You may intuitively believe that large instances are the best place to start a new community, since that's where most people are.

The good news is it's viable to start a community on any instance, provided you take some steps to ensure that content propagates to the large ones too.

How Lemmy content federation works

A Lemmy instance will automatically receive federated content from any community on the Fediverse, as long as at least one its users has subscribed to that community. This content is visible when you click on "All" on the main menu:

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For example, the content I post to [email protected] automatically propagates to the likes of lemmy.world and lemm.ee since both of those instances have at least one user that has subscribed to it.

Making your community visible

To ensure that your content propagates to the large instances, you need to have at least one subscriber from those instances. There are several ways you can go about this.

The quickest is to create a user on each instance you want to reach and subscribe to your community from there. This is easier than it sounds and gives you the added benefit of having your identity preserved there too.

If that feels like too much hassle, I am happy to help you out by subscribing to your community from a few of the largest instances. Send me a message with the details.

Another option is to try posting in communities that are dedicated to discovering new communities:

• [email protected]
• [email protected]

Choosing the right instance to host your community

What's most important is choosing a reliable instance that you resonate with. How many users the instance already has is not that relevant and can be a poor indicator of reliability (see the disappearance of vlemmy.net).

Pick an instance that is open about how it operates and what its principles are. The more you know, the better informed your decision.

Why bother with all this when I can just create my community on lemmy.world?

There are many benefits to venturing out into the Fediverse:

• You can pick an instance that more closely matches your style and beliefs.
• A community with 100 members is a drop in the ocean on a large instance, but will likely be an important pillar for a small one.
• The admins of a smaller instance are usually more accessible and care a bit more about what happens to your community.
• Well run smaller instances are usually more reliable and perform better than large ones.
• The name you want for your community is likely to be available on a smaller instance.
• Smaller instances are not usually interesting targets for attacks or trolls.
• Your content will get similar exposure thanks to federation.

I hope you found this post helpful, feel free to ask any questions you may still have.

Lemmy Help

Finding content in Lemmy is not very intuitive if you're brand new. Here's how you can enjoy all that the Fediverse has to offer, irrespective of which instance you are on.

The buttons at the top of the home page are the secret. You can also click on the small "sorting help" button to view more information on what everything does:

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"Local" will only display posts that are created on the instance you are on. "All" will display posts from all other federated instances:

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If you feel like you're seeing old posts, try changing your view to "New":

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That's it in a nutshell. The beautiful thing about the Fediverse is you can interact with all federated content from the comfort of your home Lemmy instance.

You may also be interested to learn how to find communities and subscribe to them.

Lemmy Help

Finding awesome communities and subscribing to them is likely one of the first things you want to do in Lemmy. It can also be a bit confusing.

This guide will walk you through how it works and hopefully improve your experience.

The beautiful thing about the Fediverse is you can interact with all federated content from the comfort of your home Lemmy instance.

Since the best communities may not natively reside on the server you're on, the easiest way to discover them is by using one of these awesome 3rd party explorers:

• https://lemmyverse.net/communities
• https://browse.feddit.de/

Using https://lemmyverse.net/communities ---

1. Once you've found an interesting community, click on the community Lemmy link to copy it:

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2. On your home Lemmy instance, click on Search (the magnifying glass) on the top-right of your screen:

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3. Paste the link into the search box and click the Search button:

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4. Wait! It can take Lemmy a bit of time to find the community. If nothing shows up after 10-20 seconds, try clicking Search again.

5. Click on the search result to open the community inside of your Lemmy instance:

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6. The community page wil open up and you can now click the Subscribe button on the right-hand side:

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7. Sometimes nothing seems to happen after you hit Subscribe. This is a known Lemmy bug at the moment. Refresh the page 10 seconds later and it should show you as joined:

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Using https://browse.feddit.de/ ---

1. Once you've found an interesting community, click on the copy link button:

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2. Follow the same steps as described for https://lemmyverse.net/communities

The only difference is the link you copied is the actual URL for the community page, rather than its Lemmy community link (https://lemmy.world/c/world in this example).

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Using your browser ---

1. Copy the community URL from your browser's address bar:

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2. Follow the same steps as described for https://lemmyverse.net/communities

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I hope you found this guide useful. Please leave any comments or questions you may have.

Lemmy Help

This is a collection of Lemmy links that will help you in your travels.

Finding Communities

• https://browse.feddit.de/
• https://lemmyverse.net/communities
• https://sub.rehab/

Finding Instances:

• https://join-lemmy.org/
• https://lemmyverse.net/
• https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances
• https://the-federation.info/

Check instance federation:

• https://federation-checker.vercel.app/

Lemmy Resources:

• https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/01-getting-started.html
• https://lemdit.com/c/help

Stats:

• https://fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverse

Please let me know if anything else should be on this list!

Lemmy Help

Lemmy is still in development and can be a bit quirky. This is a collection of little things I've bumped into which may help you avoid some confusion.

Browsing posts ------

'Local' only shows you posts from the Lemmy instance you are currently on (e.g. lemdit.com).

'All' will also include posts federated from other instances, and is typically the one you want.

Sometimes 'All' can be selected but only local posts will be displayed. If this happens, toggling between 'Local' and 'All' will fix it:

!

Finding content on a small instance ------

Your Lemmy instance will only show posts from communities on other instances if at least one user from your instance has subscribed to those communities.

If a community that interests you is missing, simply search for it and subscribe. You (along with everyone else on your instance) will now see posts from that community under 'All'.

Note: The same is true in reverse! Users on other instances will only see posts from communities on your instance if at least one user from their instance has subscribed to that community.

Searching for communities ------

Clicking on 'Communities' will display all communities that are either Local to your instance, or that users from your instance have subscribed to

!

The best way to discover new communities is actually through a 3rd party tool: https://browse.feddit.de/

If you find a community that you are interested in and want to subscribe, search for its URL on your home instance:

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Note: Sometimes it takes 10-20 seconds for Lemmy to fetch the actual instance in its search results! Just wait a bit, even if it says there are no results found.

Once you have opened the community through your own instance, you can then subscribe:

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"I only see old posts" ------

The way Lemmy displays "Active" and "Hot" posts at the moment is a bit broken and you may notice the list doesn't change very often. While this is being worked on, you can try sorting by 'New' or 'New Comments':

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There is a partial workaround that instance admins can use to get around this, which involves restarting the Lemmy server at regular intervals. lemdit.com automatically does this once a day.

Creating new posts or comments getting stuck on the dreaded "spinning wheel" ------

This one's a bit elusive, but when it does happen it could be one of two things:

• The instance you're on is simply a bit busy and the request fails for some reason
• Selecting a language for the post sometimes seems to help:

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Finding past private messages, replies, posts, etc. ------ Clicking on the little bell icon on the top-right will open your inbox:

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By default you will only see "Unread" messages, which is a bit counter intuitive. Switching the toggle to 'All' will display all messages:

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Closing notes ------

I hope you found this information useful. Please let me know if there's anything I've missed that should be included, I will expand on this list as we discover new things.

You may also be interested in our Intro to Lemmy and the Fediverse

Lemmy Help

If you're reading this then you likely already know that Lemmy and Kbin are alternatives to Reddit.

This is an introduction to the basics of Lemmy/Kbin and how they're different from what you're already used to.

Basics of the Fediverse --------------

A useful comparison is to think about how e-mail works. There are different e-mail platforms (e.g. Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc), but they all use a common protocol to send and receive messages between themselves.

Even though your mailbox may be with Gmail, you can exchange e-mails with any other mailbox, irrespective of either or not they are also with Gmail. None of these platforms own or control "e-mail" as a whole.

The Fediverse is a similar concept but applied to social media. Lemmy is a flavour of Fediverse software, the same as Kbin. Anyone can host a Lemmy or Kbin instance, and they all use a common protocol to communicate with each so that content posted on one is available to all. This federated network of nodes is referred to as the Fediverse.

Not one instance of Lemmy or Kbin owns or controls the Fediverse as a whole, they are just different ways of accessing that content, similar to how Gmail or Yahoo are just different ways of using e-mail.

Centralized (Reddit) vs decentralized (Lemmy/Kbin) --------------

Reddit:

• There is only one 'instance' of Reddit. The entirety of Reddit's content and userbase is hosted on that instance.
• If you get banned from a subreddit, then you lose access to that particular subreddit. If you get banned from Reddit, then you lose access to the whole of Reddit.
• If you don't like where Reddit is going or you dislike how it's managed, then your only recourse is to give up Reddit entirely.
• In our e-mail example, it's the equivalent of one entity owning 'e-mail' as a whole. Don't like it? Invent your own e-mail!

Lemmy/Kbin:

• There are many different instances of Lemmy/Kbin. The Fediverse population and content is split between them.
• Users from any Lemmy/Kbin instance are able to interact with content and users from all other Fediverse instances, as if we're all in the same place.
• If you get banned from a community (equivalent of a subreddit), then you lose access to that particular community, on that instance. You can still interact with similar communities on different instances.
• If you get banned from an instance, then you only lose access to that particular instance. You can always join another instance that may suit you better.
• If you don't like where a particular instance is going or you dislike how it's managed, then you can simply find another instance that better matches what you're looking for.
• Not one instance owns the Fediverse as a whole.

The Good, the Bad and the Confusing --------------

The Good:

• Nobody owns or controls the Fediverse. It is also very resilient thanks to its distributed nature.
• You can join the instance that best fits your preference or philosophy, but still have access to the content and users of any other instance.
• You can create posts in communities belonging to any instance, not just the one you are using.
• You don't need to join the biggest instance to access the best content. In fact, you'll likely get a better experience by joining a smaller, less congested instance.
• There's something here for everyone. With so many different instances, it's near impossible not to find one you like.

The Bad:

• Instances can choose to defederate from other instances they don't agree with. This is fundamentally a desirable feature, but it can also give large instances quite a bit of power and leverage over smaller ones.
• There is currently no way to back up or migrate a community from one instance to the other. Imagine you've invested a lot of time and effort growing your community, only for the instance that it's hosted on to dissappear into the night forever.
• People tend to instinctively join the largest instance, somewhat diminishing the benefits of federation. The large instances buckle under their own weight while smaller instances struggle to get any traction. Performance strains on the large instances lead to laggy content propagation across the Fediverse as a whole.

The Confusing:

• Similar to e-mail, usernames are only unique on that particular instance. This means that you can have [email protected] and [email protected] - this is not a bad thing, but can be a bit confusing at first.
• The same is true for communities! The same community name can exist on multiple instances, each with their own subscriber base and content, e.g. [email protected] and [email protected]
• Lemmy/Kbin still require a lot of development and there are many quirks to work through. Some of these quirks produce confusing behaviour (more on these in a future post).

Lemmy Help