cross-posted from: https://crazypeople.online/post/2634649
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
Is this true for LW as well?
It is less likely for LW because they are (in Fediverse scale) “too big to fail” but still possible.
I don’t think “too big to fail” is as much of a factor here as the fact that LW is not the only FHF platform. Fedihosting Foundation, the non-profit behind Lemmy.World and our other platforms, existed before Lemmy.World already. While the Lemmy moderation team is working mostly independently from the rest of FHF, if the LW admin team disappeared there would still be FHF in a position to search for new admins and probably also at least temporarily step in without requiring to shut down the instance.
Is the backing of FHF that significant? Do they have resources for hiring professional admins in case Ruud or Stux decide to say “screw it, I’m out”?
If it does, then why does Stux need to go around panhandling to make rent?
Ruud and Stux are not the only people involved.
I’m personally only involved in Ruud’s side of things (mostly .world instances). Stux’ platforms are managed separately, I can’t say too much about those. Afaik finances between Ruud’s instances and Stux’ instances are also separate.
On the .world side, we currently have 6 active members for infra. For moderation, LW currently has 4 active instance admins plus some community team members with elevated privileges. Other .world platforms have moderation separate from LW. We certainly don’t have resources to hire professional admins, but I’m sure that we would find a viable solution if Ruud ever wanted to leave things behind. Not all solutions require paying someone a salary for it, which seems to be your implication here.
Beyond “raise enough resources to pay a professional”, can you think of any solution that is not a variation of “keep finding fresh volunteers to work until they burn out”?
I don’t see another option than volunteer-run instances or professionally run instances. And for professionally run instances you need funds (so paid subscriptions) and for volunteer-run instances you need volunteers…
In my experience, as long as there are enough active users, you’ll find enough volunteers.
There is the co-op model. Membership on https://cosocial.ca/ requires a $50/year contribution and every member has the right to participate in discussions regarding governance. Because of the steep admission price, the instance is relatively small in size and it does not demand a lot from the people working on it.
how would paying admins prevent burnout? the only difference i see here is that it is probably easier to find people willing to do it as a paid job than volunteers, but they can both burn out. this would just change it from “keep finding fresh volunteers” to “keep finding fresh job applicants”.
Dealing with the stress of a job is completely different than the stress of some volunteer work, and “keep finding fresh job applicants” is a lot easier (and dare I say, more ethical) than “keep finding fresh volunteers”.
Thank you for your comment
A few people on the LW staff don’t seem as active as they were a year ago. Anyway, threads are going to be organized in all the communities, we’ll see what people prefer.
You really think you have no influence on that?
Just as an example: you are still the most prolific poster on the football community at lemm.ee. If I told you that I could go right now and set up a new football instance for it (because you opposed the soccer.forum name, so I got jogabonito.news), would you even consider posting there or would you do what you’ve done before (created the community on lemm.ee and ignored what was already there?)
I just want to chime in and say that blaze isn’t the most prolific poster on !Football@lemm.ee, by a long shot, and I could a name a few people that have been more consistently posting.
He also didn’t make the decision to migrate to lemm.ee. The decision to migrate was a community vote, and the instance chosen was decided by me.
The first page now has 9 posts by him, 7 by Rose. Whenever I checked the page in the past, the distribution was similar.
As for “making decisions”: I am not saying he took any fiat action; I am saying that whenever he revealed his preference or had a chance to exercise any influence in the outcome, he clearly pointed (a) away from LW and (b) away from topic-instance that I was offering.
(Again, I am saying this not as believing I am entitled to anything, just as a matter of fact)
Here’s a post count. Rose, Sabre and Amsterdam have been more consistent throughout the year. 62 out of 83 posts from blaze have been in the last ~20 days, I’m actually surprised that he is consistently posting on !Football@lemm.ee again.
That’s accurate.
As an admin of a topic based instance, I do believe topic based instances are more sustainable for an admin team to handle. It seems to be the news/political communities that attracts the worst behaviour in people. Having instances that avoid those communities would lessen the moderation load put on a team.
Thank you for the data. Yeah I wasn’t that much into football for a while, then came back.
Thank you!
I think the fact that you think blaze is relevant in the football community only fuels apprehension towards trusting you to host the community. Please take a step back and be objective.
I am not judging “relevancy” and I am not even trying to convince him to participate. My “beef” with him is simple:
Believe me when I say it: I am not interested in using the topic-based instances for personal gain. I want them to be a neutral ground and I wish they could be collectively owned. My “evil plan” is to have an easy way to onboard people coming from Reddit, and my bet is that if the ecosystem grows large enough then I would benefit by offering professional hosting services for the users.
You are talking to/about me like I owe you anything.
Really not sure where this comes from.
He feels that community lead instances have a better chance of sustainability. What’s wrong with that? You’re yet to convince him otherwise. You have a real chance of a proof of concept with soccer.forum and you’re too busy arguing rather than making a case as to why it’s a good destination to the community that matters. Make it make sense. 😮💨
There is nothing “wrong” with it. There is nothing “wrong” with someone who believes the earth is flat.
What else besides “keep the server running and post any content that you find relevant” do you think I should do? Last time I asked you, you said “nothing, just keep doing it until they come”.
I’ve done it for a long time. Not for just one instance, but 5, 6, 8, 10… I was posting to !television@metacritics.zone and then I realized that there was one user on the lemm.ee alternative that was taking every single post from reddit and posting as their own. It’s too much, and it’s not even authentic. My alien.top bots were also mirroring reddit content, but at least I wasn’t pretending to be real people behind them.
I’m tired of pushing it. For now, I’d rather just keep doing it for the things that I’m actually interested here. Right now it’s mostly NBA. With the Club World Cup I might post more on the football instance. On the summer break I might take some time to write a proper match-threader, but quite honestly I am more excited about the idea of working on my local-first ActivityPub client or on a custom version of Voyager that can browse both Lemmy and Reddit than anything new for the topic-specific instances.
Communick has fortunately got to break-even point, but it is solely thanks to people interested in Matrix. There are a handful of people interested in Lemmy, so I’m going to keep maintaining it. But whatever hopes I had to make this a viable alternative to Reddit have been shattered a while ago.
At this point in time, do a, “I’m the admin of soccer.forum and I would like to offer this community a new home” type post.
!football@lemm.ee was created after discussion with the !football@lemmy.world community. I’m not a mod there, just an active poster indeed.
Wouldn’t the first point imply the second, while you disapprove it?
I genuinely think that moving !football@lemm.ee to !football@soccer.forum would be the best move for the footballing community, in spite of the bee in his bonnet rgullis has with you.
Let’s discuss it on !football@lemm.ee
I am not saying I disapprove it. I am saying your behavior is not dependent on “what other people think” and that you are (once again) hiding your real opinions and plans and using “others” as an excuse for your actions.
So, to put it more plainly: I am confident that you will look for any possible justification to move the lemm.ee communities to piefed or the other lemmy instances, despite this yet-another data point that shows that donation-based instances are not sustainable enough and reliable enough in the long term.
Then that includes LW, and we should just all leave this platform as it will inevitably die.
Your statement only makes logical sense if you stipulate that the only donation-based instances are part of “the platform”.
According to your logic, it’s going to crumble under its own weight, so we should as well just leave this platform altogether