The OP has comments disabled and it didn't seem right to not say thank you and goodbye.

To the entire team past and present at lemm.ee- Thank you for the time and resources you poured into this platform. You will undoubtedly be missed.

Holy shit, that was unexpected.

Ahh, this is really sad. Lemm.ee was always an instance that shined brightly, and @[email protected] has helped me out a couple of times.

Sad day indeed.

Really nice that they're doing a sunset period with advance warning instead of just randomly going dark. As Lemmy's first major "shutdown" we need to accept that this sort of thing seems inevitable from time to time, maybe this can set an example and open a conversation on how to handle this sort of situation in the future. I'd hope this creates some pressure to Fediverse developers to improve portability for users (and communities!) moving between instances, maybe even some kind of immigration/emigration mode for people or communities who want to apply to transfer their account and history rather than simply sign up a new account while posting a link from their old account. Federation should be able to do better than that.

What a loss. =(

It's a strange quirk of lemmy that we will continue to be able to see content from lemm.ee even after they've shut down. It'll feel like seeing ghosts.

Sad to hear, had a very inspired name and the admin was very strong with hosting tech. Unfortunately however a generic instance with lax federation rules and no solid ideology, is a recipe for burning out your admins. The owner seemingly losing interest in lemmy also didn't help.

For lemm.ee users who will be migrating to new instances: You can export your subscriptions and blocks to import them to your new instance! You can export that info in your profile settings panel, and import it from the same page on your new instance.

This is sort of unfortunate, but as long as the fediverse remains genuinely decentralized, I expect it's just going to be a fact of life. Instances are going to come and go, alternately riding in on waves of determination and enthusiasm and out in sluggish streams of burnout and ennui.

And in a way, I think it's arguably even a good thing, or at least not a bad one. The basic structure of the fediverse prevents centralization through ownership, but there's still a risk of individual instances gaining enough clout to effectively act as a centralizing force. Not that Lemm.ee was in that position or even headed that way, but still, broadly I think that the understanding that instances are likely ephemeral — that they come and they go, and much more to the point that that's as it should be — is an important one.

And it neatly illustrates a large part of the reason that I have at least a dozen or so accounts scattered around the fediverse, including, for a little while longer, this one.

My 2nd cake day was going to be a few days after shutdown :(

Lemm.ee was a fantastic instance, it will be greatly missed. Huge thanks to the admins and owner that made it happen for so long.

A shame the communities will be lost in the transition, the movies/television communities are genuinely cursed. This is the 4th or 5th time people moved that community.

I guess now would be a good time to give Piefed another shot. I love Lemmy and all, but new features have stalled for too long and I'm ready for some change.

So long, lemm.ee

Huh. One of the least expected instances I thought would shut down :(

First thank you for the work (always keeping server up to date, fixing issues quickly, blocking spam,...).

Now time to think about migrating, any advices for another great instance?

Sad to see it go, one of the biggest instances. But I totally get it from the admins' point of views.

I literally just woke up and opened Lemmy to see this. As a lemm.ee user this is sad news but I respect the decision of all those involved as they navigate this

Wow. This is by far the biggest loss I’ve ever witnessed on lemmy.

I totally understand it. It’s a shame it has to happen. Sending much love to the lemm.ee admins.

Also, generally, lemmy can feel very gloomy, there are a lot of fights and stuff as well. I know we can’t prevent this. But whatabout fostering a slightly less cynical culture? Lets compliment more, be slightly less snarky in our replies. Don’t only comment to criticise. Also comment to praise when you see something you like. :)

It was the first foray into the fediverse and helped wean me off reddit. Sad to see it go.

I wish a sincere “fuck you” to all the Russian trolls that caused this outcome.

After the call for admins, there was never an indication that the search wasn't going well. Honestly, I would've put some time in (& I'm sure many others would've) if we'd known closure was imminent.

It may also be relevant to note that content from lemm.ee will not be deleteable once they go offline. If you are a user on lemm.ee and there is any content at all that you may at some point in the future want to delete, now is the time.

Is transferring it to someone else in the cards? I have an LLC intended for my own future instance plans, but I'd be more than happy to take over .ee under it to prevent the loss of another good Lemmy-verse instance

Very sad to see lemm.ee shutting down. I liked it here, the instance was easy to pronounce. Good luck lemm.ee admins with your future endeavors.

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.

Lemmy probably needs support for different levels of permissions, like Discord has, and PieFed has this too (but I don't think it's as in-depth as Discord yet)

Dang it! Lemm.ee was formed in summer 2023 alongside the other instances that became the Lemmyverse's biggest, sad to see it go. Thank you for everything!

What's really disappointing is that I just made my Lemm.ee account because Lemmy.One had announced they were closing down. Kinda disheartening to make a new account only for the new instance to also shutdown.

Almost as if Lemmy should not tie each community to only one specific underlying server.

I’ve only been on Lemmy for a year, but this feels pretty significant. How do we prevent this from happening to other instances? Or do we not see it as a huge problem if we assume most active users will migrate to other Lemmy instances?

Also side note, I think Voyager defaults to lemm.ee.