fediverse.

Every new user should consider and think about supporting the fediverse through a donation as they use this new community in order for it to remain free to use, open and freely available for everyone. We all like to believe that these things can be just free to use without any of us having to pay for any of it. We also like to think that people just magically and without reward or compensation just work in the background for free to keep all this software, hardware, equipment and organization running.

We don't have to spend a fortune to keep funding these projects, but we should contribute something to it even if it is a small amount. If thousands of users spend a dollar, then it would add up to thousands of dollars to keep this whole system well funded. I know I've chatted with a few of the instance owners and have read what developers have written in the past ... many of them have well paying jobs and have commercial work themselves that they do and they enjoy doing the work on Lemmy as either a hobby or passion project. However, I also know that as the popularity of these platforms grow, expenses add up for more hardware requirements, new hardware requirements, software management, security management and even having people monitoring everything online around the clock. Eventually, no matter how you cut it ... work, time, effort, equipment all ends up costing money to someone at some point. And those costs only increase as popularity grows. And those payments have to come from somewhere.

Donating a little bit and funding even just a little from everyone should be a new norm we should all accept. Otherwise, any new social media we create, no matter how open source we want it to be will slowly just be affected by corporate rot and get taken over again by those who would like to lock everything behind a wall and make the most money from it.

Donating to Lemmy.ca (run by the non-profit Fedecan)
https://fedecan.ca/en/donate

Donating to the Lemmy Software developers
https://join-lemmy.org/donate

Donating to The Fediverse Foundation
https://fediverse.foundation/en/spenden/

But also ... Donate to the instance you are on and support the people who maintain your instance.

[–] Yerbouti@sh.itjust.works 31 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I find it way more easy to have civil interactions with people here. On reddit, I would either get ignored or discussions would turn to shit. Lemmy is actually way more fun to use, it just need a bit more of content.

[–] BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 28 points 1 month ago (9 children)
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[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 31 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Welcome!

A social network is created by our collective social interaction. We're still small, so your posts, comments and upvotes matter. Don't just lurk, if you can. Every upvote counts! 😊

This one's ours.

[–] ZombApoc@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 month ago

Lurking has been my primary activity on Reddit. I shall try to contribute more.

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[–] rinze@lemmy.ca 25 points 1 month ago (1 children)

First of all, thanks for all the work you do. I lived almost 10 years in Canada and having an account here makes me feel warm inside (not on the outside :-) ).

Any idea why the recent influx of new users? May it have anything to do with Reddit planning to put some subreddits behind a paywal?

Thanks again!

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 39 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Welcome! :)

Going off of what people have mentioned in the registration applications, it is a combination of

  • wanting to support Canadian, and avoiding American tech companies (due to tariffs and other concerns)
  • concerns with how big tech has changed for the worse these past few months
  • Reddit's recent actions, such as banning (and then reversing) a bunch of communities and the recent paywall announcement
  • learning about it for the first time and being excited about the concept

The first point is why lemmy.ca has seen more relative growth this week than the others, but a lot of fediverse instances have seen growth recently

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[–] CircaV@lemmy.ca 24 points 1 month ago

Glad to be here. I wanted to get off Reddit for obvious reasons.

[–] Vegeta@lemmy.ca 21 points 1 month ago

🫢 happy to be here

[–] WorkshopBubby@lemmy.ca 19 points 1 month ago (7 children)

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?

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[–] Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca 19 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

Just joined today! Deleted all my posts on Reddit (thank you Shreddit) deleted my account, and now I’m here! The US can go to hell, well, it’s half way there already. Thank you Lemmy.ca

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[–] Soulforged@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Hello! Coming over from Reddit and I'm new to Lemmy. So happy to easily find a Canadian Community!

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[–] ehpolitical@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 month ago (8 children)

First off, this is great... thanks to everyone who's helped put all this together! It's a relief to finally have a Canadian alternative! And then can someone please explain to me (like I'm 5) what an "instance" is exactly?

[–] grte@lemmy.ca 20 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

If you think of the "fediverse" as being like email, an instance would be like an email provider. So you can get an email address from google, protonmail, microsoft, etc, but you can still communicate with other accounts from any of the providers via the standardized protocol. In the same way you can join any particular instance and communicate with other instances.

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[–] Trauma@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 month ago

Glad to be here! As Reddit keeps enshittifying, and the boycott USAmerica movement gains momentum, hoping more folks migrate over.

[–] RedDog@lemmy.ca 17 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

'morning! I'm in. Though I scrubbed my reddit content back in the 'strike' my eyeballs still regularly contributed to their site. I guess I'm stopping that now too. Small steps, as they say. Looking forward it.

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[–] solarvalleys@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Thank you for hosting and for all your work! I am excited to see this community grow. I have already seen a couple of posts on Canadian reddit communities where people name dropped lemmy.ca. It'd be interesting to maybe do a census once the signups stabilize to see how much the demographic changed. (I saw that there was one made in 2023).

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