Does it actually matter?
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 defederation is good. I see the problem with filterbubbles but I’m to old for this shit. I rather be in my bubble.
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
For others…
If you’re Canadian lemmy.ca has also been great. There is an application but I was approved in less than 4 hours answering the 4 simple questions.
They’ve also recently rejigged the administration and just upgraded to a brand spanking fast server this canada day
Lenny.ca wouldn’t let me visit a lot of communities though
Like which?
Nerf
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.
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.
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
I’m also late to the party. But I’ve been on SDF for ages so I always try out everything they offer.
I’m on sh.itjust.works. Not gonna lie, related to that name naturally.
Exactly the same for me. Choosing an instance based on values, content, or location is so lame. I chose my instance based on the funny name.
Although sh.itjust.works democratic moderation is pretty based.
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.
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!!
Same, feeling really slow for me
lemm.ee is really awesome. Thank you, admin!
Yeah I’ve noticed some issues lately with lemmy.world. I assume it has to do the quick growth from the great Reddit migration.
- Googled “Lemmy” to see what it even is
- “wtf is an instance”
- 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.
- 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.”
- “sounds good enough”, created account
There is several of factors you should consider:
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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.
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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.
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Does it look low effort: check the banner, how the announcement formatted.
That is probably all the basics
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Feddit.de because Deutschsprachig and I loved Reddit, but would love to see a successfully federated version of it.
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.
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.
Gotta support the ‘.ca’ anyway we can! Underutilized domain imo
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.
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 🤘
Same thought process here, but the performance issues I was seeing on lemmy.world prompted me to spin up my own instance right away. So far it’s been excellent performance-wise, but not quite the same as being a user on the instances that contain the content. We’ll see how it works out!
Idk, because why not Estonia.
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 🙂
The Admin of my instance (discuss.tchncs.de) is tolerant but understands the tolerance paradox. (Defderated with exploding heads but not every left instance - doesn’t fall for false balance.
Also he was fast with approving new accounts.
I got approved today 20 mins after verifying my email. It was a pleasant surprise
