European Alternatives to Reddit

Lemmy is the leading open-source Reddit alternative. It's a federated link aggregator that works on the Fediverse, meaning you can interact with communities across different servers. For European-developed options, Kbin from Poland offers a similar experience with added microblogging features.

In 2023, Reddit announced API pricing changes that would effectively shut down third-party apps. This led to massive protests with thousands of subreddits going dark. Many users migrated to alternatives like Lemmy. Reddit then went public (IPO) in 2024, further cementing its focus on profit over community.

Yes! Lemmy uses the ActivityPub protocol, so communities on different instances can interact. You can subscribe to communities on other servers from your home instance. You can even follow Lemmy communities from Mastodon. This is the power of federation - no single server controls everything.

Yes! There are several mobile apps for Lemmy including Jerboa (Android), Memmy (iOS), Thunder, and Voyager. For Kbin, there's Artemis and web-based progressive web apps. Many of these apps were created by developers whose Reddit apps were killed by the API changes.

Absolutely! Lemmy, Kbin, and Discourse are all open source and designed to be self-hosted. You can run your own instance on European cloud providers like Hetzner or OVHcloud. This gives you complete control over your community's data and moderation policies while still federating with others.

The communities are different but growing. Lemmy has active communities for technology, gaming, politics, and many niche interests. You won't find celebrities doing AMAs, but you'll find genuine discussions without the commercialization. Many users maintain accounts on both Reddit and alternatives during the transition.