Is there any interest in taking donations on Librapay or Open collective again?
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2025
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Welcome to Lemmy :)
We haven't revisited our donation methods yet, but we will at some point.
If you have a moment, could you share why you'd prefer to have Librapay / Open collective over the existing options? No wrong answers, I just wanted to copy it into our notes for when we revisit all that
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Another question: My email notifications take me to lemm.ca... is there any way to be directed to https://alex.lemmy.ca/lemmy.ca? Something in my settings maybe?
Oooh, that's a good feature request but not something we could easily do.
No worries, I was just wondering if it was already available and I couldn't find it.
If you're on desktop, it might be possible to set up a JavaScript bookmarklet for that. I can take a look tonight.
You would still open the lemmy.ca link first, but you wouldn't need to modify the URL manually. You would click on the bookmarklet
Thanks, but I don't want to put you through all that trouble. I'm guessing you're busy enough already. I'm also getting used to lemmy.ca... starting to feel more at home :)
That's very considerate, thank you :)
I've played with bookmarklets before, so it wasn't too much trouble. I don't normally use Alexandrite, but from my quick exploration it seems that Alexandrite URLs are very similar to the default ones, where it just appends alex.lemmy.ca/ to the start. If that is the case, the following steps should work. The steps are for Firefox, but it should be similar on other browsers:
- Right-click on the bookmark bar and click
Add Bookmark - Put anything you want in the name
- In the URL field, paste in this block of code:
javascript:(function(){
let currentURL = window.location.href;
if (currentURL.startsWith('https://lemmy.ca/')) {
window.location.href = currentURL.replace('https://lemmy.ca/', 'https://alex.lemmy.ca/lemmy.ca/');
}
})();
When you are on any lemmy.ca page, clicking on the bookmark should take you to the corresponding alex.lemmy.ca page. You can also make one to go in the opposite direction, with this block of code:
javascript:(function(){
let currentURL = window.location.href;
if (currentURL.startsWith('https://alex.lemmy.ca/lemmy.ca/')) {
window.location.href = currentURL.replace('https://alex.lemmy.ca/lemmy.ca/', 'https://lemmy.ca/');
} else if (currentURL === 'https://alex.lemmy.ca/lemmy.ca') {
window.location.href = 'https://lemmy.ca/';
}
})();
Hopefully that works!
Wow, thanks so much, that was really nice of you! :)
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.
Tip: sort by "Top 12 hours or 24hours". This is equivalent to reddit's "hot"
(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.
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 :)
I've been here for awhile and have a pretty good understanding of how federation works. Number (3) was a very concise way to explain how the All feed works. I sort of knew but that really helped me understand.
Number (7), I will suggest the use of the cross-posting feature. Post to the larger community for engagement but also cross-post to the smaller communities to help them grow. Quiet communities are a cat-and-mouse game where people don't post or comment because no one else is. The more people start to engage, the more others will start to engage.
What I like doing is posting to the small community first, and then cross posting from there
That way people in the larger community can follow the link back and learn about the community if they're interested. It also helps to mention the community at the start of the cross post since Lemmy doesn't do that automatically
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!
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
All of the above for me!
🫶 happy to be here
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?
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.
Perfect, I get it now, thanks!
For sure! If it helps, we put together this page on what the word means more generally (for all types of fediverse websites, and not just Lemmy). The infographic style images might be helpful
https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/get-started
For lemmy.ca specifically, you can think of the entire website as being one 'instance' of a larger network of similar websites. It is possible to shut down the 'federation' and just exist as our own isolated forum (similar to Reddit), but that defeats the purpose of running this kind of website.
This page should also help you see how it affects a Lemmy website like ours
https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/lemmy/for-users/detailed-overview
Wow, you guys have really done a terrific job on those guides!
Thanks, that helps! Sorry if this is a stupid question or not worded correctly: In this larger network, of which lemmy.ca is one "instance", are all instances Canadian?
Nope, lemmy.ca is Canadian and so is another big Lemmy instance called sh.itjust.works. There are also lots of smaller instances that are by Canadians. Since anyone can set up an instance, more technical users (with a background in that kind of thing) have set up instances for themselves or their friends / family. A university or local government could also set one up.
But the rest of the network is vast. A lot of the other Lemmy instances (ex. feddit.uk, jlai.lu) are European, aussie.zone is Australian, etc. Many of the instances are generalist instances not focusing on any location (lemmy.world, lemm.ee, etc) or topic specific (programming.dev is focussed on that).
I hope that's not too much information, I'm excited is all :)
Lol, not too much info at all... I'm excited too! I mean, this really is amazing. I'm still using Reddit right now, but weaning myself off by the day... it always takes me a bit of time to adjust to new websites. But Reddit's been a big one lately... with everything that's going on, I couldn't figure out where else we could all meet to continue organizing or even just chat... and suddenly here it is, lemmy! Anyhow, thanks for that explanation, well put and understood! Go lemmy! :)
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Glad to be here! As Reddit keeps enshittifying, and the boycott USAmerica movement gains momentum, hoping more folks migrate over.
You guys are awesome.
Any updates on when Pixelfed and Friendica will be ready? I’m waiting for the fedecan instance before I sign up for those :)
Pixelfed soon. We have a domain registered and I've started provisioning the infra.
Friendica isn't on our todo list yet, not sure if it will be or not since none of us are regular Facebook users.
Edit: Enough people are asking about friendica that I promise to investigate more after pixelfed is up.
Thank you!
I want to join Pixelfed, I joined a server but it isn't even updated to work with the app yet.
So I've been eagerly anticipating the fedecan one because I'm sure you guys will do a great job.
I couldn't see converting a lot of friends over to lemmy, but Pixelfed and loops is something I can see my friends being interested in.
Actually I am ashamed to tell that I am on Facebook, but more out of necessity and to keep in touch with relatives 😬
I deleted FB from my life a few years back, but I'm like >< this close to trying to set up a domain and my own friendica just for family. Back in the days of chronological order, FB was really nice for sharing photos and life event stuff. Now, saying that out loud (so to speak), maybe Pixelfed would satisfy that too - no idea because I never used it's corpo cousin!
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Woo! I'm from .world but wanted to make an account here too :D
Ditto!