this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
182 points (97.9% liked)
Fediverse memes
1190 readers
743 users here now
Memes about the Fediverse.
Rules
General
- Be respectful
- Post on topic
- No bigotry or hate speech
Specific
- We are not YPTB. If you have a problem with the way an instance or community is run, then take it up over at [email protected].
- Addendum: Yes we know that you think ml/hexbear/grad are tankies and or .world are a bunch of liberals but it gets old quickly. Try and come up with new material.
Elsewhere in the Fediverse
Other relevant communities:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
founded 6 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I don't understand this meme.
The vast majority of lemmy users are on a couple massive instances: lemmy.world, lemm.ee, sh.itjust.works etc.
There are tiny instances which would be happy to host more users and are faster than the big ones but no one joins them because most people just hear of lemmy.world or whatever is being shared on reddit and join that.
LW is still at 19k monthly active users, it could split in half and each of those halves would still be above lemm.ee and it's 8k
https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list
LW is also the top instance hit (for me) in a DuckDuckGo search, also being the only search result that is actually an instance. So that, plus people referring it, could keep it going.
Are perhaps apps offering it as their default recommendation? If so, perhaps that could be changed to a different one like lemm.ee or something (assuming they can only handle a singular one in that capacity). Edit: I just wiped all my data for Voyager (Android), sacrificing that to test and find that actually lemm.ee rather than LW already is its default - neat!:-)
People also continue to spread the misinformation (IMHO) that https://join-lemmy.org/ should be used to pick an instance. I just tried it now and do you want to guess which instance it pointed me towards? hexbear.net, not joking! 😺
So if you wanted to spread things out s little more, it may be time for another Lemmy post to help new Lemmings know what the factors involved are, especially the new recruits from Reddit lately.
😂
Lemmygrad.ml also appears in that list, although unironically of the big 3 instances, that one I actually respect due to the honesty of their label:
Someone reading that could either become enthused or conversely nope out easily, it's when the label doesn't match that causes the vast majority of the problems.
of all the instances I tried to join after reddit fucked over 3P developers, lemmy.world was the only one that didn't shit the bed.
Interesting, I remember LW being under huge DDoS for weeks in August 2023
OK? The fuck over was in June
I've been considering setting up a new primary account on an instance other than .world, but there isn't really a way for instances to effectively publicize themselves, their culture, and their mod/admin tempo and I'm honestly stumped
People are recommending for the local feed. I mostly changed for the experience. My instance has downvotes disabled, which IMO is a more pleasant experience as a casual user. And the instance mods have a more no-nonsense approach to moderation. And since I prefer quality over quantity, it’s a good thing.
One way to choose an instance might be to generally think of what instance the people and communities you like tend to be on? (obviously most ppl and comms are on a couple big instances, but apart from that.)
Also defederations are a huge part of the experience.
Hexbear users historically were allowed to troll a good portion of the Threadiverse - like Discuss.Online and StarTrek.website both have defederated from it now but a year ago had not done so yet, while others such as lemm.ee and mander.xyz still have not done so (and likely never will).
And lemmy.ml mods are free to say that they want to kill you without repercussions, and likewise many other ml users are responsible for the most bat shit insane comments that I've seen across the Fediverse, after discounting hexbear.net (several users on ml freely admit to having switched to their alt there after Hexbear was banned, i.e. they engage in ban evasion tactics, again without any repercussions).
And there's lemmygrad.ml too. I almost left the Threadiverse entirely after commenting there and Hexbear.net and replies kept flooding my inbox for WEEKS and WEEKS, long past when I wanted to stop the conversation. In fairness, that's often what people inside of those communities do on purpose for fun, so it's less that I'm calling that aspect "bad" and more that it doesn't fit in so well with the rest of the Threadiverse, and in particular with the rules stated on sites such as Discuss.Online.
The Federation model can get tricky, especially when the tools are lacking to describe what is going on at any given moment - like "this community is for fun, but this other community has left fun behind, prepare to be mocked for values you were taught as a child in Western society and haven't yet questioned - surely you enjoy being ridiculed for things beyond your control, r-r-right!?"
We need to do better, by providing better tools, or else the Federation model will fail. e.g. PieFed shows the community side-bar text below each and every post, so that e.g. if you were to wander into [email protected] via a post on All, you would be able to see what you are walking into.
Yeah. I’m really suprised how uncommon it is to defed lemmy.ml.
The Lemmy developers are also the admins of that instance, so they choose to put release announcements into communities on it.
something about the list of communities that exist (probably new ones?) also comes from that instance.
Both of these have alternatives available, but I guess you can't really argue about conflicts of interest when Lemmy is their software, that we (freeloaders) choose to use. If we want something different, we would need to build it (as both PieFed and Mbin have done:-).
My general advice is to pick a regional one or one based on one of your hobbies. That way you'll have a relevant "local" feed and can dip in and out of "all". On .world there isn't much difference between "all" and "local".
Visit each instance and look at their Local communities, e.g.
Thanks, I guess it's a lot of legwork on the individual
I find it fun, but If you just want short summaries you can look here: https://join-lemmy.org/instances
Yes it is, and it doesn't stop at choosing an instance - for a new user to find and add communities, and block people, and learn how things work like Hexbear users aren't serious and instead just troll everywhere, it's all a lot. Fortunately PieFed helps a new user a ton with the sign-up wizard and making community discovery trivial with the categories of communities feature.
And for your older Lemmy account, it's really nice that you can simply Export your community subscriptions and block lists to a JSON file and then Import those into the new instance, whichever one you pick.
A process which may need to be multiple times - e.g. when kbin.social went down I moved to StarTrek.website, but the delays of over a minute and constant failure to do things like vote or reply to comments frustrated me so much that I moved to discuss.online. And then the lack of ability to block users from lemmy.ml enticed me to check out PieFed.social. I'm really happy with PieFed now, but I also do really strongly recommend discuss.online as well. But StarTrek.website, at least at the time, not so much - it seems to have vastly improved since though? Hence I mention it here not to say to avoid that one, these days, but rather to give an example of how you may need to hop around over and over again to find a good one, or else stay current with recommendations from people, like discuss.online I still log onto almost daily to check up on things.
Reddit takes care of its users, as they steal data and sell the userbase to advertisers. On the Threadiverse we have to be our own advocates, which requires greater amounts of effort.
I recommend PieFed rather than Lemmy tbh - it just has so many cool features that Lemmy lacks, like categories of communities and combining comments across all cross-posts, so cool!
But if sticking with Lemmy, for anyone in the USA I cannot recommend highly enough Discuss.Online - it has fantastic uptime and a very friendly admin group, both of which are somewhat rare so it's really kinda odd why that instance has so few users on it (although understandable when most people choose Lemmy.World or lemm.ee, or coming from the EU choose a different regional instance, which is also cool:-).
I'll check it out