this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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Asklemmy

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I chose lemm.ee because:

  1. Its admin @[email protected] has been working hard at improving the instance's performance and fixing issues.
  2. It has been relatively smooth and performant since the infrastructure upgrade.
  3. The domain name is cleverly satisfying.
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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Same, feeling really slow for me

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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!!

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago
  1. Googled "Lemmy" to see what it even is
  2. "wtf is an instance"
  3. 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.
  4. 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."
  5. "sounds good enough", created account
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I chose lemmy.ca because I'm a proud Canadian patriot πŸ’ͺπŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦πŸ«‘

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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).

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 🀘

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

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!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

.... Because I own it

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Idk, because why not Estonia.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

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 πŸ™‚

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

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.

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