What made you pick the Lemmy server you are on?

Lemmy.world because lemmy.ML recommended it when I tried to sign up there. I’m considering moving to a smaller server though since this one seems to be getting overloaded.

Same, feeling really slow for me
- Check out lemm.ee - the dev seems to be on top of things. If you read the post by lemmy.world’s admin about fixing some issues, he/she actually credits lemm.ee for the fix so seems like you’re in good hands on that instance.
Yea, for whatever reason, lemmy.world became the sort of de facto "main" instance, which isn't a bad thing and lemmy.world isn't a bad choice at all, ruud AFAICT is a dedicated and experienced fediverse admin.
There may be issues to centralising the user load too much. I don't have the technical knowledge to back this up, but it probably makes sense that there is such a thing as too much for one server to handle. If it has to handle all of the user requests as well has syncing all of the large and popular communities that a "main" instance is likely to host, then it's just a lot and probably requires technical solutions and investment beyond what one admin/team is willing or capable of doing. Plus, lemmy the software may not be designed for that sort of load, which probably requires a distinct architecture from that of a smaller instance.
So it probably, at point at least, makes sense to spread the load of both the users and the communities. However, it seems that redditors as accustomed to a "central" and singular service as they are have kind of opted in to re-creating a central "main" instance like they're used to. It may very well be a bad habit, as it presumes that there's just some giant server and a dedicated tech team sitting there waiting to scale up at a moment's notice. Of course, lemmy.world are free to halt sign ups and encourage users to pick other instances. But it remains to be seen how lemmy, its software and the fediverse/threadiverse in general handles communities/groups/magazines at this new scale.
In the mean time, intentionally spreading the load might help. As would donating to the developers and your admin!!
- I have the technical knowledge to back it up, and I confirm your understanding is spot on.
Yeah I’ve noticed some issues lately with lemmy.world. I assume it has to do the quick growth from the great Reddit migration.
- lemmy.world has literally doubled its number of active users in the past few days, so yeah it's a pretty safe bet.
Welcome to the $bigProvider to Fediverse Migration Experience. This is how everyone starts off their journey.

Lemmy.ml and lemmygrad as well as tech.de (or something similar) I might host myself sometime later. I was on mastodont a while before , went back and tired of proprietary again. This time I am thoroughly fed up and will stay.

For me federation is good. I see the problem with filterbubbles but I'm to old for this shit. I rather be in my bubble.

Lemmy.ml and lemmygrad as well as tech.de (or something similar) I might host myself sometime later. I was on mastodont a while before , went back and tired of proprietary again. This time I am thoroughly fed up and will stay.

For me federation is good. I see the problem with filterbubbles but I'm to old for this shit. I rather be in my bubble.

Lemmy.ml and lemmygrad as well as tech.de (or something similar) I might host myself sometime later. I was on mastodont a while before , went back and tired of proprietary again. This time I am thoroughly fed up and will stay.

For me federation is good. I see the problem with filterbubbles but I'm to old for this shit. I rather be in my bubble.

Lemmy.ml and lemmygrad as well as tech.de (or something similar) I might host myself sometime later. I was on mastodont a while before , went back and tired of proprietary again. This time I am thoroughly fed up and will stay.

For me federation is good. I see the problem with filterbubbles but I'm to old for this shit. I rather be in my bubble.

I'm on sh.itjust.works. Not gonna lie, related to that name naturally.

Exactly the same for me. Choosing an instance based on values, content, or location is so lame. I chose my instance based on the funny name.
- Although sh.itjust.works democratic moderation is pretty based.

Lemmy.ml and lemmygrad as well as tech.de (or something similar) I might host myself sometime later. I was on mastodont a while before , went back and tired of proprietary again. This time I am thoroughly fed up and will stay.

For me federation is good. I see the problem with filterbubbles but I'm to old for this shit. I rather be in my bubble.

Went Lemmy.world because I had no idea how any of this worked.

Gonna stick with it for now, because there isn’t really a reason to switch. In the future I might switch or host my own.

I'm on lemmy.sdf.org because it's widely federated and run by a trustworthy organization.

I'm not much of a tech bro - in fact I struggle with troubleshooting basic Linux issues. That's why I mostly interact outside of my local instance.

I hardly engage with the techy discussion on SDF, but I appreciate the high quality user base.

I'm also on SDF. They've been in the business of offering free computing resources to the public since the 80s. So I feel confident that they won't close up shop due to lack of expertise or resources.
- I was going to come in here and praise SDF but I see I'm too late
  Damn you Dark Souls Remastered for taking me away from Lemmy for a bit!
  I guess I'll link the FAQ for SDF here for anyone interested in learning more
  and also mention that SDF runs a Mastodon and Pixelfed instance for all your federation needs

All that matters is you shouldn't recommend the already massive overloaded servers like lemmy.world when lemmy isn't even optimized for this sort of traffic on a single server yet, and those large servers are having issues because of it. The entire point of decentralization is to spread out and still be connected.

Recommend smaller general servers that have been up for years and also upgraded for the surge of users, like lemmy.one, lemm.ee, or vlemmy.net

For others...
If you're Canadian lemmy.ca has also been great. There is an application but I was approved in less than 4 hours answering the 4 simple questions.
They've also recently rejigged the administration and just upgraded to a brand spanking fast server this canada day
- Lenny.ca wouldn't let me visit a lot of communities though

I chose lemm.ee because:

Its admin @sunaurus@lemm.ee has been working hard at improving the instance's performance and fixing issues.
It has been relatively smooth and performant since the infrastructure upgrade.
The domain name is cleverly satisfying.

Did you know that .ee is the Estonian tld? Estonia in Estonian is Eesti. Sunaurus is from Estonia and runs the c/Eesti community. The Estonian language is one of the few living relatives of the Finnish language (a member of the Finnic language family.
- Thanks God
Yes. I realy enjoyed this instance so far. I joined during the black out protest and first looked at lemmy.me, but they said they had performance issues and didn't realy want any new sign ups. Just scrolled for a bit and stumbled upon lemm.ee, with a beautiful welcome message and another massage how he upgraded the servers. Just new this was the way to go. Such a nice owner, who actually cares how our experience on this platform is.

There is several of factors you should consider:

Does it have a healthy amount of users: between 1k-10k users are probably the sweet spot right now. You don't want too many users because it will cause performance problems. And instances with too few users has too many unknowns.
read the rules see if you agree: servers can have wildy different rules ranging from no NSFW to no downvotes. If they don't have any rules that is a red flag too. You want an active moderation so the instance doesn't get run over by bots.
Does it look low effort: check the banner, how the announcement formatted.

That is probably all the basics

I'm in Canada, so I'm using and supporting Lemmy.ca

One of the points of using a distributed system is to not centralize the userbase.

I also have a account on lemmynsfw but that's just for research purposes.

Gotta support the '.ca' anyway we can! Underutilized domain imo

Googled "Lemmy" to see what it even is
"wtf is an instance"
Checked some of the most used instances. At this point I wasn't sure if it matters much, but I just figured it's best to just pick a popular instance.
found lemmy.world, and the description goes "The World's Internet Frontpage - Lemmy.world is a general-purpose Lemmy instance of various topics, for the entire world to use."
"sounds good enough", created account

I picked sh.itjust.works because it's Canadian and the domain name is nerdy enough. It seems to be a decent instance, although I'll move if I stop liking it.

Does it matter? With all of the defederation drama, I think it does. If your instance is quick to drop others, it seems like you'll lose content.

AFAIU we're still federated with some of the douchier instances and I appreciate seeing their memes and posts. Not because they're entertaining, but because it's easier to understand the asshats. When they creep into racism/phobias/hate I'll be fine seeing them go.

I also chose it for the renewable energy server.
And it's fun to 🛑 conversations that devolved into American politics BS, and remind users this is a Canadian instance.
Maybe voting takes a while, but I view it as the Japanese government in Shin Godzilla.
Doing things the right way takes longer and can be painful sure....but marathon vs sprint.
- The Agora was a great idea IMO. One of the reasons I like it here.
I didn't realise that one was Canadian as well. It did love the name as it vibes with my exact feelings as I've explored lemmy instances and this whole concept. Endd up at lemmy.ca as that .ca domain just sold it for me
- I feel like Canadian instances are just a polite veneer on US communities. Like, 99% of the posts are from US communities/instances anyway, so it doesn't make a big difference. 🤷

I choose lemmy.world because it let me create an account nothing more. When RIF closed up, they suggested Lemmy, so I popped on. I am sure it will be a while before there is a lot of content, but I can be patient. I do hope that Reddit enjoys the fruits of the bitterness they've sown. The Anti-social network.

I chose lemmy.ca because I'm a proud Canadian patriot 💪🇨🇦🫡

Same here. Just seemed like the right choice.

I created it myself.

Consider this a test to see if the federation works :)

I'm on Feddit.de because it was recommended to me by join-lemmy.org and I like to have a server that has a German speaking Focus in the local feed.

lemm.ee because of speed and latest version of Lemmy. Less problems, good experience 🙂

Just switched to lemm.ee from .world yesterday. The speed really makes a difference 😯
- I did the same thing today. Everything seems smoother.
- It is really awesome instance. Admin made incredible work ❤️

I wanted a server that had fast posting and browsing

Then I learned that some of the larger servers aren't federating with each other, which made me happy I went this route

https://wirebase.org, FYI

Same reasoning. The first server I joined was having occasional errors and seemed like it was slowing down. Not sure why.

When I got started on Lemmy, there were only a handful of instances and they were all general-purpose. I went and made my own so that it was exactly what I wanted.

These days, I'd probably use a list like this and choose an instance that isn't too big with a cool domain name: https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances

Lemmy.world here cause it seemed to be one of the top guns, and thought it mattered in the sense that I would see more content. But after learning about the fediverse I'll most likely host my own instance soon 🤘

Same thought process here, but the performance issues I was seeing on lemmy.world prompted me to spin up my own instance right away. So far it's been excellent performance-wise, but not quite the same as being a user on the instances that contain the content. We'll see how it works out!

Signed up this account on .world because it was quite small (lol) but seemed competently run. This decision has not worked out great!

Had my other account on Beehaw so after that whole debacle I had to migrate. Moved that one to lemm.ee because again small and competently run. It's worked out much better over there, people seem to keep flocking to .world for whatever reason so lemm.ee is staying nice and manageable (for now).

I had the same thought process.
Both lemmy.world and lemm.ee seem to be run by communicative people with sysadmin experience, which is really what you need for instance to grow steadily in the long-term.
- Absolutely, and it's great to see them working together to improve things as a whole rather than just building up their own little fiefdoms.

I'm the admin :p

Same

I didn't know what I was doing so I chose at random.

Ditto. Can't downvote on mine, apparently, but honestly that's probably better for my mental health right now. It's teaching me to just move on from stuff I don't like, instead of pretending the little burst of negativity encompassed in my downvote actually accomplishes anything meaningful for me.

I registered during very early days, so I signed up for the instance run by devs because there wasn't much choice. Today I would choose a smaller one

The Admin of my instance (discuss.tchncs.de) is tolerant but understands the tolerance paradox. (Defderated with exploding heads but not every left instance - doesn't fall for false balance.

Also he was fast with approving new accounts.

I got approved today 20 mins after verifying my email. It was a pleasant surprise

I joined Lemmy a few weeks ago when a lot of other reddit refugees were making the switch. A lot of the servers were overloaded, so I just went ahead and hosted my own. My instance is never overloaded because I'm the only user, and because Lemmy is federated I can subscribe to communities on any instance I want.

and because Lemmy is federated I can subscribe to communities on any instance I want.
Just wait until the Lemmy Civil War happens.

I like the short and aesthetic of the domain name lemm.ee

Shorter domains the better I say! (usually)

Feddit.de because Deutschsprachig and I loved Reddit, but would love to see a successfully federated version of it.

My main one is on lemmy.ml and I'll admit it was just the first one I saw. My second one is on lemmy.blahaj.zone in case something happens to the dev instance.

The final update message given out on RIF suggested Lemmy.World and so, here I am.

Does it matter?

As I have found with a few niches I've been looking for and only found communities on other instances, it may matter. I can see this post even though I am on Lemmy.World and not Lemmy.ml; but some of the other places I've wanted to look at are not federated with Lemmy.World or are semi-private and require manual authorization by an admin before you can do anything; and they can't authorize a user that doesn't interact with them somehow so I had to make a new account for those instances.

I made my first account on lemmy.ml because it had a commitment to free and open-source software with a focus on privacy.

I don't think it really matters, but I picked vlemmy.net because it wasn't too big. I figured that the bigger ones were staring down the barrel of a huge influx in traffic, so I wanted to avoid them.

I didn't see any evidence of the admin being shady, but also wasn't too hasty with the defederate button.

I chose vlemmy.net for the exact same reason, too. Also it was the top instance on https://join-lemmy.org/instances the day I wanted to join another instance (I was on lemmy.ml then).

I chose Lemmy.world, because it was the one I was hearing the most about. It's a bit slow at the moment, but that's not surprising, given the amount of new users. So far it's been fun. I really hope more and more people show up!

Yeah it does kinda matter, which is problematic for onboarding new users. Personally:

I read the rules/TOS.
I checked the Instances page to make sure instances I wanted to access were linked and not blocked.
I looked for any introduction posts to see what the backend infrastructure was like.
I checked the username I wanted was available.

It should not be that complicated, but it also has to be unfortunately. I had to make sure all those things matched what I personally wanted. This much choice is great for heavily-invested tech nerds with free time but sucks for anyone else wanting to join in.

It was after the u/spez shit AMA. Wanted Beehawsomething but saw they were restrictive and I had to give a detailed reason to join them, so I didn't. Sh.itjust.works seemed like a website name I would not remember and I wouldn't be able to go too Lemmy.ml was full and we where invited to go to other places Lemmy.world was there and had a nice name, it was for me Now I discovered only 2 days ago that slrpnk.net existed, and If we were able to move instance I would move there, I vibes a lot with the ideals I discovered on Reddit, they even got me to buy plants I take very good care of

It's never too late to just create a new account and start using it. Don't feel like you're stuck on an instance. Your old posts won't move over but that's a problem even Mastodon hasn't been able to solve yet. And unlike them there is no concept of followers in Lemmy so you're really not losing anything beyond the time of re-subscribing to all your communities.

I'm a dirty hippy and slrpnk.net seemed like a server for other dirty hippies

Decided to go with a smaller instance from the start, as I think we can all see what happens when one entity holds too much power within an ecosystem.

Also wanted to go with one that was not defederated from other instances (nor defederating others as well). Checked a bunch of lists, and decided to go with my current one.

I found beehaw first, so I started there but then discovered that the admins manage the community creation there. So I made a new account on lemmy.world to mod that, and most browsed with my beehaw account. But then beehaw needed to de-federate from lemmy.world, so I made a vLemmy and lemmy.one accounts so I could interact with both beehaw and lemmy.world.

tl;dr As someone else mentioned, finding a smaller, low-profile instance to have your home account but interacting with other instances seems to be the best approach

It doesn't really matter actually, but I would prefer to stay on the one with more members as it will probably last longer than other instances

I wanted an instance specifically for Australians... so I made one 😀

Doing great work mate!

I joined lemmy.world because when I first signed up it was still quite a bit smaller than lemmy.ml. I heard that new users should try to make lemmy grow horizontally by joining other instances. I guess joining world wasn't the best choice for achieving that in retrospect 🙂

I chose lemm.ee because it came highly recommended and rightfully so. Great management and great communities too

Why is it highly recommended? And do you know where it is hosted?
- It came highly recommended because it’s a fast server under food management. I have no idea where it’s hosted 😊
Same! It seems to run smoothly, and their rules and policies sound reasonable.

I chose Aussie.zone cause I'm out of touch with my own country so seeing the news here is nice and cause I thought it would be easier to join a country instance.

Also optional email and I know I could make a temp email but I can't be bothered.

Surprised I'm not seeing any other self-hosters in here. Having seen the de-federation drama, it's nice to know that I can federate with anyone I want, regardless of if they are federating with eachother.

Obviously it comes with the administration side of things, but I really don't mind.

We're too busy accidentally banning ourselves from our own servers to post

Idk, because why not Estonia.

Biggest German server and good community.

I was looking for a lemmy instance that would let me create communities, downvote if I wanted to downvote, and that would take care of troublemakers without being too overly restrictive.

I also wanted to ease the burden on the very busy lemmy instances that were being overwhelmed by the reddit Exodus.

It seems I have found a place. The SDF has a very long history of serving several communities in the internet and Linux world. I first ran into them decades ago, and they are still here.

Es ist Deutschland hier!

So I joined lemmy.world because I use to be a user of reddit is fun, rip, and in their going away message they mentioned .world. So I joined that instance not realizing how the fediverse works.

Overall what I've seen is the instance you join determines your "front page" since by default it will be set to show local communities. Other than that subscribe to any community from any instance then set your front page to show "subscribed" or "all" and you get your basic Reddit experience

I am hosting it lol

It doesn't but I thought it did

I'd heard you shouldn't pick one of the largest, I explicitly didn't want a server run by Nazis, Paleolibertarians, or Marxist-Leninists, and I didn't mind the rules here.

.... Because I own it

I decided I felt better selfhosting it rather than being on anyone else's instance

I picked pawb because furries know tech really well, so I can trust the server to be fairly reliable.

I signed up with beehaw first, but realized that they were defederated from lemmygrad, which I wanted access to. As I became more acquainted with lemmy and started looking into the "flavors" of the different instances, I joined lemmy.ml because they are unapologetic communists and won't defederate with lemmygrad.

As an aside, it's fucking insane to me that lemmygrad is so controversial yet there's crickets about exploding-heads and people are happy to be on instances that don't block them. Cool

Everywhere I've seen has been defederating from exploding-heads.

Like most commenters here, because it was recommended and I'm a newbie at this.

Question though, if I create another account on say lemm.ee, is there a way for me to migrate my subscribed communities?

Sadly not, it's gonna be manual for the time being so if you're thinking about it it's probably worth doing before you have hundreds of subscriptions.
That said, I've gone through it once already on my other account and in the desktop browser it was fine, just involved opening lots of tabs and a bit of copy paste, took about ten minutes for a fairly extensive sub list. But I pity anyone trying to do it on mobile.
I do not have a link so this isn't very helpful but yesterday I saw someone posted that they had made something to do exactly this. I wish I could remember what community I saw it in. You may have to do some digging. Knew I should've saved it...

Set up the server myself. For me, that’s part of the fediverse experience.

Its status on federation with problematic instances.

Made one on lemmy.world but it's crumbling under the pressure as we speak. Tried a local one, but it has like 5 users. Don't trust it to live long enough. So started using the star trek one, because star trek. Not as if you'd need any other reason

Wanted to be on a reasonably big instance, since I figure they're more likely to stick around in the long run. Lemmy.ml was closed for registration at the time (might still be, idk), and plus I have some disagreements with the admins, so I chose lemmy.world. I'm pretty happy here and don't see a reason to change personally, although the server's getting pretty overloaded recently so we'll see.

First I made one on ml. Then I made one on kbin because everyone said ml was a bunch of tankies and had some shady shit going on. Then none of the apps supported kbin so now I made one on world. Lol and I have no idea which one between world and ml I'm even posting from right now since I'm logged into both on liftoff

People on Discord tell me ml is at risk of de-federation from other instances because of the admins. Any truth?

A subreddit I was in linked their lemmy community and it was on dbzer0 so I created a account on there and called it a day.

yeah i clicked the link a sub im in linked to and it was lemmy.world and i didnt bother looking too much into it

I'm learning german so while i was looking for some german speaking communities. They're surprisingly big and keep growing.

Gekoloniseerd

Tried lemmy.world as a reddit refugee but with the performance issues they're experiencing, quickly went looking for another instance with better performance and a decent amount of extra content. Lemmy.ml is blocked at work (.ml TLD is freenom so prone to abuse) and registration is closed anyway, so decided on lemm.ee.

Far better speed, a good amount of content locally, and few/no errors at the moment.

Exactly the same. Created an account on Lemmy.ml about a month ago but can't login today. So I created another account with the same username on lemm.ee just now and it works fine.
Lemmy.world got a lot more usable today. Idk if they addressed issues with resources or enough people left and went elsewhere. I definitely experienced some initial frustration I also made an account at lemm.ee but I have been sticking with my first dot-world one for now.

as a Greylag goose i flock to feddit.uk

Tried to join but looks like they don't accept disposable emails unfortunately.

A friend owns it and it has a funny domain. Bonus of it being smaller is that it didn't have any performance issues yesterday/today.

I tried to find a server that isn't blocking anyone, and hasn't been defederated by any of the big servers.

I want to avoid an echo-chamber and have access to everything on the fediverse, including stuff I find distateful. If anything really bothers me I will block the community/instance myself, I don't want others making that choice for me.

Unfortunately there seems to be a lot of folks out there just searching for an excuse to clutch their pearls, rile up a mob, and defederate anything and everything that offends them.

I don't want to circlejerk in a safe space echo chamber, I want to see both the yin and the yang of humanity. I want that wild west feeling of the internet of old

I shall inform you of a secret. There are some big servers around that don't defederate anything and aren't defederated by anyone. :) that's all I'm saying, it's up to you to find the treasure.
- Is there any way to see who is federated/defederated, and from whom?

Others did not exist back than.

We're old. 👴
There was good ol’ Lemmygrad ^^
How to you feel about "us youngsters" barging in here and bringing server performance to its knees? (sorry!)

I read some comments that lemmy.ca was well run to the extent that it was being recommended even by non-Canadians. Being Canadian myself, that was good enough for me.

It's a friendly instance and is well-run. The admin manually approved registrations which kept them safe from the great bot invasion and is now upgrading the server and bringing on more admins.

It does seem like some servers have specific niches, so if you're really interested in a specific servers niche using that instance would prevent you from having to sync those communities with your instance.

I'm new, so someone correct me if I'm wrong.

I think you’re right! It can be nice to have an active local feed with topics you’re interested in, so that’s a good reason to pick a topical instance (eg mander.xyz or slrpnk.net).
Nobody asked my opinion but my interpretation of how this whole fediverse "should" work is that while there can be empirical instances, federation shines with smaller, easy to manage instances thst connect to each other.

Literally just picked the biggest one to maximise the content I see

Rn it matters a bit, wont in a few weeks tho i think

Why won't it? Do you think updates will make the fragmentation of content better in a few weeks?

I've got accounts on 4 different instances just to see what things are like. Sometimes I want to see all sorts of posts, sometimes I want a feed of just LGBT-positive stuff, sometimes I just want to get off, different accounts on different instances for different things :)

Would you be down to tell me what the LGBT-positive and getting off instances that you like are? Asking for a friend 😉
- Lemmy.blahaj.zone and lemmynsfw.com :) Happy browsing

I'm into general instances and also a long time user of Fediverse, so I know 10-200 user instances work best. That's why I picked the first one with not too many and not too little users (the join-lemmy page only showed 50 new users when I registered, damn)

I run my own private instance so I am in control over my own data.

Tbh, I don’t think it matters what server you choose. Lemmy.world, Lemmy.ml, and Beehaw seem to be the big ones so picking a server that federates with those would be ideal.

Picked it for the name, stayed because of the community. A lot of super nice folks here on sh.itjust.works.

•Lemmy.ml - Signed up here first, was recommended to it as a general place to sign up to

•Lemmy.blahaj.zone - Egg memes, blåhaj memes, just memes

•Lemmy.world - Handy for extra world news communities

•Lemmynsfw.com - Do I need to explain. This is under a different name, but I've kinda used that name over on the other place and I'm slowly bringing my content over (plus new stuff)

I only use one and four regularly

You know that you can follow your desired communities from other servers, all with e.g. the lemmy.ml account?
- Afaik, lemmynsfw requires you to be logged in to see nswf content. In other words, you can't easily view it from other servers.
- Some like to keep their dirty from their public identity
- Yeah, but there's at least one community I've found that's on an instance that have defederated my main, so what I posted there the other day gained zero traction, and only found out the reason last night (re-found the community through Mastodon and couldn't see my own post). So having alt accounts for those edge cases is my thinking
  Plus I post sightly different things on my nsfw account compared to this one 🤣

I chose vlemmy.net cause it seemed neutral, general, and was one of the recommended ones. So far so good.

Was initially on lemmy.zip because it seemed really chill and that was such a cool instance name. I had no problems with it whatsoever but I realised it didn't block out certain instances that I disliked (aka lemmygrad). Now I'm on lemmy.fmhy.ml and I'm loving it so far since it had everything I needed:

Blocks out lemmygrad
Allows talk on piracy and NSFW content
Loads better compared to the more overpopulated instances
Wasn't very restrictive and was very welcoming (didn't even ask me for a reason for joining)

Well, I started my instance so it only makes sense that its also my home!

As for why I started an instance, I've always liked self-hosting stuff as its been one of the best ways I learn how stuff on the internet works, even more than I have learnt from doing some programming in my spare time. So it was an obvious move for me since I wanted to know more about how ActivityPub worked.

Originally I wasn't really planning on having open registration on my instance (otherwise I would've picked a better domain name, a bit late for that now) however as I saw Lemmy pick up pace, and the larger servers were starting to have issues, I figured that the best way I could give back was at least offer to share the load.

I like the subdomain name.
- Oh, thank you! Maybe it wasn't such a bad choice after all then!

I have two. I have this one (lemmy.ml) as my broad-access instance. My other is lemmygrad, but as that is a bit more widely blocked I keep this one still. That one is used for most of my politics, and this one is my more general interest. It's kind of nice to have different communities died to different user registrations.

As to why those two in particular, I am a Marxist-Leninist so...yeah.

It's the first one I found and many others were filled with germans and I said "Nein"

I have a few now just to test it out. I want to use feddit.nl as my standard server, but I just haven't fully figured out how this all works.

Like for example I'm on lemmy.world and subscribe to something, that channel/sub doesn't seem to appear on feddit.nl. there can be a channel with the same name but it isn't the one I subscribed to.

do things from your home instance, so once you find a community on another instance you want on your home instance, go to your home instance and search !community@other.instance eg !asklemmy@lemmy.ml and itl will pull in a few posts to start off, if you subscribe to that remote community hen your home instance will keep on getting posts.

It has the word world in the name, sounds bigger.

I saw people complaining that the admins were communists and I was like dope, I love those guys

Plus healthy number of users (maybe too many actually) and local communities

Don't worry about the too many users, commies are excellent reducing excess population

I'm with the boys on lemm.ee !

Google search. I had no clue about multiple instances. Search lemmy on Google and first link was for lemmy.ml domain so that's how I am here.

it was canadian

Was?
- oh it still is but it was a few weeks ago too

Feddit.uk - I figure regionality has benefit in keeping loads more spread, plus it hosts some good communities and a cute name.

Because I'm a furry. obligatory OwO

Heard lemmy.ml and lemmy.world were being overwhelmed.

The list of blocked instances made me switch from feddit.de to the current instance I'm using.

Can you explain?
- Feddit.de blocked many instances which is some kind of censorship in my point of view. So i switched to another instance which gives me full access to lemmy.

I joined the one hosted by my country's community. The community is really great.

The one I use doesn't block other instances, although I probably will block the same instances and people that big instances already block, I want to be the one to make that choice and shape the content I see.

Country, I live in The Netherlands so I searched for a Dutch hosted instance with Dutch owner.

Was the most upvoted comment on "how to get started with Lemmy". Also, some of these other places have super strange names, I get that it doesn't matter but when you know nothing it gives bad vibes.

Because RIF recommended it

I'm hosting my own. I had a free server with 9GB RAM and 99GB disk space, and it was only running my Mastodon server until now. I like the freedom to do what I want with the server :)

One of the few only lgbt friendly servers

Are many other servers proactively anti-lgbt?
- Proactively... I don't know, but i know of one that acts like a friendly instance, but allows bigoted stuff to stay up.

Trans, pan, 196, and Blahaj is friend.

Is there really a difference between the different servers? I just browse all (It's lemm.ee btw)

Well if join a bigger one, the differences are minimal.
If you join a smaller server (10-100 people maybe), the All tab will have different communities as you can only see communities someone on the server has subscribed to. Smaller servers also have less potent federation bots which makes the content a bit more stale and less active. But that's small new servers mainly. As time goes on this becomes less of a problem.
On a bigger server (600 ppl for example), this is simply not too much of a concern. On a very big server (2-50k people), it can't even be a concern cuz they're connected to basically everything.
Well there are different rules on different servers, for a start. Which ones they're federated with can potentially make a big difference.
And then of course if you're just relying on All, you'll miss out on stuff that a bigger server might see because nobody from yours has subbed to it yet. But that's sorting itself out over time, and you can always speed up the process by making sure to regularly do a trawl for new interesting communities to pull in with a tool like lemmyverse.net/communities. Absolutely not a reason to sign up on a big server, just a reason to be more proactive if you're on a smaller one.
- Wait... ugh, someone needs to make a cute little graphics animation to explain this shit.
  I'm on lemmy.ml. When I choose to see "all," is that just listing communities that other users on lemmy.ml subscribed to?? I thought it listed content from all other servers connected/federated with lemmy.ml??

The TLD.

lemmy.world because it was top recommended. In the future I might change to either host my own or use my wife's ex-husband's instance.

Is that a roundabout way of saying you're getting a divorce? Does she know?
U 2 are buddies now? 🤪🤔

it was the only one when i joined

The first I tried was Lemmy.ml. I applied and didn't hear back. So I joined Lemmy.world and registered immediately.

I was planning to sign up at BeeHaw because it seems pretty active and with high quality discussions. When I heard that it had defederated from Lemmy.ml and Lemmy.world I decided not to sign up to any of those three as I would rather have access to all of them (though I can understand why BeeHaw defederated). So I just went with VLemmy.net as it was one of the recommended ones (on join-lemmy.org and the Awesome-Lemmy-Instances GitHub) and seems to be very broadly federated.

I don't think it matters too much, though I think if you were signed up on the same instances as all your favourite communities it would be a bit more convenient.

What does it mean they were defederated? How does that impact lemmy.World etc
- This means beehaw will not see any content from the servers they defederated from, effectively preventing trolls and toxic users from harassing people in beehaw.

Bouncing between several since lemmy.world is being hammered right now, I'm sure once the dust settles things will calm down. Right now I'm on infosec.pub because it was recommended to me as a smaller server. It really doesn't matter so long as whatever you're on communicates with everyone else.

It's kind of a pain when different accounts have different subscriptions. Do you know a good way to sync them up? (Either a one time import or continuously)
- The easiest thing to do is open one account's subscriptions in one browser window, the other account's subscriptions in the other, then work through them. It doesn't take too long but I wouldn't want to do it very often.
- I wish!

I joined latte.isnot.coffee because its description said it was specifically for Reddit refugees. I'm a little worried it may be run by pro-CCP tankies, though.

Not seeing anyone mentioning lemmy.one and I'm starting to think I made a bad choice.

Fellow .one resident here. Love it.
I'm here! I read some disappointing stuff about the creator of it, but I'm not on Lemmy for the personality-worship. If it works, that's all I need.
I'm hoping it eventually allows downvoting and community creation, but I understand leaving that out at least while it deals with the waves of new users.

I have has a journey through a few instances.

I first applied to Lemmy.ml because I was interested in open source. I also applied at Lemmy.one and Beehaw because they were recommended on join-lemmy.

I got accepted at Beehaw. Then they defederated from Lemmy.world and sh.it. Stayed on Beehaw for a while but found a few communities on world that I couldn’t join, so decided to sign up to world.

World was having performance issues and I realised I could no longer interact with the Beehaw communities and people I had started talking with.

Then found lemm.ee I like the name, it hadn’t been defederated by any other instances, had good up time, was on the latest Lemmy code, and the admin seemed to know what they were doing, so joined that one. I don’t see myself moving again any time soon.

The domain name. And the community seemed friendly enough. Now with the Reddit exodus, I'm glad I migrated to a smaller instance.

I saw a local instance for new Zealanders and joined.

On the day I signed up, 18.0 was rolling out and lemmy.one was the only one that worked on Jerboa. I wanted to try out the different apps and see what worked well so that was where I started. I also have an account on lemmy.world but I don't think it's necessary unless there's a problem with lemmy.one. might still use another server if I can create my own community there.

I owned a funny domain

I signed up at Redditthat.com as it was listed as a recommend instance. I didn't want to overcomplicate the choice. If this instance doesn't fit my needs, I can still create another account somewhere else.

The name of the instance made me laugh.

I joined lemmy.ml a while ago because following cool opensource projects is my jam.

I picked lemmy.world because it was recommended and had a large userbase. I know Beehaw defederated from lemmy.world and sh.itjustwor.ks, so if you want to interact with that community, that could be a consideration against, but since the user population across all of Lemmy is currently increasing dramatically, I think everything's a bit of a moving target regardless.

I saw a youtube video that said lemmy.ml was full so you can't join. I just picked a random one that wasn't ml so I chose lemmy.world

Even lemmy.word, at least for me, was difficult to join. I have a hard time to log into the account I have created there. I think we must understand this is not redit, the platform is fundamentally different how you approach it. The fuller the server gets, the more difficult it gets to get into your account.
- I wonder if it'd be possible to setup a registration server of some sort instead of only picking instances manually? Ideally it'd know if one particular server was near capacity and could direct new user registrations to another.
  I have no idea how this sort of platform functions, just spitballing.

It was nearby geographically and the guy running it seemed to know what he was doing from a technical aspect.

I knew picking from the popular sources will provide a slow experience, so I went to a GitHub repository and picked the shortest domain from the recommended section.

Ideology!

I frequently see Stux on mastodon, and I think they're a good person so I decided to choose one of their instances when choosing a Lemmy server.

I picked Rammy for the name and the sidebar:

Just another Lemmy instance. We've got a cool mascott though! Open to everyone.
Why trust some Big Tech corporation to host your data when some random geek can do it? All thanks to the power of the Fediverse!

Ideology 🙂.

It's a local one near my country :)

I'm on lemmy.ml because my application was ignored (or not accepted, I don't know) by the smaller instances I've applied to.

I’m a pirate 🏴‍☠️ and like the community itself, friendly and helpful.

Lemmy.world was the only server where I could make an account during the busier days of reddit immigration.

Initially made an account with the instance opened after my country's subreddit made the shift, but on Jerboa trying to look at other instance content was really rough.

So I joined here since I enjoy the content, and raise the black flag every so often.

I signed up with lemmy.ml originally, but then it was a little hugged to death. I couldn't update my community, couldn't post pictures or anything and I kept getting errors.

I went through the list that was only like 10 servers or something at the time, found slrpnk.net which had the vibes of the subreddit I run and found a new home for NoLawns. The guy who runs it seems pretty cool when I had to reach out to him so I've made it my home.

I did also just make a kbin the other day to see what that's all about too but with no app (yet there's a few in the works), I've stuck here.

I chose lemmy.ml after I heard nothing for two of my applications on beehaw. I then got in, and about a week later I got approval for the second beehaw application. So that's gonna be used eventually, but I'm really happy with lemmy.ml

I’m in Kansas City so I joined https://midwest.social 😄

Lemmy.ml was requesting people register on other instances, and lemmy.one stepped up to fill the void.

But when people ask me what instance to sign up for, I tell them lemmy.world. it doesn't really matter, but being based in a bigger instance reduces the friction of finding communities.

lemmy.ml because when I joined I had no idea of how the fediverse worked. I'd change it to a smaller one but it really doesn't matter much I don't think.

lemmy.ml was the only general purpose instance when I opened my account. There were only two instances back then - lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml

For some reason I couldn't join lemmy.world and few other popular instances, be it because of technical issues, load, idk. I joined sh.itjust.works because I wanted to check fediverse before I commit to host my own instance, which I probably will at some point.

IDK

I was on dataterm.digital, I loved that server, but they went down one day and just never came back up. Sometimes I can still hear it SYN ACK

Was looking for a smaller instance which doesn't block many instances so I don't risk having an instance I want to see blocked. By the way I also use Arch

The language. There is few server that are solely or mostly in Portuguese.

Blahaj zone is explicitly and deliberately queer friendly, and a bit more lenient than beehaw

Mod of a subreddit I was following created an instance, its was the easiest choice

I want something spread out from a maint instance, and is relevant to me, so I went with Midwest.social. I also knew about their mastodon track record, which helps me feel secure knowing it's a good instance

Lemmy.world didn't require/disapprove my application!

I wrote in the beehaw application that I'd contribute empathy, humor, comments, and memes. I feel like a rejected tinder date in denial, "maybe their servers just have a lot going on right now"

Others did not exist back than.

I was going to choose sopuli.xyz but you need to give them a reason to why you want there and I never heard back from them and logging in does nothing, so I assume I was not selected. I say it would be fair if there was some message to go f myself so that I wouldn't be held in eternal limbo.

So I chose lemmy.world as it's a general purpose instance and immediate registry.

I added an account to a few geared towards specific community types. Then I can easily switch accounts and view local.

I'm considering standing up an instance for this type of thing myself.

Because of nationality

Chose an instance without mandatory email account and which seemed serious

I picked Lemmy.world because I wanted a fairly large one that will likely maintain support.

Lemmy.ca felt like a natural home as an IRL Canadian resident. I like the variety of content and the moderation seems good so far.

Tried the bee but did not get any notification I was accepted. Fortunately saw programming.dev pop on my feed and they accepted my request.

Good thing as well that I found all of my favorite programming languages on the server.

I joined lemmy.ca because I like to keep a diet of local news and a place to avoid American influence. I like using my local feed for well the local stuff and then my subscriptions for all the niche interests that the Canadian community couldn't sustain alone.

It federates with the servers that have some stuff I want access to on them, and it also has rules against being a huge douche. And it's supported by Jerboa.

That's pretty much it. Mix of convenience and what passes for my moral scruples.

Ideology 🙂.

I want to be in control over my own data. So I spun up my own instance

Lemmy user for a couple of days here. I jumped on lemmy.world because it was big and the name suggested it was universal and open, it had open registration and allows nsfw content.

I suffered through the technical issues many of us experienced, but everything seems much better and smoother now (maybe because they were able to fix the issues, or maybe because enough people left because of them, I can't say!)

Does it matter what you use? Yes and no, I guess. Apparently the last few days performance issues were mostly local to dot-world. I did make another profile on lemm.ee and I noticed the different instances seem to show different feeds with some different content, but also many of the same posts from the same communities as well. I'm still trying to figure out how they decide what they show in their feeds. Something to do with federation, I guess, but I'm not pretending to understand the meaning of that concept yet. Given that instances can choose to federated or defederate, it seems like it must matter to some extent what instance you are on even though content can be shared between instances.

Basically, you saw different posts on each instance's local feed because they dont always federate with the exact same servers, one may be blocked on one instance or not yet discovered
it does matter what instance you're on when your instance starts getting defederated by others - so far i know a lot of servers defederated lemmygrad and explodingheads for political extremism, and beehaw blocked shitjustworks and lemmy.world because of bots

Because it's a furry instance

I went with ReddThat as the past tense seemed apt. Also it's a small enough instance not to feel overwhelming, while being large enough to provide content.

I use lemmy.ml because i found it has a large user-base. I also like programming.dev and ideally i would like to see all the posts from the one and the other instance into one :)

I chose mine because it disallows NSFW on its own communities and takes a hard stance against defederation while not being defederated. I want to have more control over my feed and not be isolated.

I went for what I believe to be the bigger one, because it might get a higher quality of support from third parties, and still be here after a year.