New to Lemmy

I keep seeing people ask for this. There are basically only two ways, neither of which are terribly easy unless you are willing to switch to a Lemmy alternative and then it can be a breeze with just a couple of button clicks.

First, note that on base Lemmy, it basically cannot be done, short of either spinning up your own instance or trying to do some advanced programming with spamblock filtering rules (that is likely to mess up the pages in some way). There is a related feature though - in User -> Settings -> Blocks -> scroll waaay down -> Block instance - except that unlike blocking a community or a user, this does not actually "block an instance", and instead merely (& misleadingly?) hides the communities on those instances. You will still see comments from those users, they can still downvote you, and ping your notifications, etc.

About the only thing the above approach offers beyond blocking those communities individually is that if ever new communities were to be made from those instances, they would be automatically hidden from your account. So not all that helpful imho.

(1) Use an App

I have heard that the Sync and Connect apps (+ maybe others?) offer this, as well as a plethora of other features. Note that Voyager does not work for this - it is the same type of blocking as mentioned above.

Check them out? If anyone wants to supplement this section, please submit a post to this community to help people who want to know! (and/or at least add it in the comments here)

(2) Lemmy Alternatives

What I do use is PieFed.social, which in addition to this feature also offers several other advancements not currently available in Lemmy such as Categories of Communities that makes finding additional content a breeze (though overall it is not as feature-rich or easy to use as base Lemmy; and yet its choice to use Python rather than Rust should help it to catch up extremely quickly, plus the admins are extraordinarily responsive to deal with any issues).

To block all users from a PieFed instance, the easiest way is to start from a user on that instance, click their account, then click More -> Block everyone from [instance_name]. Or you could go to a page with the instance name in the url, like https://piefed.social/instance/lemmy.ml and just click "Block everyone from [instance_name]" there.

PieFed also offers additional opportunities in-between blocking trolls vs. not doing so: accounts that meet certain criteria levels will have icons placed next to the account name, so that you can still see their content (rather than have it automatically removed) but not have to spend as much time parsing it as you would something that is more likely to have been offered in good faith.

Mbin likewise offers Categories, and cross-connection with Mastodon, and also user blocking too, though the process to do it is not nearly as easy. Overall I find that whole style confusing - e.g. "communities" become "magazines", downvotes become "reduces", upvotes are both "favorites" and also upvotes exist too that are entirely separate from that, plus you can see who offers favorites, but only from other Mbin/Kbin users and you cannot see the same for reduces. Though if you want Mastodon integration with Lemmy in one account, this is definitely the way to go (b/c it's the only one that does both:-). From @[email protected]:

It's not anywhere in the settings at all, lol. Like a hidden option. You have to go to the url https://fedia.io/d/[instance_domain_name], like https://fedia.io/d/lemmy.ml. Then it will give you the ability to block, and that block will be reflected in your settings page.

Either of these alternatives should make you quite happy with the result!:-)

(3) Honorable mention: relying upon an instance admin

As a normal user, not an admin yourself, you cannot implement a custom block of users from any specified instance. However, you can either ask your current admins to implement such a block for you (would need the support of the entire community on that instance ofc), or move your account to one that has already done so?

The only instances I've ever heard of that block the big-3 (lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, and lemmy.ml) are:

• lemmy.cafe - has very welcoming messages, including a link guiding new users to this community!:-)
• Tesseract on dubvee.org - extremely impressive, if not for everyone, but definitely worth a look
• quokk.au

The caveat to all of these is that each is a single-admin instance. Those of us who recall the story of e.g. Kbin.social (or dmv.social or so many others) know how worrisome that can be in that it could vanish overnight with little to no warning. Then again, unlike Kbin.social, they seem quite healthy for now - definitely worth at least taking a look?

https://lemmy.ca/post/26966518

Also https://join-lemmy.org/apps

https://www.lemmyapps.com/

Also [email protected]

Copying over the guide from [email protected] so it's more accessible here

🙌 Communities for discovering new communities

🌐 Instances to look through

🔎 Search Engines

🔥 Apps and Browser Extensions

👽 Coming from Reddit?

There are a lot of different apps / frontends that can show stuff from Lemmy, and they vary in how well they support different link formats. Here is a short explainer:

Each entry below shows you what you should type (like this) and what you will see as a result (after the dash '-').

For each entry, some apps will support it and others will not. It can be helpful to include a few different link formats so that everyone can use the link easily.

NOTE: There is a bug on the Lemmy website right now. If you start typing a community or username, it will try to autocomplete it. DO NOT click that autocomplete, or it will mess up the link.

[[email protected]](/c/[email protected]) - [email protected]

• This is the universal format. If you click this link, the community will open in your home instance.
• This is the recommended method.
• If you are coming from Reddit, it is similar to how you could type /r/askReddit

[you can put whatever here](/c/[email protected]) - you can put whatever here

• This is another way to make a universal link. If you click this link, the community will open in your home instance.
• This works well if you can't use the method above. For example, if you want to stick a link in a shields.io badge, you can use this technique to still include a universal link.

example.com/c/community - https://example.com/c/community

• This is a hardcoded link. This is what you can copy and paste from the browser. If you click this link, the community will open on a specific instance. Anyone using a different instance (ex. anything except lemmy.ca in this case) will not be able to subscribe right away, and they will need to redirect it first.
• Sometimes you can't use the methods above. For example, if you want to create a nice thumbnail while promoting your community on [email protected], you will need to use this URL.
• If you use this method, try to use the other methods as well so people have options.

https://lemmyverse.link/c/[email protected]

• You can also use this external tool to automatically redirect users. Once the user clicks on the link, they will be redirected to the instance that they set. This can be great for new users that click on the link, who may not understand what is happening or how the instances work.
• This also works for posts, but I will write up a separate post for those

There are a lot of different apps / frontends that can show stuff from Lemmy, and they vary in how well they support different link formats. Here is a short explainer:

Each entry below shows you what you should type (like this) and what you will see as a result (after the dash '-').

For each entry, some apps will support it and others will not. It can be helpful to include a few different link formats so that everyone can use the link easily.

NOTE: There is a bug on the Lemmy website right now. If you start typing a community or username, it will try to autocomplete it. DO NOT click that autocomplete, or it will mess up the link.

[[email protected]](/c/[email protected]) - [email protected]

• This is the universal format. If you click this link, the community will open in your home instance.
• This is the recommended method.
• If you are coming from Reddit, it is similar to how you could type /r/askReddit

[you can put whatever here](/c/[email protected]) - you can put whatever here

• This is another way to make a universal link. If you click this link, the community will open in your home instance.
• This works well if you can't use the method above. For example, if you want to stick a link in a shields.io badge, you can use this technique to still include a universal link.

example.com/c/community - https://example.com/c/community

• This is a hardcoded link. This is what you can copy and paste from the browser. If you click this link, the community will open on a specific instance. Anyone using a different instance (ex. anything except lemmy.ca in this case) will not be able to subscribe right away, and they will need to redirect it first.
• Sometimes you can't use the methods above. For example, if you want to create a nice thumbnail while promoting your community on [email protected], you will need to use this URL.
• If you use this method, try to use the other methods as well so people have options.

https://lemmyverse.link/c/[email protected]

• You can also use this external tool to automatically redirect users. Once the user clicks on the link, they will be redirected to the instance that they set. This can be great for new users that click on the link, who may not understand what is happening or how the instances work.
• This also works for posts, but I will write up a separate post for those

If you're like me, you would join one Lemmy instance, and then join a community by one of the following ways,

1. through a 3rd party search
2. on the server you are on
3. a link to the community

Let's say you find a community you like hosted from a different Lemmy instance, you bookmark it and find out that you have to make another account, which you don't, in order to post, interact and save settings.

We can fix this by modifying or editing the URL in the bookmark.

say my main account is in Lemmy world, I click a link to another community and it acts as if I should have an account on there and I can't log into my account through new instance! How do I make it just work with just my original account?

using https://lemmy.ml/c/linux_gaming as example (not in the screenshot but same concept)

1. at the beginning of the url, I would want to change the lemmy.ml to lemmy.world this tells "them" i'm on the instance that I signed up on.

2. at the end of the url right after the name of the instance lastly I would want to add @lemmy.ml. This is useful with communities with double names in different instances! Sometimes what will happen without that included in the url is "they'l" will take to the community you asked for but only if it's from that community at the start of the url, so be sure to have that in the bookmarked URL.

3. the bookmarked URL in my case should end up looking like this, https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]

An easily accessible list of communities with links and inputted descriptions from the op poster. edit: changed gaming community from beehaw to Lemmy.ml hopefully it'll be more easilly accessible.

tech/gaming news related communities:

1. [email protected] Keep up with the latest technology news
2. [email protected] Keep up with the latest fediverse updates
3. [email protected]
   Linux content, could be news or something random
4. !gaming[email protected] Keep up with the latest gaming news content

fun and amusement communities:

1. [email protected] random pictures of food, could help inspire a meal. don't worry it is safe for work despite the potentially misleading name.
2. [email protected] ask whatever floats your boat to Lemmy users available to answer your questions.
3. [email protected] post or consume some wholesome material.
4. [email protected] a currated list of some of the best Lemmy content.

Lemmy help and support

1. [email protected] For if you're really really new to Lemmy.
2. [email protected] free costumer support for Lemmy?
3. [email protected] learn, discuss or ask about Lemmy apps.

Mod: if you want to steal bits of this for an official sticky thread of your own or whatever feel free.

Newbies: Welcome to lemmy!

Where am I and what's going on?

You're on a platform called "Lemmy", a collection of discussion groups ("communities") around particular topics. You can think of it kind of like Reddit, or like a collection of old-school forums that all share a login.

Is Lemmy the Fediverse?

You might have heard the term "fediverse" thrown around, it's the name for a collection of platforms like Lemmy that all talk to each other. So Lemmy is just one small part of the Fediverse, but there are lots of others for you to investigate one day too :)

What about the Threadiverse?

Another Fediverse platform that works a bit like Lemmy does is called Kbin. Since both of them use a forum thread type structure for discussion, they became collectively known as the Threadiverse.

People keep talking about "instances" and I'm confused

Lemmy as a whole consists of lots of different websites, all running the "Lemmy" software and talking to each other. For example this community is hosted on lemmy.ca, whereas my user account is on lemm.ee, but I can post here anyway. They're two different websites (usually called "instances" or "servers"), but all part of the wider Lemmy platform.

You'll learn more about what this means as you go, but for the most part it's not super important to get started.

I clicked a link and it logged me out

Remember what we said about Lemmy actually being lots of websites? Chances are, you clicked a badly-formatted link that took you to a different one of those sites. You're not logged out of your account, you're just looking at another site.

If you're on the web, you can follow instructions in the sidebar and search for the community address from your instance's search page (magnifying glass icon at the top of the page). But if you're on a mobile app they all work differently so I can't sum that one up for you, sorry!

To create links that should work for everyone, you can use the ! syntax like so:

[email protected]

How do I find cool stuff?

Two main ways. First you can check out the All feed on your instance homepage. This shows all the content your instance knows about, from all the other Lemmy instances it talks to. Subscribe to any communities that catch your eye!

Alternatively you can use a search tool like https://lemmyverse.net/communities. Use the home icon in the top right to set your home instance, and search for stuff you want to talk about!

And if you're a fibre crafter, well, check out my profile because I post in a lot of relevant communities 😉

It can be hard for someone who's been here a while to explain things in a way that makes sense to absolute beginners. So if any of this was confusing, please just ask me in the comments and I'm happy to clarify.

Welcome, enjoy, and see you around!

• Add two spaces after a line of text, if you want to continue on the next line with no spaces.
  Like this (see this line just under the other!)!

.

• In Lemmy, you can copy a picture in the computer's clipboard and paste it straight away in the text box with Ctrl+V!
• Note the star. Click three dots on a comment to see it or look straight on a thread to see it. It's a saving feature. When you deem something worth coming back to or to remember about, click it. It gets saved in your account
• Lemmy supports the spoiler system. If you want to hide text (appears when clicked on), use that. Its symbol in the text editor is an excalamtion mark inside a triangle
• Add "-" with a space before a line of text to make a list!
• using the "#" lets you create a tag. Through tags you can find content outside the post and the community where you see the tag, going beyond to different communities, posts and threads and maybe find something new and interesting that you can start following!
• Add ">" (with no space) before a line of text to quote something

Quotation!

.

• See the dot above?
  If you want more space between paragraphs, you can use that (I know I do!). Makes reading text more clear, in my opinion!

.

Lemmy has many interesting communities of various topics. Check some of them out and subscribe to them if you get interested! And if you don't find something that just should be there, consider creating one yourself!
Your own fresh new community grows slowly. Make sure to post regularly and talk about your community in other posts/threads to gain some visibility!

Welcome to Lemmy! If this is your first experience in the Fediverse, then welcome to that too!

Don't worry about understanding everything right away. We all took time to get it, and many of us are still learning. You'll know enough to start using Lemmy very quickly, and you can fill in the rest as you go.

This is a brand-new community, so we're still adding resources for you. Go ahead and say hi or ask your questions, either as a comment or in a new post.

See the pinned post on [email protected] for a guide to finding new communities.