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

  • Ilandar@lemm.eeEnglish
    6·
    3 days ago

    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.

    • JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.eeEnglish
      7·
      3 days ago

      I don’t think reddit is necessarily doing anything better in that regard,

      I’d say the big, honking difference with Reddit is that there’s a team of paid admins and staff to handle so much of the chores and unsavory occurrences that the volunteer admins & mods on the Lemmysphere have to do on their own. Also, their software is years ahead, and I strongly suspect has many more out-of-the-box tools than Lemmy has on the admin side. It’s certainly that way for the mod side, I can attest.

      • Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        11·
        3 days ago

        handle so much of the chores and unsavory occurrences that the volunteer admins & mods on the Lemmysphere have to do on their own.

        Reddit was known for years to leave the moderation tasks to the volunteers admins. I’m still a mod in a quite active sub, the mod queue is around 2600 items now.

      • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        reddit has admins, AI moderations, aggressive filters, and COMPLIcit mods in many subs to do the policing.

        the auto-removal and auto-bans take much pressure off of reddit admins and mods, regardless if you were in violation of policies or not.

      • Ilandar@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        3 days ago

        That’s true, I guess I was commenting more on the differences between the userbases. I’m not sure much can really be done about that in the short term. Lemmy is this way because it is small and is a sort of counterculture protest against mainstream social media. Until it grows and evolves out of that framing, its userbase will continue to look very different to reddit’s.

    • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      i think lemmy is skewed, because the people that got banned from reddit for expressing such trollish/spammy , or propaganda(like conservatives and ml and hexbeared) come here thats why there are such strong opinion.

      and theres the recent arrivals: from reddits indiscriminate bannings.