Welcome to even more new users! There’s real hype behind Lemmygrad due to the Reddit API thing, which drives further hype for people to recommend Lemmygrad to their friends.

This post should contain everything to get you started using Lemmygrad, so please read it entirely. Then, at the end, why not make your first comment in this thread and tell us about yourself?

What is Federation

Lemmygrad works similarly to Reddit for users. You can make posts, subscribe to communities, comment on posts, etc.

The major part where we differ from Reddit (aside from the fact we’re not corporate-owned and don’t run ads) is that Lemmy allows federation to other instances. If you click on the “All” button at the top of your home page, you’ll see posts from Lemmygrad as well as other instances (two big ones we federate with is lemmy.ml and lemmy.world). You can act on those instances the same way you would act on Lemmygrad, except they have their own rules and moderation team. They’re completely independent from us, you can just interact with them. And they can interact with us too.

You can also subscribe to federated communities by the way, and they will show up on your “Subscribed” view (on the same group of buttons as All).

We also federate with Mastodon and other ActivityPub projects by the way. You access all federation from lemmygrad.ml, by using the All button or typing the URL you want to reach in the search bar.

Speaking of, please read our rules

Lemmygrad-wide rules are on the homepage. I’ll copy them here too:

Rules
  1. No capitalist apologia / anti-communism.
  2. No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
  3. Be respectful. This is a safe space where all comrades >should feel welcome, this includes a warning against >uncritical sectarianism.
  4. No porn or sexually explicit content (even if marked >NSFW).
  5. No right-deviationists (patsocs, nazbols, strasserists, >duginists, etc).

Since January 2023, the creation of new “Shit X Say” type communities is not allowed. Please post anything of that nature to Shit Reactionaries Say or Shit Ultras Say.

We take these rules seriously and you will be warned or even banned (temporarily or permanently) for breaking them. We’ve cultivated a very laid-back and welcoming atmosphere here over the years though, so don’t be scared to participate haha

If you participate on Lemmygrad from another instance, we also expect you will respect our rules.

Creating communities

Unlike other Lemmy instances, we allow users to create communities here. You’re free to create a community (subreddits on the aforementioned inferior competitor), but please look around to make sure it doesn’t already exist. Community bloat is a real problem on such a small site, which is why we merged the Shit X Say communities into just 2 earlier this year.

You’re free to run a community you create however you want for the most part, but you have to respect and enforce the instance rules. For our part we try not to step on your toes as a mod unless we have to make a sitewide ban. Essentially it helps spread the load of moderation from our small team of 5 people.

As a moderator, you can’t ban people from the lemmygrad as a whole, just from your community. Generally, we find that someone who gets banned from a community should be banned from the whole instance, so in that case feel free to contact us or make a report and we’ll look at it.

How to make reports

We’re a small team managing a growing forum, and as such we rely on reports to see what we can’t see ourselves. Please see this post: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/727768

What else?

We try to submit big decisions to the community for input as much as possible, for example the merger of SXS communities was first put to a vote, and then further discussed to see how we should go about it.

We hope you enjoy Lemmygrad, now it’s your turn ;) tell us a bit about yourself!

  • WhatWouldKarlDo
    371·
    1 year ago

    Thanks for having me! This is my first time being openly communist online. I’m a long time lurker, and I love the vibe here. In light of the recent radlib uprising though, I really wanted to openly show my support for my comrades here.

  • pax27
    34·
    1 year ago

    Ahoy hoy! I’m one of the Redd-fugees, pretty active in r/LateStageCapitalism up until recently, and I hope to get to know some more like-minded people up in this place (as the kids say these days).

    I’m also that type of middle aged person that gets more chill about everything as I pile up the years. Well, apart from how much I hate this ever intensifying capitalistic hellscape we find ourselves in.

    I use the same username here as I did on Reddit, we’ll see if that’s a smart move or not. I like the look of things, especially after I found the dark setting for the UI and I can definitely see myself hang out with all you nice people even if, or when, Reddit change their tone. Yeah, as if…

    • Nakaru
      16·
      1 year ago

      Welcome comrade! I also don’t anticipate reddit making any changes to reverse their capitalist trajectory so my plan is to enjoy the sharing of thoughts, opinions, and information here. I wish you the best!

    • redtea
      11·
      1 year ago

      The atmosphere is so much better here than on Reddit. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it if you like chill. I could never really participate on Reddit because there were just too many trolls but very few trolls make it here and those who do leave or get booted quick.

    • Drive-by Lurker
      5·
      1 year ago

      especially after I found the dark setting for the UI

      Thank you friend. It didn’t even occur to me.

      • pax27
        5·
        1 year ago

        No, I just searched for a Reddit alternative (quite literally) and looked at the alternatives. I liked the familiarity and the general feel I got from this community and it felt like I could fit in rather well here.

  • DONTxISNTxCANT
    33·
    1 year ago

    Former redditor ready to finally burn that bridge. Sick of the libs always finding excuses to justify making deals with fascists or saying “we should do X” when it’s obvious the machine will never allow their fantasy reforms. I’m a fan of dissecting rhetoric and propaganda, with an interest in mental wellness, comparative religion, and consciously examining how we make meaning.

    I do my best to live a life without illusions while not becoming disillusioned and try to focus on bringing change over the long term.

  • Ratboy@lemmy.ml
    31·
    1 year ago

    Yoooo, I just joined lemmy.ml a couple of days ago as part of the reddit exodus. I expect to be spending a ton of time here though, you all seem rad. I don’t adhere to a particular political ideology beyond leftist simply because I don’t feel knowledgeable enough in any flavor of communism or anarchism to brandish the label. I haven’t read any theory but have tried to do some independent research on Cuba and North Korea specifically. I feel like I’ve done just enough to kill my brain worms and recognize that they aren’t these evil superpowers that American propaganda paints them to be. Also Michael Parenti is daddy.

    Definitely will be here lurking and learning and expanding my understanding of Marxism. And shitposts of course lol. Stoked to be here!

    • redtea
      20·
      1 year ago

      I don’t feel knowledgeable enough in any flavor of communism or anarchism to brandish the label

      We’re all still learning, comrade. It took me a long while to call myself a Marxist. There’s a tipping point where you can’t go back and have to embrace what you’ve become haha.

    • purahna
      17·
      1 year ago

      happy to have you comrade, if you like Parenti you’re a friend of mine ✊

      what are your favorite works of his?

    • Makan ☭ CPUSA
      4·
      1 year ago

      Did you come with the Reddit post that I posted back on /r/InformedTankie (and subsequently cross-posted to a lot of places)?

      If anyone has, please tell me.

    • IntoDaLagoon
      2·
      1 year ago

      I don’t feel knowledgeable enough in any flavor of communism or anarchism to brandish the label

      Well you’ll be happy to know you’ve already started reverse-engineering Mao

      For real though, welcome, I’m new here myself from the hexagonal bear site and while it’s a nice active place, we don’t get the same amount of newcomers over there that this place does, and seeing so many new comrades warms my heart.

  • Che's Motorcycle
    22·
    1 year ago

    I’m a longtime Reddit lurker, and joined lemmegrad last week. I’m just happy to see there’s an actual commie space online and to be able to participate in it!

  • Hexahedra
    17·
    1 year ago

    sup! we heard about lemmy when we first joined mastodon 3 years ago but just now exploring it. weve barely used our reddit account when we had one but this instance seemed pretty cool so we decided to check this out :::)

  • Soviet Pigeon
    13·
    1 year ago

    For me, it was particularly important to be able to create a filter list of subreddits that should not be shown to me. I was able to filter out all the US-related stuff in particular. I do not live there.

    I don’t know if the official app can do that. Even if it does, I don’t feel like patching it so I don’t have to see ads.

    The only Android clients I don’t really like are the ones I found on F-Droid.

    I’m just not that familiar with it yet. I had commented on something once, it was there and then gone after a while without me knowing why.

  • Compadre de Ogum
    12·
    1 year ago

    hello.

    what is hexbear and why dont they federate with anything?

    also, what are the bad lemmy instances i should be wary of?

    • purahna
      29·
      1 year ago

      hi friend! I’m from hexbear and I hang out here as of recently. I’ll give you the brief.

      Hexbear was once another Lemmy instance just like all the others. At some point a while back, we decided we wanted some other features that lemmy didn’t support, like custom emoji and pronoun flair. So we forked lemmy and did our own thing. We kinda started to regret it because lemmy started making performance improvements that we wanted, so our lovely development team is in the process of implementing the hexbear-unique features in mainline lemmy and migrating us back to mainline lemmy. We’re actually set to migrate to mainline lemmy on the 17th without federation yet, and we’re set to turn on federation, starting with lemmygrad, some undefined but soon date after that when we work out all the migration bugs.

      looking forward to shitposting with you comrade 🫡

      oh, also, some more notes:

      • hexbear is pan-leftist with a definitive bias towards Marxism (but we do have anarchist comms and we do have lots of good faith and rewarding interactions with the anarchists there)
      • hexbear is l a r g e by fediverse standards (600 users online at time of writing)
      • Compadre de Ogum
        13·
        1 year ago

        hexbear is l a r g e by fediverse standards (600 users online at time of writing)

        now with twitter burning, i bet that will become closer to the standard, like what happened with mastodon

    • Bloops
      21·
      1 year ago

      Hexbear, originally known as chapo dot chat, was created three (?) years ago by members of /r/chapotraphouse after the subreddit got banned. Its software was based off of lemmy, but so many changes were made that they no longer worked together. Now, they finally added all the features they contributed to lemmy, so hexbear will become a lemmy instance in a few days. The admins said they will only be federating with lemmygrad for the moment. It’s basically been its own forum for a couple years now so federation with the rest of the instances would chance the vibe a lot.

      sh.itjust.works, sopuli.xyz, feddit.de, beehaw.org, lemmy.one, lemmy.ca, and midwest.social, and probably some other moderately sized instances all have lemmygrad blocked, so their users won’t see any of your replies. There is now an nsfw lemmy instance so if you don’t want to see porn, make sure to block that. I forget the exact name and I don’t want to look it up, sorry. The 196 blahaj zone community is anticommunist and maybe also anti-anarchist?? so I’d recommend just blocking that cause you’ll get banned immediately anyway.

  • alex_steelman
    10·
    1 year ago

    Hello! I was never that active on Reddit, but it’s good to find a federated alternative, anyways. I try to make socialist infographics in my spare time.

  • Scientific Utopian
    7·
    1 year ago

    Saw this posted on r/socialism, so I came. Happy to be here. Will mostly be lurking. Heavy RevLeftRadio Red_Menace listener. Can’t quite quit Reddit because I need my doses of tradespeople talking about plumbing, home maintenance, and permaculture.

  • WithoutFurtherDelay
    71·
    1 year ago

    Hi! I came here because I was curious about Lemmy after Hexbear swapped back over to it.

    So far I’m just concerned that I’m too much of an anti-secular softie to fit here, I get the impression a lot of people here came from genzdong and other subreddits during the recent Dark Ages when self described “anarchists” started calling anyone who wanted anything more extreme than liberal policies a “tankie”, so they’re understandably pretty disillusioned with anarchists in general.

    • Navaryn
      51·
      1 year ago

      what do you mean by “anti-secular softie”? No hostility, just asking

        • Navaryn
          21·
          1 year ago

          I don’t think this is gonna work out

          • WithoutFurtherDelay
            2·
            1 year ago

            I mean, if you’d rather I alienate people because of their glorified consumer choice political identity, I can

            • ☭ 𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗘𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 ☭MA
              6·
              1 year ago

              I believe Navaryn was joking. Anarchist views definitely get pushback here, but the users are generally friendly. I have no issue with anarchists if they’re anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist, and I think many others here would more or less agree with that

    • CriticalResist8OPA
      16·
      1 year ago

      We’ve gone through all account requests, they should try to login with their account and see if they’ve been approved or rejected.

      lemmygrad. com was a fake copycat website btw, taken down thankfully.