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.
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.
You brought hypothetical scenarios. I was just pointing out a fact: the second largest Lemmy instance is going under and taking with it all the communities that were created there.
And healthy.community and viewfinder.pro are getting activity from other people who are just focused on doing their thing. What does this have to do with the overall point?
It qualifies as activity. People are posting when it matters to them.
It still is unrelated to the point. The point is that you keep betting on donation-based instances because you want them to succeed, yet history is (repeatedly) showing it to you that these bets are not good.