With all the new users coming to Lemmy, myself included, I thought we could pin a FAQ to this community.

Here are a few questions that I’ve seen floating about the last few days. If anyone would like to take a stab at answering them in the comments, I’ll edit the post and add them here.

1. What is Lemmy? Lemmy is a link aggregation social network similar to reddit but with some important differences. Lemmy has no advertising or tracking, it’s open source, and is compatible with the fediverse. This means it can communicate with other fediverse sites.
2. How does Lemmy compare to Reddit? Lemmy is decentralized. It is not owned by a single person/group/corporation. Lemmy is open source and anyone can create their own server/instance. There is no advertising or tracking on Lemmy. Subreddits are called communities. Posts are still voted on. For more information, see this guide.
3. What does federated mean? Federated means a group of individuals that work together but each keep their own autonomy. The word “fediverse” stems from the word federated. This means that each site/instance in the fediverse can communicate with each other but they remain separate entities with their own rules, norms, interfaces, uses, etc.
4. Does it matter what instance I make an account on and what are the implications?
5. Can I transfer my account to another instance in the future?
6. If my instance shuts down, what happens to my posts, comments, messages, history, etc?
7. Can I subscribe to communities outside of my home instance? How? Yes. First search the Lemmy Community-Browser for a community –> Click through and visit the community –> copy the url –> return to home community (lemmy.ml) –> click magnifying glass icon at the top of the page to search –> search for the copied URL –> click through to the result –> click subscribe.
8. How does moderation work?
9. Are bots allowed?
10. Are there Android and iOS apps? Yes. Android has Jerboa and iOS has Mlem. It is early days for both these apps. Mlem is still a TestFlight app and Jerboa is in Alpha.
11. What is the best way to find new communities? The Lemmy Community-Browser is a list of all lemmy communities across all instances. An outside community can be subscribed to by searching for the URL in your home instance’s search field. Ex. Search LCB for a community –> Click through and visit the community –> copy the url –> return to home community (lemmy.ml) –> click magnifying glass icon at the top of the page to search –> search for the copied URL –> click through to the result –> click subscribe.
12. Can I subscribe/follow a user?

… What else?