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
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.
why are comments even disabled in the first place?
its probably because its just an important announcement post they plan to pin for the whole month and they dont want it to get filled with people talking in it which could led to the comment derailing the discussion
… They are literally saying they don’t have admins/mods enough. You want to strain your mods? Allowing comments on that sort of post is how you do that.
it could have been a cool free 4 all like in the good old internet times xD
good
Was it?
Yeah sure its all fun and games until people start posting csam.
“Think of the kids”
Seriously, I have enough of people using this kind of reasoning for censoring everything and having strong moderation. I’m pretty sure nearly no one does that
He said he’s fine with csam on lemmy, as it will be voted away
then block them with your user power. i dont see the problem?
CSAM stands for Child Sexual Abuse Material (child porn under its old moniker).
I’m going to assume you didn’t know what the acronym meant because saying “just block them I don’t see the problem” to CSAM posts is very idiotic.
The problem, besides that just being gross, is that hosting csam is a very serious crime in most places. Leaving that unmoderated can very easily end with alphabet agencies from around the world shutting down lemmy instances.
And hosting CSAM is immoral.
Yes officer, this one right here.
Probably because if they were enabled it would be filled with people soapboxing about their irrelevant hobbyhorses or offering to help just to keep the instance alive. Neither are useful or relevant. If people wanted the instance to survive then they should have been volunteering months ago, not at 11:59 on the Doomsday Clock.
The sad thing is that nobody knew there was a doomsday clock.
There always is. No one is getting paid to do this, they’re giving up their free time and (often) money. Leaving it to the last minute to volunteer or donate is never sustainable long-term. If people really care so much and are willing to sacrifice either, they need to be proactive rather than wait for emergency pleas for help.
On the other hand, as far as I can tell, they only called for new admins/mods 4 months ago and not since then. I agree that if you care about something, you should support it and not wait until they cry for help, but there is also a matter of being proactive and transparent about how volunteer recruitment is going (well or badly).
Completely. This feels like a major communications fail. It’s a basic technique of fundraising and mobilization: put a big ticking clock on your campaign and people will step up in time.
I think you’re missing the point. The call for new admin volunteers was stickied by the instance for an extended period. Even using an app rather than the web interface, it was stuck at the top of my feed until I hid the post.
The group of people who ignored that call to action yet would have volunteered with a follow-up post of a “big ticking clock” as it were, aren’t necessarily the type of people you want to admin an instance. Especially one as big as lemm.ee. Certainly, if any admin will do then increasing recruitment efforts makes sense.
Yet, they’re entitled to their own decisions, triumphs and failures. So, they can shutdown the instance. Now, it would be a different thing if people really want them to be around again, raise some money, grab a backup, buy the domain name, let’s gooo!! …or not. Fine by me. If only 2 users from the instance decided to start a new one this is a huge win :)
❤️
Reddit refugee here, can someone recommend to me a place that is not heavily censored but also not filled with racists and white supremacists?
Well now I feel awful for not helping when they needed admins :( I don’t manage servers or even have experience managing communities.
Don’t feel bad, it’s not like it’s your fault. Just keep it in mind for the next instance you join, if they seem to be struggling or call for help.
Sucks, made a new account on world. The app i use defaults to .ee so thats why i chose it when i joined lemmy.
Almost as if Lemmy should not tie each community to only one specific underlying server.
It’s sad. I’m really going to miss this place. I migrated to lemmy.blahaj.zone. I hope I’ll continue to have great experiences there.
Forgive me, I’m still not sure what this means. Is this site just dead at the end of the month?
That is unfortunate :( they were one of the instances I could easily recommend to new users. Sad to see them go, but I get it. Moderation is hard job
oh shit :(
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.
I think I might be based there, but how do I know? I’ve literally only used the app to access this place. Laptop is strictly reserved for porn. lol
So long, and thanks for all the fish! o7
I was not expecting to wake up to this :(
On one hand, it makes me want to recommend Lemmy.World even more. On the other hand, if Lemmy.World ends up like this too…
It’s a really tricky situation.
I don’t see us going down anytime soon, and at current user numbers I don’t think there’s going to be a major difference in moderation workload with the influx of users compared to what we already have, but it really is not great for decentralization. We already try delegating the majority of moderation to community moderators where applicable, where on a lot of other instances the admin teams seem to be more involved in addressing community reports on admin level as well. For the most part we’re dealing only with instance level topics in the admin team and provide some additional tooling to improve report notifications to community mods. There are even various benefits from a moderation perspective when users are all local and not remote, as with federation a lot of signals that would allow various types of abuse are unfortunately lost. That said, I would still prefer if there were more stable and larger instances overall, while not having a single instance stand out as massively larger than any other one. Friendly “competition” is almost always beneficial for everyone involved.
lemm.ee being the second largest instance and the shutdown only being announced less than a month before is unfortunately also not something that gives people looking for a stable instance much confidence. I hope this won’t scare too many users away from Lemmy and that most will just find a new instance in the Fediverse.
Instance moderation and moderation in general are unfortunately tasks that can be very challenging at scale, even with just a few thousand users, especially when dealing with drama. It’s not really a surprise that there are somewhat frequently posts from larger instances looking for new admins, while older admins on the same instance are becoming less active. Even if people aren’t exhausted from their involvement, their circumstances in life may change, or they may no longer be interested in Lemmy as a platform in general, leading to a number of reasons why admins may not be as active as it seems when looking at the list of admins in an instance sidebar. It’s often a thankless job with a lot of things happening in the background to deal with spam, trolls and other issues, which most users won’t even see when done right.
One of the best instances that was up. Sad to hear about it shutting down :/
Wow. This is by far the biggest loss I’ve ever witnessed on lemmy.
I totally understand it. It’s a shame it has to happen. Sending much love to the lemm.ee admins.
Also, generally, lemmy can feel very gloomy, there are a lot of fights and stuff as well. I know we can’t prevent this. But whatabout fostering a slightly less cynical culture? Lets compliment more, be slightly less snarky in our replies. Don’t only comment to criticise. Also comment to praise when you see something you like. :)
We get trolled a lot, that’s mostly what you’re seeing. They seem to be off schedule lately or the admins are handling them better, not sure which. I agree with being better commenters though, it would help the atmosphere.
The rare time I venture to reddit to talk about Lemmy I saw lemm.ee posted the most.
I’ve certainly seen some toxic .ee users which jives with your theory.
I think a big part of it is because they defeded basically no one. Made it a great instance for modding from but also great for being an alt for people in undesirable instances.
allowed to many ml and hexbear to show up in ee feeds, im not surprised. .world has some questionable people too.
That’s just what critical discourse looks like. If people agreed on everything, we wouldn’t need these discussions to begin with.
I don’t think it has to be like that. We can discuss things while still being positive. Ideally discussions aren’t about disagreements only, but understanding, seeing things from other’s perspective, finding middle grounds and so on.
I agree on principal, but in reality it would feel like chatting to tech support or chatgpt.
Besides, bitter sweet, the bitter makes the sweet so much more sweeter.
