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
And that is bad why...?
The people that want to be in charge of large groups of people are often the people you least want to be under.
This argument applies more to "instance with lots of users and groups" (what we have now) than "communities with lots of users on topic-specific instances", so I don't think this is the problem here.
Let's say we are in a different universe where lemm.ee is a users instance, and not a groups instances.
Drama still happens involving lemm.ee users.
Admins still get burnt out.
They still shut down the instance.
So indeed the communities wouldn't have to move, but the 5.5k monthly active users of Lemm.ee (out of 47k total) would still have to find a new instance.
Only the users on lemm.ee are affected by it, in this scenario. It is bad, but the current scenario is much worse.
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.
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.
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.
That was available to the lemm.ee admins in our scenario as well. They preferred to shut the instance down rather than reduce.
It is a lot more difficult to get out of burn out than it is to avoid getting there in the first place.
Indeed, but that's true in both scenarios
One scenario is hypothetical. The other really happened. It makes no sense to say "they are both true".
Then let's stop discussing hypothetical scenarios altogether if we can't assess them?
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.
Another fact:
Maybe reflect on why people don't post on your instances instead of painting other instances in a bad light.
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?
Last post 28 days ago: https://viewfinder.pro/?dataType=Post&listingType=Local&sort=New
Last post 21 days ago: https://healthy.community/?dataType=Post&listingType=Local&sort=New
Not sure if that qualifies as activity
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.
History shows you every day that people prefer to post on other instances than yours.
https://lemm.ee/c/football@lemm.ee has 4 regular posters (Rose, Sabrewake, Ulrik and I). I'm not forcing them to post there, they decide it by themselves.
This again?
Even if I had never created any of the topic-specific instances and I all I had was Communick as an user instance. How many instances have we both seem go down? How many admins have you seen showing up full of enthusiasm to burn out some months/years later? Why is it that my manage to keep my (few) users satisfied with the service? Why is it that I don't feel overworked?
I'm not talking with other "people". I'm talking with you. You raised every possible objection against what I am doing. Yet, it keeps growing. Slower than I'd hoped, but growing. It has been self-sustaining. But you continue to look for ways to discredit me.
Let's just agree to disagree at this point. I'm not going through another round.