this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to [email protected].

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What caused the massive exodus to lemmy.ml? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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What caused users to sign up to specifically lemmy.ml, instead of other servers? I am aware a lot of users signed up after the spez AMA, but even before the AMA the site was overloaded.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

instead of other servers?

The fact that when people started joining about a week ago or so, lemmy.ml was at the top of the recommendations in join-lemmy, the fact that it had in its description that lemmy.ml is ran by the developers of lemmy and the jerboa app so people assumed this is the correct one and lastly, unfortunately during that time the only alternative instances at the top of the recommendations was lemmygrad and I don't remember the other one that screamed communism so people flocked to other ones.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

It’s the first site on join lemmy

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

I joined before the AMA, but not on lemmy.ml. Frankly, my first temptation was to ignore the overload warning for fear of missing something by joining another instance. Fortunately I spent more than two minutes figuring out how it works and decided otherwise, but that might be the reasoning behind other people's choice

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Frankly, my first temptation was to ignore the overload warning for fear of missing something by joining another instance.

I think many non tech savvy users won’t understand how Lemmy works and just give up trying to understand how to signup. Plus some instances have a form and users are waitlisted. I think that’s the biggest con of Lemmy.

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

It seems that the last point has been solved a few days ago by unlisting Beehaw and Lemmy.ml from suggested instances on join-lemmy.org

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

My first impulse as an ex-redditor is to flock to the server with highest population, because I am sheep. I want to see the most content and comments. For me fortunately likewise it took two minutes to figure out that you can see any content from any server. Maybe the server list on join-lemmy.org should show "load percentage" instead of "number of users" :)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I don’t think there’s a good universal definition of “load percentage”

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

For me, I think it was a combination of not understanding the system and not knowing anything about any instances. Which ones can you trust to not just shut down and make you loose your data?

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

This, I wanted to join an instance with management I somewhat agreed with on matters of federation and had longevity. I didn’t want to join beehaw or lemmy.one for the first reason; and the others don’t really have the longevity to see how admins will react in certain cases.

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

Am super new. What happens with my account if "my" Lemmy instance shuts down? What are my safeguards?

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

If your instance shuts down, you won't be able to use that account, and your existing content will be in a limbo of pre-shutdown instances knowing about them and post-shutdown ones not. I assume a similar limbo will happen to the communities hosted on your instance, but I'm not entirely sure on what specifically will happen.

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

Sounds like something that will have to be addressed. Thus is definitely a reason to have an account with a large, established instance.

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

It's been linked to all over Reddit when they should be linking to join-lemmy instead. Federation is a bit confusing if you're new, plus you have instances like Beehaw and lemmygrad with their own questionable policies...

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

People (like me) to jump ship before the AMA.

I did not know about it and I didn't expect anything from it once I did. I was already here on lemmy anyways

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

Well I made an account 10 days ago when the traffic was much less because the devs of Lemmy had just started advertising the site on Reddit.

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

IDK I just kinda like being on the OG instance/the instance with the devs. Also why I am on mastodon.social.

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

A lot of smaller instances defederate with mastodon.social because it's very unmoderated. Tonnes of spammy accounts often flood smaller instance from mastodon.social which made a lot of admins defederate with it. Just as a heads up. You might not see posts from quite a few instances.