tbf people just wanna sign up and click on funny links, not browse through 100 rando instances to find the one that lines up with their exact interests and wait for approval and worry about uptime and whether their instance will still exist in a year
I feel that, while lemmy is still a work in progress, it is already pretty adequate for solving this need. If you want to subscribe to other instances you can do it from within your insance by going up to communities and searching. You can also click the all tab and see a bunch of instances from around lemmy that your instance is federated with.
I think mastadon struggled with this because the twitter model is to follow people and depending how far removed the servers are this can be trickier. Compared to lemmy where people interested in a single subject will likely target and find the subject theyre interested in and bring themselves together naturally.
Furthermore I think some people are splitting up and dividing into sub instances and tiny subjects a little prematurely. Reddit didnt get super esoteric with it's subs until it got big and the larger subs either declined or got too noisy to talk about certain things. Like for example how beehaw has an operatingsystems instance instead of a linux, ubuntu, macos, windows, fedora, archinux, opensuse, openbsd, etc. Right now there arent enough of us that we dont need to subdivide.
I've seen people literally signing up here just to make like 50 empty communities and not post or comment on anything at all. Definitely a lot of folks just trying to stake some territory that they think will be valuable in the future.
Very true. It would be sad to build up a persona on a smaller instance to then have it go dark and take your user with it. Other than losing your collection of "upvotes," you can just recreate a new user with the same display name on another instance and keep going. 👍
Holy crap, you can do Slack style emoticons? Huzzah! 🎉
If I create an account on a random, small instance. And then go to the "all communities" feed. I can automatically see all communities that are in my instance.
In addition to that, I can see all communities of other Lemmy instances, that are "federated". But I cannot see other communities from other nstances, unless I go on there, find the communitis and manually subscribe to them (I believe there are other ways to get them to show up, like using the search etc.?)
So, as a normal user.
Who's just looking for a replacement for /r/all, wouldn't joining the largest lemmy instance that is fedarated to many others (Just by how many users it has, because it's the users who link instances by their actions?) make perfect sense?
The all communities tab should be showing you communities from every instance you are federated with. It's true that they won't show up in your feed until someone on your instance connects to the instance it's on at least once, but you don't need to be on a massive server to be connected to all the major communities right from the start.
Based on my previous experience running a Mastodon server, 90%+ of people are going to concentrate on already popular servers, especially the "official" one. I suppose I will also close (or be strict about) registration at some point myself, but I have a feeling I am not going to have to worry about it for a long time. My goal now is just to get some friends and acquaintances to join any lemmy instance, bonus points if it is mine.
Same here. I only have a couple of users though so I don't show up on join-lemmy.org anymore. Not sure how to gather more users now. I figure if I do actually get up to a hundred or so users I'll set up a LibrePay account and expand based on available funds.
Problem is that a) new users don’t know that they can join communities across servers, and b) it is intuitive use start with the servers that a lot of people like.
Instance browsing and onboarding is probably the biggest challenge to Lemmy’s growth. The current experience either scares new people away, or encourages them to congregate on a limited set of instances.
If the registration process just picked a random instance for you, maybe something nearby, and assured new users that they can visit communities and interact with users across instances, very few would pick the biggest instance.
That isn't guaranteed, though. The other day I wanted to create a new community and was browsing instances on join-lemmy.org/instances for an instance that was compatible rulewise. The one I picked evidently wasn't a good pick (burggit.moe). Trying to advertise my new community, I found out it was defederated from beehaw (and likely others) and got insulted as a pedophilia sympathizer ...
Randomly assigning new users to instances would make a substantial fraction of people very unhappy.
It's also that lemmy.ml is the instance I've seen posted everywhere when it's brought up, so naturally people would just sign up there instead of finding somewhere else.
First I created account there and then landed on my current instance, because lemmy.ml's admin views looks sketchy for me. Been living in ex-ussr for all my life I just cant accept all that communists and marxists and the fact that lemmy.ml has /c/Communism on it.
I know that's silly but that's why I'm not there anymore.
It's not silly at all. I also made an account there before realizing the admins are tankies. It honestly sketches me out about Lemmy in general considering they're the two lead (and currently only?) devs. Casts a big shadow over all of Lemmy when the devs are posting Xinjiang genocide denialism and their instance is at the top of the recommendations on join-lemmy.org. With lemmy.grad pretty high up there too.
Yeah that’s what Lemmy started out as. The thing is with all the Reddit refugees flooding in it is diluting out the tankies. Besides, lemmygrad.ml is blocked by many instances. As for the values of the devs the great thing is that Lemmy is FOSS so if they go rouge someone will just make a fork of Lemmy.
At least with the way Lemmy is designed it doesn't seem like even the main devs can have much of an impact.
They even write themselves that if they made changes to the Lemmy codebase that some instance admins didn't like, then those admins can decide not to upgrade their instance. The code is also open sourced so anyone with some tech know-how can fork the codebase and remove whatever they don't like.
Profit motive ruined Reddit so you’ve come to a place created by communist then get upset that the people who made and operate it are communists. Yeah that’s more than a little silly.
I'm not upset about their political views. For me its just too painful to read something like "Russia didn't start that war, its NATO" while I'm currently fleeing from conscription to Russian army to fight against Ukrainian people I respect more than citizens of my motherland.
So, I make only choice I find suitable in that situation: avoid places where this behaviour is fine for mods and gains upvotes.
You'd need to sign up for a totally new account. There is talk of adding a migration feature but obviously that'll require a bit of patience, they've got a long list of feature requests!
Everything from beehaw.org is nice. Even stuff on lemmy.ml is okay as long you don't bring up politics. Stay away from news or politics subs on this instance. And I hope we will get bigger communities on other servers than lemmy.ml or beehaw.org.
All I know is that you should avoid lemmy.ml. In their /c/WorldNews community, an admin gave a four day ban to a user for posting an Axios article about the Chinese succession plan for the reason of "Orientalism". Those guys are tankie shills. In my experience, lemmy.ca, sh.itjust.works, and lemmy.one seem solid. Obviously I personally went with lemmy.ca. But you should check out the admin profiles before you join any instance. That will tell you most of what you need to know. That and the modlogs (found at the bottom of the page) that will tell you what posts have been taken down and what people have been banned by mods on various communities.
Same, I found a place that I know I'l prioritize a lot so I joinded that instance instead of the official one because ran into a post pointing out just what you said.
Also I've seen admins and users in the most popular/main instances acting like if not allowing adult content will keep their instances safe from NSFL or troll content or as if that will save them from the problems to moderate that kind of content, which honestly is disingenuous and/or naive (at least until the instances actually have to deal with big constant activity).
I'm very tempted to switch to another instance, but from what I understand, you can't migrate your account like you can with Mastodon? That seems like something that should be expected with fediverse apps...
I think clarity on this or maybe a "roulette" of which instance on new user accounts would help. Most new users are Reddit refugees and just sign up to the mothership.
A roulette would be nice, the system balances the load of each instance. The downside of this is that it will negate the theme or purpose of the instance since the assigning of the members would likely be randomized instead of joining by choice of instance values and purpose.
I don't think a roulette would work, because not all instances are created equal. Like, just look at Lemmygrad for the proof of that. There are other differences too, like some instances turn off downvoting.
I wanted a server that wasn't likely to close I don't really know for sure, but I imagine it's easy to underestimate how much money or time is required to run a server. And I'd really prefer not having to worry about migrating. The 'run by Lemmy's developers' part makes me think that either the risk will be lower or the people running the server will know how to prevent reaching a point like that.
I didn't want to join a very specific instance As I see it, there are two possible scenarios:
The instance I join will affect the content I'm exposed (and not exposed) to, in which case I want to experience 'the whole internet' rather than a section of it.
The instance I choose is irrelevant to the content I get, in which case, (apart from community rules) it shouldn't really matter which one I choose, so I would just join the biggest instance.
Still something that could help with the choosing-an-instance process is to display in the list of servers the community rules and if they are blocking certain communities.
This is something that lemmy devs need to better address. This is an "Eternal September" kind of situation. People (me included) are not used to the fediverse. They think you can participate only if you're in that instance. And people want content, so they think "why's the instance with most people? Ahh lemmy.ml? Cool, let's join.
As someone who intentionally joined a different instance, the biggest issue is the “federation” doesn’t allow cross-authentication. Clicking a link to another instance moves me to that instance where I’m not logged in. Authentication should really be cross-instance.
I think this occurs because people haven't gotten used to linking to communities on other instances properly.
They usually post the direct link like beehaw.org/c/technology . Instead they should start using the federated link which is more instance agnostic like this: /c/[email protected] . This link will load the community from your instance.
This is something I also find strange. If I click a link to an instance, I want to view their content and not visit their homepage, where I am not logged in and cannot do anything.
assuming the servers are properly federated you should be getting a link that is still on your server. i mean, you got to this lemmy.ml link alright at least
wait, i think i get what you mean, like if you get an external link while not browsing on your instance? you should just be able to paste that link into the search function to find your instance's version of the post
Yeah, I can manually search and find communities, but hyperlinks move you to the other instance (on a webpage; browsing within an app like mlem seems to work)
If I click the link you provided, my browser takes me to Lenny.ml. There I am not logged in and my credentials from feddit.de are not working. So I cannot post there.
I think it only works if the link points to a community on another instance. Like [email protected] . Maybe this is the intended behavior.
The downside is, you can not visit an instance and view the local communities and their post and interact with them. This makes it a lot more attractive to join the instance where the communities are you want to frequent.
Edit: the link to the community does not work either for me. But I am kind of sure, that there are links that work as intended and make you just view the community from your own insurance…
The devs of kbin and Lemmy have that on their list of things to do, make cross-instance links work nicer. But they have a lot on their plate at a moment, so it could be some time before that comes about.
Can you elaborate on your experience a bit more? I can't say I have had any issues as you've described. If something doesn't look right, or isn't working the way you expect, it might actually be a bug.
When I first looked into Lemmy I thought picking an instance confined you to that instance. I think a lot of new people don't realize that isn't the case.
It's definitely a new concept for people. I've been on Mastodon for a while so I'm already used to the idea of multiple instances
I think over time more people will figure it out and it won't be so confusing. Like how people intuitively understand that if you have a Gmail account you can still send emails to people on Outlook
99.99% don’t really want or understand a federated system. How do you know it’s not hosted on someone’s desktop over DSL? How do you know it will be there tomorrow? How do you know they aren’t modifying the code to do something nefarious?
As long as there’s a “main” instance people will prioritize that.
This is exactly why federation is better than centralization - no single point of failure. If Reddit decides to do something nefarious like cutting off your 3pa access or Facebook sells all your personal data, you have no recourse. But if you disagree with some admin actions on lemmy, you can go to another instance. Yeah you lose your karma, but there is no shortage of usernames. I guess the only single point of failure is the developer of the lemmy software itself. From that perspective, also joining the one lemmy instance run by the lemmy developer doesn't help things xD
I find it is nice to just join a server you enjoy at its core and then simply use the "all" sort of thing. I can see from other servers what is popular and can comment and upvote and downvote. It's all very seamless even if I am not in that home server
I don't think I spent more than 10 minutes total in /r/all in my 12 years of Reddit, so it's quite nice to browse all here and not be bombarded with rubbish.
I think people naturally tend toward the servers of the people that started the project and also the servers that have the most people on them. As the federated technology continues to smooth out I think more people might be more comfortable spreading out to other servers.
Personally I started out on the Beehaw server but they had some rules I didn't like so then I found another server.
I started off on lemmy.ml before the deluge and then today it’s basically inaccessible so I started up a new account over at lemmy.world. I browse by All anyway so I haven’t really noticed a difference.
It's at the top of the list on join-lemmy.org's popular server list, next to lemmy.world and beehaw.org, of course new users will sign up on the more popular ones. Plus, a few posts on reddit called out these three which set everything in motion.
Once folks start to understand how it works, they might start to sign up on other ones, for a "cooler handle @ address" for their user, or register a domain and start their own instance like I did.
Well, hello from feddit.de! Since I'm a german user I thought it'd be only logical to register on a german instance. While new registrations are semi-locked, the criteria for being let in are quite easy to pass and they are mostly in place to filter out spam. Got my account approved right on the next day
I'm having a similar experience right now. I wonder if there is a more complete setup walkthrough out there than what's in the codeberg wiki? I had the same problem standing up an instance of Mastodon, in that available walkthrough seemed to assume knowledge I didn't have, and additionally just didn't work right if you were, say, setting it up in an LXC instance instead of using Docker. I got it sorted eventually, but the process was pretty annoying
Yeah the codeberg iirc just lists a set of commands with no idea what you're doing, so it's very hard to know if you've done something wrong. Usually I would do that, and then edit and look up things as I go, but that was the biggest deadend I've ever had. Though, the recommended server provider's interface, slowness, and bugs wasn't impressing me, I'd really love if they could make a droplet. (and selfishly a droplet with something that has more options for US servers)
I hope someone wraps his head around to get kbin running in a container, so noobs like me can just pull the image and host their own instances. I do like kbin, having most of what I am interested in the fediverse in one place is great!
I usually persevere through difficult setups if it's denying me access or a setting didn't get flipped, but the whole thing just crashing and debian no longer booting is uhhhhhh. Welp.
Hello from lemmy.world! Don't come here, I think it's starting to get overloaded too. Lemmy.one looks like it may be in a good "growing but not snowballing yet" position, go over there and get that ball rolling.
I've had a lemmy.ml account for a little bit but I'm trying out a lemmy.world account as I was put off by some of the things I heard about the original server.
Something about lemmy.ml admin having odd views posted on their reddit account. Something I read but didn't really look into so take what I said with a grain of salt.
I setup Anarch.is today. Feel free to create an account. Still need to write-up guidelines, enable community creation, etc. but it’s ready if you want to post/comment on other instances.
If we run into server load problems i’ll upgrade it. 😎
Well I tried beehaw but I after creating an account I had to wait to be accepted.. 1 hour later couldn't login so I went to lemmy.ml and it was instantaneous so..here I am
My work blocks lemmy.ml but not many other instances. Unfortunately all the heaviest memes are on lemmy.ml ! I just want to look at fun memes instead of my lame ass patients what’s wrong with that
It seems to be hit and miss at the moment. It's something I've asked on beehaw support in this comment. Also, as the other user mentioned, those links (both yours and the ones I've used as examples in my comment) are broken in Jerboa, although they work on the web app.
Functionally it's not very different. Everyone on a different federated server can access all the other "subreddits." However, your account is hosted by the server you joined. If it were to go down, I suppose your account would disappear.
Good question, it varies by server. Beehaw.org for example limits sub creation to admins.
If you’re worried about how our rules are explicitly open to interpretation, that’s on purpose and I hope the text above helps to clarify the vision that I have (and others of the community share) around how I’d like to see this community evolve and what we’d like to think we’re doing differently on this website. I’m not banning people for no reason or simply because they don’t agree with me. I want people to disagree with me. I want diverse opinions in here. But I also need this place to be nice and members of the community need to be willing to hold each other accountable in creating that kind of space. Of note, I’ve never banned a single person without openly discussing what happened with other individuals who participate in this community and asking for their input. I can’t promise this will always be the case, but I can promise that I’ll be open to having a discussion with any community member who feels that something unjust happened with another user or to themselves.
Beehaw is the only instance that has the most other instances blocked. Users from beehaw can't even see this comment, nor yours if you reply to this one.
The rules being "We reserve the right to ban you whenever we want.” are not rules.
I didn’t even mind writing an application and waiting a bit to be accepted. Of all the instances I looked at, Beehaw was the one that appealed to me the most.
Personally, I'd rather this not turn into another voat debacle. No offense. I'm on an instance that doesn't block it by default, but I have blocked most of the major lemmygrad communities so they don't pollute my all page.
I'm not aware of the voat debacle, I just arrived in the fediverse. If you have any links for me I'll be grateful.
I think it's fair to block stuff you don't want to see. But to have every major player in Lemmy block it creates a divide based on... Nothing much?
I am interested both in lemmygrad stuff, and mostly every other instance. This divide will only cause me to have to create at least 2 accounts, and artificially deflates lemmygrad just... Because people are red scared?
That might me a fraction of the reason why lemmy.ml has the popularity it does.
First one I heard about was Lemmy.world, and for a short time I thought others were just "imitation offshoots", taking time to learn the system. There's still not a simple summary to send people, at the very least it can open simply as "Here's some non-Reddit Reddit sites"
They actually defederated with lemmy.world due to spam, kindof sucks, as users will miss out on communities on lemmy.world, lots of which were not spam.
listen, I'm willing to go to smaller instances if necessary, but for the same reason I signed up for mastodon.social - I want my local community to not be a desert, if at all possible.
If I want to comment on another insurance such as beehaw.org, do I need to create a different account or can I log in with one that I created on lemmy.ml?
Well when other instances outright ghost your application people.will either discard the fediverse or join the ones with auto accept be it LM or mimmthe one I joined.
I like beehaw a lot. I think it’s natural for people to still be in the mindset of going to the “source”. And I admit I felt that way at the start of mastodon, but I found my home on fosstadon and understand.
I think it is OK. People need time to transition to this new way of doing things.
Yes and no, i signed up to different instances and even if i subscribed to the same federated communities, i see wildly different content, and the home on lemmy.ml is more engaging
I wish I could comment here from my own instance, but I can't. [email protected] returns only 3 posts for me.
Everything is so weird, I guess I'll be spending some next few days and nights in the support community. thread 'main' panicked everywhere in logs. The communication between nodes is really inconsistent.
Jerboa now doesn't have community search, but you can visit your instance website and subscribe. If it hasn't needed community, go to community search and put full community name prepended with !, like ! [email protected]. then wait for like 10s and do the search again, your instance will fetch it and add to its community list.
On jebora on the bottom next to the home button is the community list view and you can search it to find instances. In addition to that from the home page if you click the little filter icon(that one with the three lines creating a triangle shape down) you can select all and it will show you links federated with your instance as well.
I don't know much about the Android mobile app, but now I'm curious to dig up one of my old phones and try it just to see. I've been mostly in a browser either oh my iPhone of MacBook, which is very odd for me as I primarily reddit via the native mobile app.
I joined an instance based on my region but otherwise I can’t say this is surprising. Everyone wants to be at the most popular spot, very few people actively seek out quieter places.
I think we will see other bigger stable servers in the future when more eyes are on it. And I seriously hope that the Lemmy devs will try hard to push their instance as the all dominating one.