Why did you choose your instance?

I joined sh.itjust.works because I like the domain. It makes me smile 🙂

I did not. I ended up on lemmy.world but visiting over, which I think is a cool feature.

lemmy.world seemed reputable with a straightforward domain name, and no out-of-the-ordinary policies.

I chose lemmy.world solely on the fact it had a lot of members. Lemmy.ml was a contender too. I just wanted to jump in and check things out. Knowing (slightly)more now, I don't think it was a bad choice.

I joined lemmy.ml because the join-lemmy site gave me extremely little to go on. It was a coin toss between this and beehaw.org once I realized how few instances were established and not right-wing.

That was only 2 weeks ago and already I've seen the site force 2 server upgrades, even as the admins have strongly encouraged new users to join elsewhere to prevent centralization.

The instance list desperately needs a few columns added, including whether new signups are encouraged or discouraged.

I joined Beehaw early on when things where a lot quieter because I liked what they were trying to do (and back then there were only like two instances, and I didn't want to put more load on lemmy.ml).

Joined sh.itjust.works to make a community after the sysadmin just casually walked up with a huge server, which is a level of swagger I can get behind. I've since moved to this as my "main" account since Beehaw defederated with lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works (which sucks, but is understandable).

May move again to pawb.social at some point, although that means people will know something about me. :P

Edit: And now pawb.social has defederated with sh.itjust.works... I'm getting more and more tempted to just roll my own personal instance just for me...

The github page said to pick one at rasdom and not over think it.

I chose beehaw. I chose wrong. So now I'm on lemmy.world and nothing was lost 😎

Thought about switching over, with zero knowledge of this platform, clicked random link in reddit thread and it was lemmy.world. turns out it's populated and stable.

I just picked lemmy.one mostly at random, but also in part because it advertised itself as well regulated but also not heavily populated and thus prone to crashing with the recent influx of reddfugees.

Seems to work okay, but I can't create a community without admin approval and the instance also disallows downvoting, and I'm not a big fan of that at all, but I'll give it a while longer and see.

I'm still finding it a challenge to find the balance of communities that interest me I used to have. There's an awful lot of meta chatter about the site itself from new users that, while I understand, gets rather annoying when it takes up the whole feed. So it's definitely an adjustment, resulting in me using it less than I did my old haunts, but in the meantime I've gotten a lot more reading done than I used to, so I've got that going for me.

feddit.de because it was made for german potatoes like me

Not gonna lie. I've got multiple accounts across platforms. But yours seems to be responding quickly and the content is solid, so... here I am.

Lemmy.ml re-opened registration but I had problems signing up. Lemmy.world seemed like the next best option.

I was looking for a furry one. Found pawb.social and yiffit. Stuck with the one that had nsfw. They both are Lemmy instances

Was looking for a furry one, and pawb.social seemed to be well-run (since it was related to a couple of decently-sized Mastodon servers) and was generic enough (and not NSFW focused). There also seemed to be a decent number of technical people there as well (in fact, one of the Mastodon instances is furry.engineer), so it matched up with my other interests as well. I considered lemmyrs.org, but ended up not choosing it.

i moved over to lemmy.world after i heard somewhere that lemmy.ml was run by a tankie and had been censoring proof of the tiananmen square massacre. idk if it's true or not, but I didn't wanna take any chances.

Back in my day, the only instance that federated with all other instances was lemmy.ml 👴🏻

lemmy.ml says they are overloaded, I then found beehaw but they requires signup application so I say fuck it and choose lemmy.world instead.

I landed at vlemmy.net. I tried to register at a few bigger ones that gave infinite circles. By the time I got to vlemmy I wasn't really being too picky anymore, I was just trying to figure out if the problem was me or overloading.

A nice side effect of landing there is that some of my very few subscriptions are on beehaw, and we haven't been defederated.

I joined mander.xyz because it has a central theme around the natural sciences. It could possibly include STEM content as well; there is an ongoing discussion about it. The admin(s) are present and very responsive.

For anyone with a love of science and/or nature I recommend it highly as a home instance of Lemmy.

I was told it was better for load balancing if we didn't all use the same one. So I just looked for one that had easy signups and didn't seem overeager to block stuff. Apparently, some from this instance come form /r/china. I'm not, but I do drink coffee. Anyway, I think it's working out so far; better than reddit anyway.

I run a Mastodon server and Lemmy started to grow, happened to find a cool domain so here we are

feddit.dk. I wanted a regional instance as my home instance, because they tend to be chill with controlled growth, while also having native language discussions. My country didn't have a Lemmy instance at the time, so I picked the closest option. I love Denmark and they don't seem too annoyed by my presence (yet). Thanks for having me 🫶🏻 🇩🇰

For the meme.

Vlemmy.net as it currently hasn't defederated from anyone or been defederated.

I created my own because I wanted a more specific type of instance, a place that I would want to read the local feed rather than just see randomness. I also wanted to create a space that I felt at home.

You're welcome to come say hello at Wayfarers' Haven - sign-ups are open but do need a short application to keep things ship-shape.

lemm.ee said it was newcomer-friendly and I was a newcomer so bingo bango there I went. I suppose I can always join a different instance if I need to but I'm still just getting a grip on this place so I'm good for now.

Knowing that Beehaw and Lemmy.ml were overloaded, I chose the next biggest one in my country at the time, which was Lemmy.one.

I chose lemmy.world after lemmy.ml closed their registration. Just glad I made my account somewhere.

Kbin because it was the first one that actually let me register and didn't freeze

I joined @lemmy.world because the admin @[email protected] had a lot of experience running a large Mastodon instance, and @lemmy.ml was asking folks to go elsewhere.

My current instance has a bunch of sports communities, and typically the first thing i like to look at when i was on reddit were the sports subs. I was previously on beehaw but they kind of shut themselves off from some of other big communities so i migrated off

funny domain name

lemmy.world is more open and performant than lemmy.ml and Beehaw.

I'm self-hosting my own Lemmy instance, but I might switch to self-hosting kbin instead. I'm just unsure whether it's possible to migrate comments and posts from Lemmy to kbin :/

Lemmy.world: because it was the top result on Google and I neither knew about the other servers nor remembered my experiences with Mastodon.

Probably going to stay here anyway.

Mostly out of laziness

I actually made my home in the one hosting a previous reddit community I was fond of, just choose one u like.

I'm on Beehaw because there are no downvote button

I bounced back and forth between several lemmy instances and kbin.social. I feel like I gave them all a fair shot. I ended up sticking with kbin because I like the interface better, and it integrates with the fediverse better (microblog/mastodon integration). It is younger though, so it still has some more growing pains to go through, but the developer is very active, so I'm confident it'll get there. Ultimately, it will have a much more robust feature set than lemmy, and I still won't miss out on anything posted in a lemmy instance.

Lemmy.world initially cause I didn't like the overbearing moderation and locked communities of beehaw.org and the developers of lemmy.ml. Kbin seems to be great and I prefer its timeline / sorting, I just wish it was a bit more polished with magazine syncing and certain UI features, but that should come with time.

I'm on lemmy.ca because I'm Canadian.

I created my own instance so that I know it will not just "go away".

Edit: I have a feeling that a lot of instances, besides the big ones, will vanish after the newness wears off.

Joined sh.itjust.works since it's located in North America, has open registration, and the admin sounds like he knows what he's doing running a server. I've stayed 'cause it's been stable and I like the admin's vibe. It and lemmy.world seem to have become the main large "general purpose" instances since they both have open registration.

I also have an account on kbin that I'm not using much at the moment. I think that site has lots of future potential, though.

I ended up with kbin.social since I liked the interface, liked the roadmap and existing integration with Mastodon, and because that instance was the one everyone was suggesting for KBin at the time. I'll most likely spin up my own instance for myself and maybe a small group of others to join.

I chose kbin.social because of the alleged tankie issues at Lemmy. I didn't know enough about the fediverse to realise though that only a handful of Lemmy instances were included in the "warning" I'd heard about, so I looked to kbin instead.

Based on what I've seen from the admin here, though, I'm confident I'm in the right instance. He seems like an honest, stand-up dude who genuinely believes in all the best things the fediverse seems to be capable of

This was linked on some post about alternatives to that other site I want to stop using. And honestly I'm quite confused on the "it doesn't matter/it does matter" so I'm just rolling with it and not trying to worry about it.

I've been using Kbin and Lemmy so far and I like both, but Kbin seems much more stable right now. I like kbin interface a bit more and the ranking algo seems to work better (there an issue on lemmy with hot and posts being added that should not be there). Kbin also let's me sort by 3hr/6hr/12hr in addition to normal sorting options.

I initially made an account here because it looked cool. But I didn't know that kbin was part of the Federation so I also made an account on the newly created lemmy.world instance just to bounce between kbin and lemmy. But once federation was enabled here I subscribed to all the communities I had subscribed on lemmy world. Still bounce between the two buuuuut spending most of my time here. Love you guys!

lemmy.ml was broken and lemmy.world was the first one I saw besides that one. that's about it

edit: did a bit of scrolling, sounds like kbin might be a better fit, what do y'all feel is better?

I joined lemmy.fmhy.ml because it allowed NSFW without being focused on it and I prefer the more open approach.

I'm very happy with my choice

Randomly came across mine. Was gunna join a larger instance just for testing, but it was right as the big Reddit rush was happening and my signups kept failing.

So I went with this one.

I switched off lemmy.ml for two reasons:

• I didn't want to be on the "main" instance, kinda defeats the point of federation.
• While they were testing UI 0.17 on the instance it totally broke the site for me on both my phone and PC, I couldn't click anything for nearly a week.

So I settled on lemm.ee as it was a general purpose instance that wasn't too big, and the admin is committed to staying around. And of course I was actually able to click on things. It's nice here!

I made an account at kbin.social and just went with it. It's all gonna be federated anyway (unless it gets defederated) and each day actually feels like it's improving.

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com

It really doesn't matter too much. You can search for communities across the fediverse anyway.

infosec.pub because their communities were interesting.

I chose kbin, loved the integration with mastodon

Kbin just because I love the interface and I love the idea of having both articles and microblogs!

I joined sh.itjust.works because my application at lemmy.one was taking a while and I mean, who doesn't want to be a sh.it.head 🙃

I picked my regional one (technically also better for latency)

I read two things about the fediverse and immediately hopped over here to make an account. Though I had no idea what I was doing, like no idea. Kbin was the first name that popped up and I signed up for it.

Again, no idea what I was doing. Once I did sort of figure out the fediverse I also signed up for Lemmy but I didn't seem to like it as much as Kbin so, I'm sticking here.

I prefer kbin's UI to the other federated servers I've tried. Beehaw is probably #2 for me, and it seems like a really nice community. Mastodon.social is also cool but it's a lot more twitter-like which I have a hard time getting used to.

I was curious when I heard about Kbin. I like it so far

I started on https://midwest.social (Lemmy) before Kbin was on my radar because I'm from the Midwest. There are things I like about both platforms. I'm spending more time on kbin.social right now because Midwest is having performance issues, but I like the community there, so I may hang out on both and see where the platforms go with development, features, mobile apps, and the feel for the local community.

I chose Kbin because at the time I went searching it was the only option that was working/responsive haha.

I chose what was a smaller instance to try to spread things out

I'm using https://lemmy.dbzer0.com because I can't start an account in lemmy.ml

I think kbin.social is a bit more free speech. I want less moderation. Lemmy has easy tools to use to block users and communities I find offensive so if something really offends me it’s easy to block. I prefer to control it rather than having some petty mods play king with what I’m allowed to see.

If anyone has any good suggestions for other free speech instances I’d love to hear!

Feddit.de because the guys at R/de linked to it

Kbin has my favorite interface from the federated sites I've seen, and the developer seems like a decent dude.

I'm still getting used to the concept of federation so... I created my initial account on beehaw because I liked it's ethos about being a safe and welcoming space. Then they defederated from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, which produced a lot of content i was going to be missing out on, so i created an alt on lemmy.world. I then realized this meant I'd have to swap back and forth between accounts to see both instances activity, so i moved to reddthat which is a nice little australian community, and this allows me to participate in beehaw posts, as well as lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works without switching accounts

Sticking with BeeHaw for their community (usually browse local only) and now Kbin for the wider fediverse. I'd use Fedia.io over kbin.social (to put less strain on Kbin.social) but fedia.io isn't federating perfectly yet and seems to have image issues. I'm sure @Jerry will have it running smooth soon enough and I'll probably migrate my Kbin/fediverse-wide browsing there.

I chose infosec.pub because I think it has a good chance at longevity and will be managed well.

I tend to hang in indie game development subreddits and didn't want to have to deal with confrontational trolls on a regular basis, so programming.dev felt like a relatively safe choice since it's neither a super large server or a general-purpose one. I just wanna make lil' games and have little patience for those lacking in empathy and maturity.

I chose programming.dev because i am a programmer and developer.

I have four!

Beehaw was my first, when I joined it was 3rd or 4th most users, but had just been upgraded (per a pinned post) and had a cool community vibe. This was like a few days pre protest I think?

Lemmy.one got made on the first day of the mass Exodus, and beehaw was STRUGGLING. I knew the mods were a small team and the server wasnt able to keep up so I went to a less populated instance.

Reddthat.com is new and I haven't used it yet, I went there because it seemed middle of the pack, and I wanted to have an account where I create a community.

And then lemmynsfw is for...actually, I miscounted I only have three accounts.

I read the rules for a bunch of US-based Lemmy instances, as I wanted one with low latency -- if I'm going to be seeing the whole Fediverse through it, I want it to be peppy -- and I'm in the US. Many kind of took what I'd call a censorship-heavy position from the get-go -- like, creating a safe space for LGBT users or something was the highest priority.

There was one Dutch Lemmy instance that specifically mentioned free speech, but I was hunting for something with good latency, and pinging it with mtr had relatively-high latency.

There was a US Pleroma instance (IIRC freespeechextremist.com or something like that) that mentioned free speech. Pleroma, I understand, can federate with lemmy, and IIRC its default max comment size is longer. Unfortunately, browsing it without registering seemed that most of it seemed to be racist. I'd like a platform that doesn't try, as a top priority, to shut down everyone who is racist or otherwise offensive instancewide, but also not to drop into stuff that's just racism.

One thing that I did notice, skimming the content on said rather-racist server, was that they highlighted a Lemmy dev saying that he actively wanted to make it difficult for right-wingers to use the Lemmy platform. That didn't sit well with me at all -- I don't want to try to be using a platform that is actively opposed to right-wingers, nor to be in conflict with the developers of the platform on the matter, as it could lead to friction down the line. I also wasn't enthralled with the fact that Lemmy had a slur filter by default (though I'll concede that I don't know whether kbin does or not).

Kbin.social had rules that didn't from the get-go heavily talk about trying to restrict users and also wasn't purely serving up objectionable stuff. I tried it and discovered the fact that it had support for both Twitter-style microblogging and Reddit-style functionality, unlike Lemmy's focus on just Reddit functionality. I am most interested in Reddit-style functionality, but if I could get integrated microblogging, that'd be even better. Hence, I stuck with kbin.social, and so far, it's been unexpectedly good. There are a few UI quirks (e.g. the comment field is at the bottom of the page rather than the top), but people provided userscript fixes for that and other differences from Reddit within hours of me showing up. I'm broadly very happy with the UI -- the decisions made are basically what I would have liked to see from Reddit. Has a dark mode, though I use Dark Reader, essentially making it unnecessary.

I don't totally understand the kbin.social infrastructure -- I have low latency to kbin.social with mtr, but I don't know if that means that that's just some kind of Cloudflare-based frontend server in the US and the backend is located in Poland, where the developer is, or what. He does have a note currently in the sidebar referring to a "server room", which makes me think that he is physically near at least some of the infrastructure.

I chose kbin because lemmy.ml blocks my Google Fi VPN, so fuck 'em I guess.

If it's fast, federated and the admins aren't pushing any ideology I'm happy.

I joined slrpnk earlier in the year when I was excited about having installed my own home powerplant.

Kbin.social has a good interface, a few userscripts to customize it as I please, and it was the first one listed on the website that was in english lol.

I used Lemmy for a while but now I am planning to exclusively use kbin. It appears to be a way more mature project and is infinitely better UI/UX wise than Lemmy. Moreover it's a project maintained by a fellow Polander and not a bunch of tankies.

It was near the top of the join Lemmy recommendations that day, I like piracy, and it didn't have any hoops to jump through to make an account, not even a email address.

I went with lemmy.ca because I figured it'd put me in proximity to Canadian Political discourse.