Lemmy
LemmyNet · Forums & communities
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What is Lemmy?
Lemmy lets you run Reddit-style discussion communities on your own server, outside any one company's control. Members subscribe to the communities they like, post links and discussions, and vote on what is useful. Your server joins a federated network, so members can also take part in communities hosted elsewhere.
Lemmy is an open-source link aggregator and discussion forum, similar to Reddit or Hacker News. People subscribe to communities, post links and discussions, then vote and comment in threads. Servers are federated, so a user on one server can join communities and talk with people on others.
Core capabilities
- Communities with upvotes, downvotes and threaded, live-updating comments.
- Federates with other servers so users can join communities hosted anywhere.
- Public moderation logs, with site admins and community moderators.
Communities, posts and votes
Each server hosts communities that members subscribe to, and a post can be a title with text, a link, or both. Posts and comments carry full vote scores, and comment threads update live. Members can tag users and communities, upload images, send private messages and get notifications by email. Cross-posting and a similar post search help avoid duplicate questions, and RSS and Atom feeds are available for communities, users and the inbox.
- Communities
- Voting
- Comments
- RSS
Federation and moderation
Lemmy servers are federated, much like email, so a user registered on one server can subscribe to communities on any other. Each server sets its own moderation policy, with site-wide admins and community moderators. Moderators can sticky, lock, remove and restore posts, and ban users from communities or the site. All moderation actions are listed in a public moderation log, and users can fully erase their own data.
- Federation
- Moderation
- Mod log
- Privacy
Self-host it under AGPL-3.0
The official Docker install uses a docker-compose.yml, a lemmy.hjson config file and an nginx configuration, and starts the stack with docker compose up -d. You set your domain and a database password in those files, and a reverse proxy with Let's Encrypt is recommended for TLS. An Ansible install is also documented, and the Rust server can run on arm64 devices including a Raspberry Pi. Lemmy is released under the AGPL-3.0 licence.
- Self-hosted
- Docker
- Ansible
- AGPL-3.0
Where it fits
Use cases
- 01
Host discussion communities for a project or brand
Run a Lemmy server and create a community for each topic, such as support, news or feedback. Members post links or text, vote, and reply in threads, and moderators can sticky important posts to the top. RSS and Atom feeds let people follow a community outside the site.
- 02
Moderate in the open
Appoint site admins and community moderators, who can appoint further moderators. They can lock, remove and restore posts and comments, and ban users from a community or the whole site. Every action appears in the public moderation log, so members can see how the rules are applied.
- 03
Join a wider network instead of starting from zero
Because Lemmy servers are federated, your members can subscribe to communities on other servers, and people elsewhere can join yours. They can use the web interface or one of more than a dozen apps for iOS, Android and desktop. Each server keeps its own moderation policy.