this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2025
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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

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[–] LuckyPierre@lemm.ee 14 points 1 day ago

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

[–] Knightfox@lemm.ee 28 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] aeshna_cyanea@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's just life on the Internet/fediverse in general, there's a constant churn of the small websites/instances as people inevitably burn out. You gotta be mentally prepared for it. I'm really sad since .ee was one of the few good instances that federated with the unpopular ones too

The only solution is improvements to the protocol so migrating instances is less painful. A different form of identity (key-based rather than domain based) would be cool to let us keep handles across instances

[–] theblips@lemm.ee 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Oh so it's your fault then. Please stop ruining instances

[–] Knightfox@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] NewSocialWhoDis@lemm.ee 3 points 16 hours ago

NGL, I'm pretty sad to lose this handle.

I also had just joined Lemm.ee, barely over a month ago. I was really starting to enjoy it when they posted the news. Am disheartened, for sure.

[–] TheGuyTM3@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 day ago

Damn, even if it was to be excepted with how the admin issue was evolving, it's still sad.

But i guess the strengh of the fediverse come from the fact that such an issue can happen without impacting the entire lemmy community as a whole.

I'm just worried that the lack of moderation becomes a recurrent issue in the future of lemmy with the userbase growth and the lack of revenue.

I wish best luck for communities moderators and EE users!

[–] Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee 44 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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

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[–] MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca 24 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The settings import / export feature is extremely cool.

Reminds me of the many times I was banned from reddit for no good reason and then had to reset every one of my subs. So much easier, and just goes to back up the decentralized philosophy of lemmy.

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[–] MangioneDontMiss@lemm.ee 25 points 1 day ago (19 children)
[–] NewSocialWhoDis@lemm.ee 1 points 16 hours ago

As someone new to Lemmy, thanks for asking this. I just joined lemm.ee from a Reddit link, and I don't know all the different flavors of the different domains.

[–] TheTurner@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago

I just moved to lemmy.zip.

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I'd recommend going to lemmy.zip or lemmy.ca. They work almost exactly the same as lemm.ee, and you can interact with the same content.

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[–] Corno@lemm.ee 57 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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

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[–] tartaruga@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day ago

Please say it ain't so. I know it's hard work, but hang in there. The trolling is on hyperdrive now so that people don't act at this critical moment. Reddit sold out because of Elon Musk, and there is a new need for Lemmy because of it. I would forgive you if you did ads or used AI to moderate. The point is, either we fight the trolls online from the safety of our homes or we will have to deal with them in real life. Trust me, you don't want that. These are real people with a sick agenda, they are 1000 times worse in the flesh. If you need help, PM me. I'm sure others will step up to the plate. Anyone here willing to help Lemmy, please say you will in the comments.

[–] FrostyTrichs@crazypeople.online 302 points 2 days ago (26 children)

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.

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[–] moseschrute@lemmy.world 26 points 1 day ago (13 children)

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.

[–] TyrianMollusk@infosec.pub 0 points 12 hours ago

How do we prevent this from happening to other instances?

We don't, and we can't. What we need is to stop acting like Actors/People/Groups are single points homed on a single instance. They should be a ring of mirrored instance entities, so the "source" Actor and content are still there when one instance drops out of the ring. Everything is already getting copied around, we're just missing out on the biggest value of that: RAID for identities.

Ie, if I make my accounts on three sites, those should all be me, and it doesn't matter to the fediverse which one I use at any given moment. Same for communities.

That's real federation, not this ramshackle heap of points of failure where we just hope we don't individually get bit too often by shutdowns, even though shutdowns are completely inevitable.

[–] OmegaLemmy@discuss.online 13 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Normalising helping the instances out I guess, Lemmy acts more like a group/commune and it thrives when people step up to do more than their peers at their own expense to benefit everyone

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[–] biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 day ago (9 children)

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

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[–] happy_wheels@lemm.ee 20 points 1 day ago

So long, and thanks for all the fish! o7

[–] detun3d@lemm.ee 11 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 139 points 2 days ago (12 children)

Holy shit, that was unexpected.

[–] JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee 119 points 2 days ago (40 children)

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. :/

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[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is sad, but also not unexpected. I'd noticed a lack of engagement from their admin team for a while, and very often they wouldn't respond to reports. Still sad to see them go, and also slightly worrying since there are a lot of active communities on there and many many users.

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[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 112 points 2 days ago (2 children)
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