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.
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2025
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Lemmy.ca's Main Community
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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
MODERATORS
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 !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 :)
Welcome ๐
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!
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
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!
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I'm not new. This is my second post already.
Welcome nonetheless ๐
Elbows up!!!
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 ๐
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! ๐
Hello. Nice to see a Canadian alternative to reddit.
Welcome :) Let us know if you need help with anything!
Elbows up, hosers!
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.
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.
Hello, this place is kinda old school interwebs, I like it
Welcome!
We also have a few custom front ends, one of which is https://old.lemmy.ca/
Since it's developed by a third party, it's likely not as stable as the main interface, but it's fun to look at ๐
Hi thanks for welcoming. I joined this community because I was looking for a non u.s based social platform, that was like a reddit/message board, while being close to. Seems like a great social community on the Fediverse.
Happy to have you here ๐
Glad to have you. Enjoy your time here!
Bonjour all.
Beinvenue!
Bonjour, et bienvenue ๐
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.
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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
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.
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Bonjour, all! ๐
Bonjour! ๐
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!
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Hi everyone!
Welcome ๐
What exactly is an 'instance'?
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.
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Welcome!
I'd recommend looking through these two guides / infographics as they are a good introduction
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
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.
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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 ๐
You are currently labeled as a bot. You can change that in your account settings, there should be a checkbox "Bot account", uncheck it :)
Dang that was quick! Thank you! I am definitely not a bot, I enjoy human things like walking bipedally on my 2 legs and breathing oxygen rich air with my very human lungs!
That's what a bot would say. A human would complain about their microplastics-filled brain. ๐
That was very fast, thank you for responding so quickly ๐
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