7mo ago

lemm.ee is shutting down at the end of this month

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

602 comments

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?
  
  Probably because if they were enabled it would be filled with people soapboxing about their irrelevant hobbyhorses or offering to help just to keep the instance alive. Neither are useful or relevant. If people wanted the instance to survive then they should have been volunteering months ago, not at 11:59 on the Doomsday Clock.
  
  ... 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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  I think people really underestimate how much work it is to maintain a community online. It's something that is so outside of my skillset and capabilities that I feel awe when I see it done successfully.
  
  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!
  
  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.
  I guess it's not really surprising, though. The Lemmy userbase is much smaller and very skewed towards certain types of people with extremely strong opinions and low levels of tolerance for anything that goes against their worldview. I don't think reddit is necessarily doing anything better in that regard, it just benefits from having such a massive userbase filled with all kinds of people. The toxicity and off-topic intrusions of political/culture war stuff get drowned out over there, whereas here you'll frequently see threads where 90% of the comments are arguing about things that are completely irrelevant to the actual topic because so much of userbase has an activist mindset that is always itching for a fight.
  
  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...
  
  Perhaps I wasn't paying appropriate attention but it also seemed unexpected to me. Everywhere has a background level of "we want more mods and admins" so it gets easy to ignore, and it feels like we've gone straight from there to "right we're shutting down now" without an intermediate "we're really struggling here folk and may have to consider shutting down if it doesn't improve".
  
  the problem is the people who have trolled, spammed on reddit with right wing propaganda/ or pro-israeli also fled to lemmy causing problems here too. reddit now is just overmoderating to the point its not usable for most people now. reddit used to be a good place to go to, but they have been banning people so easily now, you cant even create a account without getting shadowbanned for some people.
  
  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.
  
  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 @sunaurus@lemm.ee has helped me out a couple of times.
Sad day indeed.
- This instance will live on. Definitely understand the burnout and hope @sunaurus@lemm.ee and the other volunteers here stick around.

- Sail into the sunset lemm.ee
  You will be missed
  
  Definitely

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.
- Piefed currently allows community transfers!
  
  and they don't support voyager
- 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.
- feddit.de disappeared a while back. As did the original UK one. (Both have been replaced)
  
  Was there an original uk one? This one is the only one I'm aware of, it had a moment of doubt a year back but we got new admins before we needed to move.
- 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 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.
- Yeah I agree, that model just isn't sustainable. Moderation is one of the most challenging aspects of running a Lemmy instance, and deciding to never defederate because of "free speech" and "user choice" just makes the job that much worse. It feels almost inevitable that instances like this will ultimately succumb to this type of burnout.
  Really I feel like we should stop talking about "defederation" as an abstract concept without context or reason since it makes it seem like defederation happens for no reason. Which is almost never the case. We don't talk about other forms of moderation that way, and if someone did it would be clear they're one of those free speech trolls, so why do we so casually talk about defederation this way? Seriously, defederation, like any other moderation is 100% necessary, because humans are evil pieces of shit. Not all of them, but many are. That's why we ban people, that's why we defederate the most rotten places in the fediverse. Saying "just block users" is counterproductive. You know what Lemmy would look like if that's all we offered here? Probably a more extreme version of 4chan, since those are the people that dominate when moderation isn't enforced.
  
  Agreed
- shouldve kept the nsfw, ml and hexbear instance seperate when they had the chance.
  
  Ironically, that lemm.ee still federated with .ml, hexbear, and lemmygrad was one of the primary factors for me deciding to move my account there from lemmy.world. I want to be a part of an instance that federates with those communities and then I can just block individual communities and accounts on a case-by-case basis from my account.

This is sort of unfortunate, but as long as the fediverse remains genuinely decentralized, I expect it's just going to be a fact of life. Instances are going to come and go, alternately riding in on waves of determination and enthusiasm and out in sluggish streams of burnout and ennui.
And in a way, I think it's arguably even a good thing, or at least not a bad one. The basic structure of the fediverse prevents centralization through ownership, but there's still a risk of individual instances gaining enough clout to effectively act as a centralizing force. Not that Lemm.ee was in that position or even headed that way, but still, broadly I think that the understanding that instances are likely ephemeral — that they come and they go, and much more to the point that that's as it should be — is an important one.
And it neatly illustrates a large part of the reason that I have at least a dozen or so accounts scattered around the fediverse, including, for a little while longer, this one.
- It's important now that we don't all move to lemmy.world we want many smaller instances, not one really big one.
  PS. Checkout PieFed, it's much more feature rich compared to lemmy, and has better mod tools.
  
  Piefed is very centralized as of now, and while it is small overall, we'll see how it goes with the new instances.
- I suspect there is wisdom to be learned from forest management, specifically how regular, small controlled burns are how you avoid huge, unmanageable forest fires.
- @WatDabney @FrostyTrichs I started my friendica instance after facebook banned me for pointing out issues with the Covid-19 vax, then I started my mastodon instance after twatter did the same prior to Elon's ownership. I've had some hardware issues along the way but we've got those straightened out. There seems to be the this false assumption on many peoples part that fediverse instances should be echo chambers like the old facebook and twitter were. I think it's healthy for opposing viewpoints to be expressed, but I believe it is unhealthy to allow to degrade to ad hominem attacks, I run my sites accordingly, others don't feel this way they prefer an echo chamber and there are instances that accommodate those folks well, and to me this is the beauty of the fediverse. I personally prefer long format posting because I don't believe short format provides the opportunity for the depth of discussion needed to explore opposing view, historical perspective, cause and effect elaboration, etc, which is, of my nodes I spend most of my time on friendica. Friendica is however not efficient, it takes a lot of hardware resources to run it efficiently.
  
  issues with the Covid-19 vax
  healthy for opposing viewpoints
  Vaccine skepticism is not a "healthy viewpoint", but quite the opposite. Vaccines and inoculations are about as much "proven science" as we have, with hundreds of years behind the science. Spreading anti-vaxxer propaganda kills people.
  
  I think it's healthy for opposing viewpoints to be expressed
  Yeah, that way the community can get inoculated with these ideas and learns how to respond to them, and over enough time the response gets faster and more efficient so that the body as a whole builds up a resistance against whenever those types of comments show up.
  
  If only you could dedicate as much effort into understanding basic science.
  
  This right here is why you should stay in school.
  
  alot of people came here from the recent reddit ban waves, which correlated with the large jump in users on .ee, unfortunately, it also includes people that were banned for spreading rw propaganda, israeli talking points, general trolls. legitmate users were also part of those bans.

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.
  
  so you have to create a new account as well, when you join said instance.
- Thank God I don't have to reblock all the furry communities.
  
  it seems that this will save your subscriptions list and some other settings but not your list of blocked communities. at least, it hasn't worked like that for me. edit - disregard! they showed up after a while.
  also, you need to save your avatar pic and re-upload.
  
  all the kink porns/furry porn yea, i had to block alot of nsfw, and a whol host of users i blocked

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
- We are currently preparing the 1.0 release which will have lots of major new features, such as private communities, multi-communities and much more. Although 0.19 is also getting constant updates with smaller improvements, for example 0.19.11.
- 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.
  
  Interstellar - https://interstellar.jwr.one/
- Yeah hope ppl remake them quickly

Huh. One of the least expected instances I thought would shut down :(
- Right? Where will I go? What will I do?
  
  I figured it's all federated and I can block and find tune regardless, so I just hopped over to .world. Literally took 2 minutes, so that was nice at least. But sad to see it go. It was my home for two years and it was perfect for what I needed :/

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. If you're a community mod looking to migrate, Piefed apparently makes it particularly easy!
  Also @1024_Kibibytes@lemm.ee
  
  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.
  
  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...).
  
  Thank you!
  
  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!
- I may be biased, but lemmy.ca is pretty great
  
  I may be biased
  So far everyone has recommended their home instance. 😆
  
  i might join it, eventhough im not canadian.
- 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.
- I'm very happy with infosec.pub. If I had to pick a different one, then I would choose lemmy.dbzer0.com.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- sh.itjust.works has lived up to its name

Sad to see it go, one of the biggest instances. But I totally get it from the admins' point of views.

I literally just woke up and opened Lemmy to see this. As a lemm.ee user this is sad news but I respect the decision of all those involved as they navigate this

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. :)
- It's possible that lemm.ee grew too fast for its own good. Also possible that it lacked an "identity" as it was very general purpose. Certain instances attract users that behave better. Perhaps lemm.ee did not (no shade on anyone, just speculating).
  
  I've certainly seen some toxic .ee users which jives with your theory.
  
  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.

It was the first foray into the fediverse and helped wean me off reddit. Sad to see it go.

I wish a sincere “fuck you” to all the Russian trolls that caused this outcome.
- Context?
  
  In case you’re not actually here to sealion I encourage you to read through the modlog of lem.ee communities.
  
  Certain kinds of people blame Russia for all bad things in their life
- To be fair there are a lot of American tankies as well.
  
  No, only Russian, you disinformation spreading tankie!
- Wait what happened
  
  Nothing, they're just one of those people who thinks everything is a Russian conspiracy
- Yes, lemm.ee is shutting down because of a sinister foreign conspiracy.

After the call for admins, there was never an indication that the search wasn't going well. Honestly, I would've put some time in (& I'm sure many others would've) if we'd known closure was imminent.
- An excuse isn't always a cause, I guess.
  
  You're saying they're looking for an excuse to shut down? Yeah honestly that's what I figured, locking comments doesn't make any sense otherwise.
- its probably bad sign that there was no noise after asking for donations/moderators/admins. if they had "hired" more you would think there would be posts about them.
- Yeah I have years of various moderating experiences, and would've happily volunteered to start a .ee account and help once in a while.

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
  
  The first thing they'd do would be to defed ml, grad and hexbear anyway.
  Although I wouldn't blame them for the later two, but the whole point of .ee was it's reluctance to defed.
- Yeah, I'd love to see if something like that were possible. I'd even volunteer....

It may also be relevant to note that content from lemm.ee will not be deleteable once they go offline. If you are a user on lemm.ee and there is any content at all that you may at some point in the future want to delete, now is the time.

Very sad to see lemm.ee shutting down. I liked it here, the instance was easy to pronounce. Good luck lemm.ee admins with your future endeavors.
- 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.:-)
  
  I guess this is a nice test of the migration feature for a lot of users :)

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.
Lemmy probably needs support for different levels of permissions, like Discord has, and PieFed has this too (but I don't think it's as in-depth as Discord yet)
- Relevant issue: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3375
  It seems like nutomic is in favor of this idea. He stated that he wanted to implement such a thing in the future when most bug fixing is done. So we definitely could see this during the v1.x.x releases: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3303#issuecomment-1607459130

Dang it! Lemm.ee was formed in summer 2023 alongside the other instances that became the Lemmyverse's biggest, sad to see it go. Thank you for everything!

What's really disappointing is that I just made my Lemm.ee account because Lemmy.One had announced they were closing down. Kinda disheartening to make a new account only for the new instance to also shutdown.

I’ve only been on Lemmy for a year, but this feels pretty significant. How do we prevent this from happening to other instances? Or do we not see it as a huge problem if we assume most active users will migrate to other Lemmy instances?
Also side note, I think Voyager defaults to lemm.ee.

so where do i go now?

This hits so deep.
Where can I migrate to? I want a similar instance, that doesn't block other instances, instead lets users decide what content they see on their frontpage, as how lemm.ee did it.
I'd be very glad for any suggestions...
(edit: ended up migrating to lemmy.zip . Thanks everyone for your suggestions!)

im going to miss lemmee also this is going to led to more lemmy.world centralization sadly
- I would hope that the users would not go immediately to lemmy.world, but rather other instances. But you may be right unfortunately
  
  I went to world since thats what popped up the most in the all feed for .ee

Reddit refugee here, can someone recommend to me a place that is not heavily censored but also not filled with racists and white supremacists?
- sh.itjust.works
- lemmy.dbzer0.com

aww man, this is actually depressing. Hope Lemmy as a whole grows back better after this blows over. o7

I almost joined you. Thank you for all you did and I'm sad to see you go. I guess there's a reason why it's not that toxic on Lemmy, you guys were/are taking the brunt of it.

So long, and thanks for all the fish! o7

as someone who barely understands this whole fediverse stuff and had a difficult enough time just choosing and getting into an instance after leaving reddit, what does this mean for me?
is my account and all its posts, comments, activity and bookmarks just gonna be gone?
can that stuff be imported into a different instance?
this sounds like a huge pain in the ass, and my plan in picking a bigger instance in the hope it wouldnt just go off the rails or shut down apparently backfired.

I know that instance had a policy of trying not to defederate from anything (unless very necessary). Is there another instance like this that will not be shutting down?
- I think sh.itjust.works has a similar policy IIRC reading the various instance policies across Lemmy. I suppose Hexbear may also be in that category, but I don't want to be subjected to constant pics of pigs shitting on their own balls.
  
  Hexbear is actually pretty selective about who they federate with.
  
  Yeah tbh I feel like Hexbear/ML/Lemmygrad are all instances that will ruin/poison any other instances touched by them much. As well as any communities modded by the .World admin team.
- lemmy.sdf.org
- Lemmy.today
- infosec.pub
- .ml is like that.

Such a shame. 💔

I was taking a break from browsing lemmy the last few days and just saw this. I'm absolutely devastated. I knew the admins were looking for new mods and such but never knew it was this severe. I don't think I could've spent my time doing this work but I definitely could've given a few dollars if that helped.

NOO! I loved this place.

Very sad to hear but totally understandable. Unfortunately, this will make the centralization of lemmy world even worse.
How much effort is it actually to host a small instance? I am thinking about hosting one mostly for my self. Mainly because I am interested in the technology. Also my country doesn't have one so that could be a topic too if there is some interest. But hearing this I am not so sure anymore. I can't put many hours into it each week just to keep it running.
- Sounds like it's not the technical side that's too difficult, but managing the users.
  
  Yeah moderation is the biggest challenge on Lemmy servers, they ended up making it more challenging for themselves with the decision to never defederate from any instance and lean all the way into the hysteria surrounding defederation. That's really not a sustainable model for the long term, it increases workload, and drives off portions of the userbase who are sensitive to extreme or aggressive people (the people who run wild if you never defederate troll instances or ban trolls).
- Not too hard tbh, I had a bird themed one going for like 3 days. I'd love to join a smaller instance, and would happily volunteer to help with one.

That is unfortunate :( they were one of the instances I could easily recommend to new users. Sad to see them go, but I get it. Moderation is hard job
- lemmy.cafe is extremely recommendable to me now.
  Pretty neutral, doesn't have a weird domain name and they block hexbear and lemmygrad.

Well that's sudden and unexpected. Was there any calls for admins? I'm sort of surprised that lemm.ee couldn't find enough volunteers with their sizable user base.
- https://lemmy.ca/post/37365128

Forgive me, I’m still not sure what this means. Is this site just dead at the end of the month?
- You are a lemme.ee user, so you will need to find another instance (it's like a server) if you want to keep using Lemmy - and I hope you do!
  https://join-lemmy.org/ has a listing of instances, though I'm sure others will hop in here and recommend some.
  Edit: This comment describes how to migrate your subscriptions, blocks, and saved posts
  
  Is there a basic rundown on the different Lemmy Servers eg I have heard negative things about Hexbear etc?
  
  Neat, thank you!
- Not this specific site, but another instance of lemmy. I think.

Dear lemm.ee and the wonderful admin,
I'm sad to see you go, but thank you, sincerely, for being the springboard that allowed me to dive into the refreshing waters of Lemmy.
Stay golden, pony boy

Thank you and the admin team, past and present, for their time and care.

Big thanks to lemm.ee, great job to the whole team

Kinda scary that the threadi (??) instance with the (probably) second-highest active users struggled enough to warrant a shutdown :(
- maybe the influx of 10k accounts in the last few weeks just pushed the admin team too far?
  
  They seemed to have been asking for help around the time reddit was banning in waves around February
- it correlates in line with the massive reddit ban waves recently.

Gonna miss it here. The admins were chill as hell and so were the communities hosted here. Especially the car one.
- Who the h*ck are you.

On the topic of admjn burnout, I find it ridiculous that we choose to put so much burden on instance and community admins. Why don't people just utilize their block functions instead of expecting admins to clean up bad posts and users as fast as possible?
Not saying admins should do nothing, but it should be sufficient for an admin to only do what's absolutely necessary to keep the instance alive (including removal of illegal content). Anything else should be considered extra credit and no one should be entertained complaining about it.
- If you see a community for the first time, and then see harassment and insults everywhere, you're probably not going to block every offender, you're just going to not visit that community again.
  
  Libertarians envision a system where everyone takes care of their own trash without regulation or municipal waste services.
  Normies come in and see neighborhoods with rubbish everywhere, overrun by bears and racoons.
  Not just a metaphor, it really happened.
  
  Sure, if I want a community about cooking and instead of finding cooking content I find insults and harassment, then I will leave. That's essentially an equivalent of the blocking feature I spoke about.
  But I find it hard to believe that such a cooking community would become good by just having a moderator ban all the offenders, when they occupy most of the posts.
- still need to report people for spreading dangerous info around, and sometimes the same dangerous people are probably trying to brigade and report people too. whichr eddit had to deal with unfortunately, that caused them to overmoderate.

Well now I feel awful for not helping when they needed admins :( I don't manage servers or even have experience managing communities.
- Don't feel bad, it's not like it's your fault. Just keep it in mind for the next instance you join, if they seem to be struggling or call for help.

Very unfortunate, lemm.ee had a real promise of being a flagship lemmy instance.
Bit of an off topic question though, as someone who really has no knowledge on software development, what are the chances lemmy as a whole could fork?
- What does forking have to do with this instance shutdown? They were lacking admins for running the instance, not developers.
  
  Because a couple weeks ago, the lemm.ee crew made a post asking for donations and their comment section immediately went dumpster fire mode. Not saying they can't ask for donations, but I can imagine its very problematic considering that the lead developers themselves are very hateful, transphobic and have questionable political opinions.
  You cannot possibly convice me that didn't somehow influence this decision to shutdown the instance. And if lemmy doesn't find a way to keep that stuff down we're def gonna see more instances shutting down.
- There are already lemmy compatible solutions.
  Don't need another fork / competitor unless it has killer features that other don't have.

I'll need some time to find where to migrate, if at all. Lemm.ee was very well managed and I would've gladly volunteered to help out. My bad for not paying closer attention sooner.

I moderate a community. Do I need to move that community? Or can I just give it over to my new account?

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