Welcome to even more new users! There’s real hype behind Lemmygrad due to the Reddit API thing, which drives further hype for people to recommend Lemmygrad to their friends.

This post should contain everything to get you started using Lemmygrad, so please read it entirely. Then, at the end, why not make your first comment in this thread and tell us about yourself?

What is Federation

Lemmygrad works similarly to Reddit for users. You can make posts, subscribe to communities, comment on posts, etc.

The major part where we differ from Reddit (aside from the fact we’re not corporate-owned and don’t run ads) is that Lemmy allows federation to other instances. If you click on the “All” button at the top of your home page, you’ll see posts from Lemmygrad as well as other instances (two big ones we federate with is lemmy.ml and lemmy.world). You can act on those instances the same way you would act on Lemmygrad, except they have their own rules and moderation team. They’re completely independent from us, you can just interact with them. And they can interact with us too.

You can also subscribe to federated communities by the way, and they will show up on your “Subscribed” view (on the same group of buttons as All).

We also federate with Mastodon and other ActivityPub projects by the way. You access all federation from lemmygrad.ml, by using the All button or typing the URL you want to reach in the search bar.

Speaking of, please read our rules

Lemmygrad-wide rules are on the homepage. I’ll copy them here too:

Rules
  1. No capitalist apologia / anti-communism.
  2. No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
  3. Be respectful. This is a safe space where all comrades >should feel welcome, this includes a warning against >uncritical sectarianism.
  4. No porn or sexually explicit content (even if marked >NSFW).
  5. No right-deviationists (patsocs, nazbols, strasserists, >duginists, etc).

Since January 2023, the creation of new “Shit X Say” type communities is not allowed. Please post anything of that nature to Shit Reactionaries Say or Shit Ultras Say.

We take these rules seriously and you will be warned or even banned (temporarily or permanently) for breaking them. We’ve cultivated a very laid-back and welcoming atmosphere here over the years though, so don’t be scared to participate haha

If you participate on Lemmygrad from another instance, we also expect you will respect our rules.

Creating communities

Unlike other Lemmy instances, we allow users to create communities here. You’re free to create a community (subreddits on the aforementioned inferior competitor), but please look around to make sure it doesn’t already exist. Community bloat is a real problem on such a small site, which is why we merged the Shit X Say communities into just 2 earlier this year.

You’re free to run a community you create however you want for the most part, but you have to respect and enforce the instance rules. For our part we try not to step on your toes as a mod unless we have to make a sitewide ban. Essentially it helps spread the load of moderation from our small team of 5 people.

As a moderator, you can’t ban people from the lemmygrad as a whole, just from your community. Generally, we find that someone who gets banned from a community should be banned from the whole instance, so in that case feel free to contact us or make a report and we’ll look at it.

How to make reports

We’re a small team managing a growing forum, and as such we rely on reports to see what we can’t see ourselves. Please see this post: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/727768

What else?

We try to submit big decisions to the community for input as much as possible, for example the merger of SXS communities was first put to a vote, and then further discussed to see how we should go about it.

We hope you enjoy Lemmygrad, now it’s your turn ;) tell us a bit about yourself!

  • kd637_mi@lemmygrad.ml
    3·
    1 year ago

    Hey comrades, ML from Australia here, although big appreciation for MLM too. I saw the link to Lemmygrad back when GenZedong was quarantined, checked it out, and then forgot about it. I found this again checking out what was blocked on other instances, so thanks libs I guess? Looking forward to my local feed being actually good, and I will hopefully end up posting more than on Reddit.

    • sunoukong@lemmygrad.ml
      2·
      1 year ago

      Was going to start a new comment thread so say hi, but why not here, this is pretty much my story (except I’m European). It gives me good vibes to see that GenZhou survives here. It was a great place for reading news/opinions.

  • melody_denton@lemmygrad.ml
    2·
    1 year ago

    hello! I’m not much of a redditor but lemmy looks promising; I’ve been on the fediverse for a bit so I’m used to the multiple federated servers format.

    Anyhow, outside of my politics, I’m mostly about gardening, caring for our three dogs, and reading up on sciences. I live in Texas, and have to deal with the shitty politics of that place in my offline life, but online I like reading political theory and research.

  • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
    2·
    1 year ago

    Hey, I’m new here, but not entirely new to theory and discussion of these things (highly recommend George Jackson’s Blood In my Eye). Hope I can learn some things and contribute too. May have developed a slight tendency to overgeneralize differing material conditions from engaging with people online who are not used to this stuff and trying to condense it, and am willing to listen if I come across as missing the historical context of something at any point. I try not to say too much about stuff beyond the US, as it’s what I’m most familiar with the conditions of, but I do try to venture beyond if it seems appropriate and something I’ve done some investigation on.

  • Tofutefisk @lemmygrad.ml
    2·
    1 year ago

    Hi there! I made my account back in December but forgot about it until tonight. I have been trying to decrease my dependence on another corporate social media platform so I’ve been trying out alternatives and this is one that I saw a link for somewhere (either reddit or telegram) and decided I wanted to try.

    I am a M-L, I am doing some organizing locally, I have a dog and a cat, I love memes (and sometimes make them too), and like another comrade in here, I am also one of those middle-aged people who keeps getting more chill and laid back as I get older (but also more angry with the conditions imposed on us by late stage capitalism/bourgeoisie).

    I look forward to learning my way around and getting to know everyone, y’all seem very cool.

  • Sanyanov@lemmygrad.ml
    2·
    1 year ago

    Hey there! Never heard of Lemmy before all that Reddit situation, which is a sad occasion because I like it here! I’m a left-winger since mid-teen ages, first got bought by the Venus project (see, it’s not useless!), and then figured out it’s basically communism served for red scare victims and went into Marxism from there (and never looked back). Despite being a fairly orthodox Marxist, I’m also a young and somewhat soyboy left-winger, wishing to make the world a better place for everyone (for that reason I’m also a young and aspiring scientist). Hope to find meaningful conversations, useful theory and deep analysis of world’s events here.

    P.S. I also come from an actual Leningrad (Saint Petersburg, that is), which I guess makes me the ultimate Lemmygrad user :D

  • WithoutFurtherDelay@lemmygrad.ml
    1·
    1 year ago

    Hi! I came here because I was curious about Lemmy after Hexbear swapped back over to it.

    So far I’m just concerned that I’m too much of an anti-secular softie to fit here, I get the impression a lot of people here came from genzdong and other subreddits during the recent Dark Ages when self described “anarchists” started calling anyone who wanted anything more extreme than liberal policies a “tankie”, so they’re understandably pretty disillusioned with anarchists in general.

  • MLRodneyist@lemmygrad.ml
    1·
    1 year ago

    oh shit I got accepted a while ago, I never received the email and assumed the mods were swamped or something. Well, I’m a hexbear user but the vibe here is pretty cool also, so I check here every once in a while and excited to join and discuss

  • WhatWouldKarlDo@lemmygrad.ml
    21·
    1 year ago

    Thanks for having me! This is my first time being openly communist online. I’m a long time lurker, and I love the vibe here. In light of the recent radlib uprising though, I really wanted to openly show my support for my comrades here.