lemm.ee is shutting down at the end of this month
lemm.ee is shutting down at the end of this month
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
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Maybe we can take this as an opportunity to understand the importance of separating "instance for groups" and "instance for users"?
Doesn't really solve the issue, admins will all want to manage an instance for groups rather than instance for users as that would avoid much of the drama.
Doesn’t really solve the issue, admins will all want to manage an instance for groups rather than instance for users as that would avoid much of the drama.
And that is bad why...?
The people that want to be in charge of large groups of people are often the people you least want to be under.
This argument applies more to "instance with lots of users and groups" (what we have now) than "communities with lots of users on topic-specific instances", so I don't think this is the problem here.
Let's say we are in a different universe where lemm.ee is a users instance, and not a groups instances.
Drama still happens involving lemm.ee users.
Admins still get burnt out.
They still shut down the instance.So indeed the communities wouldn't have to move, but the 5.5k monthly active users of Lemm.ee (out of 47k total) would still have to find a new instance.
They still shut down the instance.
Only the users on lemm.ee are affected by it, in this scenario. It is bad, but the current scenario is much worse.
Drama still happens involving lemm.ee users.
User-only instances are less dependent on each other, defederation is not as big of an issue, so a lot of the drama would go away.
Admins still get burnt out.
Less communities on their instances means less traffic, less activities, less moderation reports (they would have to deal only with users on their own instances) and if even then they are overloaded with work, they could decide to scale down the operation before reaching burning-out point: close the instance for new registrations, make user registration conditional on payment/donation, etc.
Less communities on their instances means less traffic, less activities, less moderation reports (they would have to deal only with users on their own instances)
Those users are the same as in our universe for lemm.ee as a user instance. They stir the same dramas, create the same number of alts, violate rules in a similar way.
if even then they are overloaded with work, they could decide to scale down the operation before reaching burning-out point: close the instance for new registrations, make user registration conditional on payment/donation, etc.
That was available to the lemm.ee admins in our scenario as well. They preferred to shut the instance down rather than reduce.
That was available to the lemm.ee admins in our scenario as well.
It is a lot more difficult to get out of burn out than it is to avoid getting there in the first place.
I've had this idea as well, and I definitely see some benefits though as stated in the thread by someone else, most admins would want to be on a groups instance and not a users instance and I'm not sure how to combat that. The thought that occurred to me was a lemmy federation compatible community only instance server that could augment the current thrediverse landscape. Essentially making it easier to spin up a community for your topic than it is to spin up a while new instance. It would still be easiest to just make a community on your main user instance but it would introduce a new difficulty level for communities to run separate without standing up a whole Lemmy instance.