EDIT: I’ve attempted to post this in both r/Calgary and r/Airdrie, and both times it has been removed. In r/Calgary, it shows it was removed by the mods of the sub. When I posted to r/Airdrie, it was just straight up hidden from the subreddit. I can see it on my profile page, but not on the Airdrie sub. This is true both when I am logged in and when I’m not. Reddit is censoring its users.

ORIGINAL POST:

I’ve attempted to summarize the happenings of Reddit in the last couple months in a post I’ve tried to post to r/Calgary. The post is awaiting approval but I hope the moderators approve it. The Reddit mods have removed the post, so if anyone has any ideas for how to get this out into the world, please let me know!

I wanted to put the text here in case anyone wants somewhere to direct users where there is a brief summary of information and simple steps to join Lemmy. If anyone has any further recommendations or corrections for what I’ve put together, please let me know! The text from my Reddit post is as follows:

Hey all. As you know, many subs have gone private for the next two days (or indefinitely) to protest Reddit’s new API changes. Many users are migrating to an open source site called Lemmy.

To learn how to join Lemmy, check out this post on Lemmy, or this post on r/LemmyMigration. The Lemmy communities are very welcoming and, in my opinion, far chiller than any Reddit community right now. You can see the Calgary community on Lemmy here: https://lemmy.ca/c/calgary

Reddit has been taking down posts and banning accounts that are promoting Lemmy. A few subreddits have been created and banned, then unbanned in the last week, including r/LemmyMigration. Reddit doesn’t want Lemmy promoted because they’re scared they are actually going to lose users because of their API decisions in the last couple months. This is a good indication that Reddit knows what they are doing is wrong, but they are proceeding to do it anyway. Something like this could never happen on Lemmy.

Lemmy is part of the Fediverse. The Fediverse is “decentralized, autonomous networks running on free open software on a myriad of servers across the world.” Since Lemmy is hosted on multiple servers and runs on multiple instances, it is impossible for the entirety of it to go down. Separate instances (or servers) could go down, but users would be able to login using a different instance and continue to access the same content. Again, for a bit of a more in-depth explanation, this post on r/LemmyMigration does a good job.

Understanding the Fediverse takes a bit of time, but you don’t need to have a full understanding of it to take advantage of Lemmy. I personally have found that the https://lemmy.ca/ instance contains the things I am most interested in, so it’s a good place to start.

You can also access Lemmy from apps on iOS and Android. I recommend getting registered using a desktop browser first and then logging in with your chosen app, as you cannot make new accounts from the apps. The iOS app is Mlem and the Android app is Jerboa for Lemmy. You can learn more about the apps here.

What Reddit is doing is ostracizing a large part of its user base, especially the mods of various subreddits. Making it impossible for third party apps to operate also makes it impossible for individuals with disabilities to access Reddit. The official Reddit app doesn’t even support screen reading capabilities, which should be a basic feature since Reddit has been running for over a decade. I personally won’t be supporting a company that is choosing not to listen to its users.

There are better options out there. Lemmy is just the start.