I was curious whether Lemmy has ever considered (or discussed) adding some form of group chat / group messaging functionality, to the already existing DM system.

One area where this could be especially useful is community mod-mail or instance admin-mail.

Right now, if a user wants to contact a community’s moderators (or instance admins), they generally have to message individuals one by one. A group chat or shared inbox system would allow:

Users to message all community moderators at once

Users to contact instance admins as a group

Mods/admins to see and respond collaboratively in a single thread

This would be similar in spirit to Reddit’s mod-mail system, but adapted to Lemmy’s federated model.

Potential benefits:

Easier and clearer communication for users

Less duplicated effort for mods/admins

Better moderation transparency and coordination

A single canonical place for moderation-related messages

From a user’s perspective, it would feel like contacting “the mods” as a single entity rather than guessing who to message

I’m curious:

Has this been discussed before?

Are there technical or federation-related reasons this might be difficult?

Would this be something better handled at the client level, or would it require core Lemmy support?

EDIT: I would have posted this to the GitHub, but GitHub never works for me, no matter what GitHub account I use, so I just decided to post it here instead.

(this is a bit of a rant, i'm sorry)

what in particular do you mean by lack of discoverability?

like, i want to see posts from communities that i already subscribed to, but because there's more than 1000 communities on the fediverse and i'm only subscribed to a small countable subset of them, i inevitably lose out on a lot of content. (The "all" feed sucks unfortunately). So how to solve this?

The lack of discoverability is non-starter for many.

The Fediverse significantly lacks behind on the Content Discoverability technology.

I guess this is because there was a loud public outcry in the last 20 years that whoever makes your feed (this is called an "recommendation algorithm" or abbreviated "the algorithm") has a lot of political power to decide what you see and what you don't see, and that's frowned upon. Because everybody that has power over what you see and what you don't see is bad. That is why nobody wanted to provide an recommendation algorithm for the fediverse, because they would expose themselves to wild accusations. There should be an open-source recommendation algorithm, though; I'm sure of it.

I recently made a feature suggestion post for the Lemmy app Summit, which I personally use.

lemmy.world/post/41709672

The idea was a small UI/UX enhancement:

Summit already visually distinguishes roles well:

Community Mods → green

Instance Admins → red

I suggested potentially adding a distinct colour for the Head Mod / Top Mod of a community, for example:

Instance Admin: Red

Head Mod: Yellow

Other Mods: Green

Kind of like a stoplight system (red / yellow / green).

The motivation was to make it easier at a glance to tell who ultimately runs a community, especially in larger mod teams or when reading mod comments in threads.

When I posted this to summit@lemmy.world, idunnololz@lemmy.world (the app’s creator and sole community mod) replied that they don’t think this is currently possible, because there doesn’t appear to be any notion of a “head mod” in the data returned by the API.

So my question for Lemmy devs / maintainers here:

Does Lemmy currently track any concept of a “top mod” or mod hierarchy internally?

If not, is the mod list intentionally flat by design?

Would adding an explicit “community owner” / “head mod” role be technically feasible or aligned with Lemmy’s design philosophy?

Are there federation or governance reasons this hasn’t been modeled?

Not trying to push a specific feature — I’m mostly curious about the architectural and philosophical reasoning behind how moderation roles are represented today.

Given all the events happening, this is a reminder that peaceful protests are the key to change. We are all angry, we are all sad for the people and families being violently attacked, and it is hard to stay cool and calm, but violence reciprocity is not the answer. Channeling Gandhi, and MLK, both who change nations by absorbing violence and standing in their way. Show how they lost the moral high ground, and DO NOT RECIPROCATE!

Also it works:

There are key parameters to the 3.5 percent rule according to Chenoweth. The “figure is a descriptive statistic based on a sample of historical movements.” Thus, it is not necessarily a hard-and-fast law, but rather a solid predictor. Remarkably, most mass nonviolent movements that succeeded did so even without reaching the 3.5 percent threshold. Moreover, durable nonviolent movements are twice as likely to succeed as violent campaigns because people generally reject violence. The 3.5 percent rule does not rely on cumulative participation, but rather participation at a peak event, which usually means a mass nonviolent demonstration. And the demands for change must achieve success within one year as a result of the mobilization.

...

For everyday Americans wishing to actively object to the government’s slide toward authoritarian policies, the 3.5 percent rule is a motivational yardstick to measure the likely result of peaceful mobilization.

People-powered movements can increase the chances of pressuring the government to meet their demands, including by building broad, sustained public participation across diverse groups. This is especially true because authoritarian-minded governments try to divide the population and keep them afraid of defiance. When 3.5 percent of a population goes beyond protest to engage in peaceful civil disobedience and noncooperation, these actions disrupt the system and force governmental change. For example, general strikes that affect the economy, boycotts, sit-ins, walkouts, or shutdowns of parts of cities can put unavoidable pressure on political leaders to hear their constituents and resolve the matter.

Chenoweth also states that 3.5 percent participation strongly indicates that there is much deeper support of the movement across society and a sense of inevitability, which can translate into defections from key pillars on the government’s side. For example, leaders from the economic, business, political, cultural, and media sectors become more likely to shift their allegiance to the side of a broad nonviolent mobilization. Perhaps most importantly, effective mobilizations can cause vital defections from police and military forces as well as the members of the political party in power.

So to reiterate:

...People-powered movements are more successful when they can strategically build a broad tent across the political spectrum, avoid violence, and remain relentlessly disciplined. Sharing the risks of defiance, Americans committed to pro-democracy principles can shift the current balance of power and change the trajectory of the nation.

نُشر تبادليًا من: hexbear.net/post/7452562

This isn’t just an ordinary photo.
It’s a kettle over a small fire—how we cope with gas shortages and daily hardship here in Gaza.
Sometimes we rely on very basic methods just to get through the day and provide warmth for our children.
Quiet suffering is still real suffering.
Any act of human solidarity truly matters. 🤍

Support link:
gofund.me/1d3ea05b6

Doaa [none/use name]

2026-01-25 19:34:30

Quiet Struggles 🇵🇸

This isn’t just an ordinary photo.
It’s a kettle over a small fire—how we cope with gas shortages and daily hardship here in Gaza.
Sometimes we rely on very basic methods just to get through the day and provide warmth for our children.
Quiet suffering is still real suffering.
Any act of human solidarity truly matters. 🤍

Support link:
gofund.me/1d3ea05b6