A Letter About a Calmer Place on the Internet
Please read on. This will take a few minutes, and I believe it will be worth your time.
I. A brief hello
If someone has pointed you to this page, it is because they think you would enjoy a website called Lemmy, and they have asked me to explain it clearly. I will do my best to do that here — without hurry, without slang, and without any technical vocabulary that I do not first define.
There is no rush. You may read this at whatever pace suits you. You may also stop, do something else, and return later. Nothing on this page requires anything from you until you decide otherwise.
II. The problem, put simply
The websites and applications most people use today are, for the most part, owned by very large companies whose main business is selling advertisements. In order to sell more advertisements, these companies design their websites to keep people looking at them for as many hours as possible. Software watches what you read. The order of what you see is chosen not by chance, but by what has kept other people looking in the past — very often, things that made those people upset or worried.
This is not, on the whole, a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. A number of thoughtful people, some of them quite young, have grown tired of the arrangement. Some of them have built alternatives, of which Lemmy is one.
III. What Lemmy is
Lemmy is a website — or, more precisely, a group of related websites — where people gather in groups to share articles, photographs, and thoughtful conversation, organized by subject. Every group is devoted to something in particular: perhaps birdwatching, or classical music, or news from a particular town. Inside each group, people post things they find interesting, and other members reply, ask questions, or vote to indicate that a post is worth reading. The most-liked posts appear at the top. It is orderly and calm.
The unusual and important thing about Lemmy is its structure. It is not a single website owned by a single company. It is a network of smaller websites, run by different people, that have agreed to speak with one another.
The best comparison I can offer is to electronic mail. When you write a letter from one email service to a friend who uses a different one — say, from a Gmail address to a Yahoo address — the letter arrives, because both services agreed, long ago, on a shared method for moving mail between them. Nobody owns electronic mail. It belongs to no company. It is simply an agreement that everyone honors. Lemmy's smaller websites have made the same kind of agreement. You sign up on one of them. From there, you may read and participate in every one of the others.
The alternative arrangement, which you may have encountered, is called a platform. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter — each of these is a single website owned by a single company. If you have a video on one of them, you cannot share it on another; each keeps to itself. And because each has a single owner, each can be shut off. TikTok was, for a period, forbidden in the United States. The company that owns Google decided long ago that it would not operate in China, and now it does not. Facebook is not available in Russia. In every case this was possible because a single company could be told to stop, and did.
Lemmy cannot be shut off in the same way, because there is no single company to instruct. It is, like electronic mail, an agreement rather than a possession. No shareholders can vote to sell it. No executive can change its nature on a difficult afternoon. It belongs, in the ordinary sense of the word, to the people using it.
IV. What you will find there
There are four things I would like you to know before you decide, and I will describe them one at a time.
The first is that there are no popularity contests. Nowhere on Lemmy will you see a count of how many people are following a given person. There are no verified badges, no gold stars beside certain names, no sense that some voices are meant to matter more than others because of who is speaking. A note written by a newcomer sits comfortably alongside a note written by someone who has been reading for years. Each is considered on its own merit.
The second is that there is no algorithm. You may have heard this word. It refers to a piece of software, used by nearly every large website today, that quietly selects what you see next based on what has kept other people watching in the past — often, unfortunately, things that made those people frightened or angry. Lemmy has nothing of the kind. The posts on your screen appear either in the order they were written, or in the order other readers found them interesting. You may choose. That is the entire system.
The third is that there are no advertisements. None whatsoever. No software is watching what you read in order to sell that information to anyone. No sponsored notices are hidden among the posts. It is, in the truest old-fashioned sense of the phrase, simply a place to read and to talk.
And the fourth — this is really the heart of the matter — is that Lemmy is, at bottom, just people sharing their voices with one another. Someone found a good article and wished to pass it along. Someone had a question and wished to hear from real human beings. Someone made a photograph, or wrote a small essay, and wanted another person to see it. That is the entire activity of the place. There is no scheme behind it, and nothing being sold. It is, in a word, a conversation.
I wish also to be candid with you about one further matter, because I think it will help you understand what Lemmy actually is. Lemmy is not a lesser version of the websites and telephone applications you may already have encountered. It is a wholly different sort of arrangement, resting upon a wholly different foundation. The larger services — the ones you have perhaps read about in the newspaper — depend, in order to remain profitable, upon a continuous stream of paid advertisements, and, more recently, upon a great deal of content generated by machines rather than by human beings. If, upon reflection, you find that you prefer such an arrangement, then by all means you should remain where you are. Those services need your continued attention in order to exist. Lemmy does not.
Lemmy is held aloft by two things, and only two things. The first is authenticity: it functions because real people take the trouble to write on it, and to read what others have written, and to reply thoughtfully to one another. The second is global solidarity: the many smaller websites that make up the network are maintained, at their own expense and out of their own conviction, by ordinary people scattered across the whole of the world. There is no third ingredient. That is the entirety of what keeps the place running — and it is why the conversations there have the quality that they do.
V. How to join — a careful walkthrough
Before we begin, a reassurance: nothing on the following pages will install software on your computer, and nothing you do can damage your device. If any step confuses you, you may close the page and start again. No harm will come of it.
Step one. Open the web browser you already use — this may be called Safari, Chrome, Edge, or Firefox. At the top of the browser window, there is a long white bar. This is called the address bar. Click into it once, then type these letters exactly:
join-lemmy.org
Then press the Enter key on your keyboard. A welcome page will appear.
Step two. On that page, look for a large button labeled Join a Server. Click it once. You will be shown a list of the smaller websites I described earlier. Each has a short description.
Step three. If you do not wish to compare them yourself, that is quite all right. I recommend choosing the one called lemmy.world — it is the largest and is welcoming to newcomers. Click on its name.
Step four. You will now see a signup form. It will ask you for two things: an email address (the one you already use is fine), and a username of your choosing. The username can be anything — perhaps your first name and a number, or a word you like. You will not be asked for your telephone number, your photograph, or any identification. Fill in these two boxes and click the button at the bottom of the form.
Step five. You will now be inside Lemmy, on your own home page. At the top of the page there is a small magnifying glass, or a search bar. Click into it and type a subject you enjoy — for example, gardening, or classical music, or the name of the city where you live. You will be shown any communities discussing that subject. Click on one that interests you. On the community's page, look for a button labeled Subscribe, and click it. From now on, that community's posts will appear on your home page whenever you visit.
That is the entire process. It takes, in ordinary circumstances, about two minutes. If any step goes differently than I have described, please do not worry. You may close the browser tab and try again at any time.
VI. A closing note
The internet does not have to feel the way it currently feels. In this calmer corner of it, at this very moment, a small number of thoughtful people are having a good conversation about a subject you care about. They would welcome you gladly.
Whenever you are ready, the door is open.
With warm regards,
A fellow reader