Is lemm.ee actually shutting down?

Bruh what? They're citing lack of staff? They haven't even asked for volunteers! I would be happy to help!

You don't necessarily want to just ask for volunteers as that's a great way to summon exactly the kind of people you don't want to put in charge of online communities. The best way is usually to notice people who are already part of the community and consistently make positive contributions, then ask for their help. If none of those people want to, though, you're stuck.
- As somebody that created and moderated communities for almost 20 years you nailed it.
  Nobody should actively want to be a moderator, it's a hell job.
- Flashback to when the creator of lemmy.world/c/the_pack was looking for mods. I volunteered with
  I’m also a shitty mod and will disappear for weeks at a time. I only have experience modding a small subreddit and have no familiarity with Lemmy’s mod tools. Feel free to hit me up.
  I passed the vibe check and now I'm exactly as crap a mod as I said I'd be.
- Obviously you would vet each person, not just blindly give admin privileges.
they have, not long ago.
- Yeah, I got close to volunteering, too, but honestly, my plate is too full doing more important stuff in the real world atm.
They did, 4 month ago
The people that are most willing to help are generally the least likely to help, especially when it comes to content moderation.
https://lemmy.ca/post/37365128
(my local version of the recruitment thread, in case the original lemm.ee post link becomes inaccessible)

I wish the best for the admin and mods of lemm.ee. I can attest to the frustration that is running any online community though, especially one built on/dependent on Lemmy. I am sorry to see you stepping out @sunaurus@lemm.ee but hope you're doing alright otherwise. Was real nice bouncing ideas and changes off you in the past.

I also wish the best for the admins and mods

I guess it's time to migrate to piefed. I really love some of the things they're doing - but I'll miss lemm.ee, I feel most other instances either defederate way too much, or way too little (as in, not at all)...

I was waiting for piefed to develop a little bit more ig this is the best opportunity now
- Community transfers came just in time

Here here. This was a special place and I'm glad it existed and I was part of it, too. I wish the admin(s) nothing but the best and hope they stay on Lemmy as one of us reg. users!

Anyone have suggestions for similar instances?

I assume my user account will also go down? I'm new to the lemmy community so I don't know how this would interfere with me being able to comment and post on other instances from this account

Your account will still exist, but you won’t be able to use it. So you should probably make an alt on another server.
I’d recommend maybe https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/ (similar but explicitly political unlike lemmee) https://lemmy.cafe/ (similar but defederated from more instances)
- I do typically browse by all so lemmy.dbzer0.com may be the better option. I like how lemm.ee wasn't defederated from that many instances
- I’d recommend maybe https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/
  I think this is gonna be the most logical direction to go for me now.
Someone in another thread suggested lemmy.zip and lemmy.today as having similar defederation policies as lemm.ee. That's probably where I'll go since I like being able to see pretty much all lemmy instances. Most of the ones that have been suggested in the replies to your post so far appear to defederate more than lemm.ee. I can't tell for sure on the piefed instances since their /instances format is pretty different than lemmy's.
Please consider piefed.social/feddit.online/piefed.au
- feddit.au
  Server not found?

It seems so 😭

another discussion here: https://crazypeople.online/post/2634649 (with people from outside lemm.ee)

Oof this sucks

well it's not in April so you're just on the denial stage

Discuit is a good alt. Not as much content but very much worth a looksee

looks
Discuit isn't a Threadiverse implementation, a la Lemmy, Piefed, and Mbin. Based on this, I don't believe that multiple Discuit instances can even federate with themselves:
https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/14b5rdo/introducing_discuit_an_easy_to_use_reddit/
I don't believe federated platforms will ever become mainstream. They have a whole host of problems, not the least of which is that they're too complicated for most people to use. This platform is not, therefore, federated.
Less than 200 commenters: https://discuit.net/DiscuitMeta/post/THOarSQv
Definitely not in the same ballpark as Lemmy/Piefed
Lemmy's benefit is decentralisation. If you go to lemmy.zip, most of the old content is there. We don't lose everything with this shutdown.

Yep