this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2026

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181

What Fediverse instances would you recommend to others? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by Cantaloupe877@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

62 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The Fediverse is huge and overwhelming to a newcomer, with many different types and each with servers to pick from. Which ones would you suggest checking out or avoiding?

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[–] zaphod@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Well, it depends on what they want. There are different platforms in the fediverse that work very differently. Mastodon and Lemmy/PieFed can interact with each other, but it's always painful. For Lemmy/PieFed I'd recommend they look for an instance that has a local feed that fits their interests. Ideally an instance that is federated with most large instances, otherwise it gets a little too boring.

[–] nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

I joined this one because the main one was defederating a whole bunch of pirate ones and that makes no goddamn sense. thanks 👍

mods will be like hey let's make it so our users can't access stuff. that makes sense. I bet that's what they want. they want to not have access to things. they think it's good

smart and federal

[–] cash@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 hours ago

Liked the name.

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

I was wondering why we suddenly had so many astroturfers, shills and bots creeping in and fucking up all the conversations. It used to just be dumb but earnest tankies, now we got all kinds up in this bitch.

[–] nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 hours ago

I don't know which ones are bots. I assume nothing is a bot. I don't know about any bots. I don't know if I've ever seen one. Are you a bot? How do I know?

[–] Beero@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

Corpo trash can't stand wrongthink

[–] Carrot@lemmy.today 7 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I live in the PNW. I picked an instance in the PNW. Sometimes I see local news, and often I read comments from people within a few hour drive. It's nice to have a small, local community here, while still having access to the rest of the world together. So I guess recommend picking the largest instance in your region if you don't have any other preferences.

[–] hector@lemmy.today 1 points 1 hour ago

The one I am on is from that area, even though I'm in the upper midwest. I just picked it because they don't block anything, didn't defederate any communities or anything. Hands off, fast enough, here to stay they say.

[–] Paradachshund@lemmy.today 3 points 12 hours ago

I had no idea this was a local instance. Neat!

[–] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

Blahaj.zone we're chill AF here

[–] hector@lemmy.today 2 points 1 hour ago

Are you though? Not as enlightened as you may think.

[–] Psythik@lemmy.world 8 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

I don't like that you can't downvote, though.

[–] Inkstainthebat@pawb.social 1 points 3 minutes ago

Wait what that's not a thing on blahaj??

[–] Flames5123@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 hours ago

Exactly. I look at downvotes on articles as a kind of fact curator. If an article has 50/50, you know it’s gotta be wrong.

[–] WiseFirefighter7299@sh.itjust.works 10 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

!main@sh.itjust.works they are very new-user friendly, diaspora: idfk its dead, mastodon: official instance, peertube: peertube.wtf with official app to do federation stuff

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[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 40 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Just FYI everyone, this spike is sort of a glitch and its quite obvious just from looking at how steep the curve is. It all comes from nodebb which is a forum software and i guess they switched on federation on 11.01.2026 which gave us this magical bump.

They are real users probably, but what i mean is that this wasnt a rush of new users, but just old (mostly inactive) users that were never considered part of the fediverse until now.

https://nodebb.fediverse.observer/dailystats

[–] Carrot@lemmy.today 7 points 15 hours ago

Still increases footprint/grants more credibility to the Fediverse, which I think is a good thing. It just won't really impact the daily experience here

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 9 points 19 hours ago

I think the best thing is to choose one and hang around and if you like where you land then go forward but once you learn how to look them over and what makes them different then evaluate and decide on one and make a new account that becomes your main.

[–] mesamunefire@piefed.social 8 points 20 hours ago

https://lemmy.sdf.org/ has some pretty unique content, even from the normal fediverse. I like the users there. See !funhole@lemmy.sdf.org and !unix_surrealism@lemmy.sdf.org

When its up peertube.wtf is great for discovering peertube videos. I use it to find things to post on !peertube@lemmy.world

I like to spend my time on piefed. Its my favorite "threadiverse" software atm. I spent snd contributed code to lemmy for about a year but jumped over to piefed. Its fun and fedi interop was better at the time.

For everything else fediverse.party for fun software and instances!

[–] imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

As far as I understand, lemmy instances are sort of a community with communities inside. It seems that each isntance has their own like minded userbase. .world has basich mix of everyone due to popularity, .ml holds strong beliefs politically, blahaj.zone is more progressive in gender identity, piefed.social is more mainstream decentralized instance. And of course there are more I didn't mention.

I am on dbzer0 because I am into selfhosting and sailing the seas. It fits me well. Tied to one instance doesn't stop me from engaging on other instances except the ones I blacklisted.

Check the instances and their descriptions and find something that fits you.

[–] kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

db0 is also pro-GenAI, which seems unfortunate to me.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

You can do what I do and just block the genAI art comms.

No harm, no foul, I just am not interested in the content.

While I can't say for certain, I would strongly suspect that a lot of the people in those comms are self hosting their LLMs/Image generators, if that makes you feel any better.

But uh, there are a variety of nuanced stances on LLMs and such, amongst the other m@teys I've talked with.

Its... not like we're all super duper no holds barred put AI in everything advocates.

A lot of us are... quite a lot closer to 'Butlerian Jihad NOW', lol.

[–] kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

At the risk of starting an argument (sorry)... I see any use of GenAI as support and endorsement of the technology, and I see the technology as a systemic attack on creative work by real people. It's stealing the results of hard work of people to produce derivative work with the intent of replacing those same people. Thus, while self-hosting does remove some concerns related to big corporations, I think it still empowers them by supporting the tech they deal in.

I do block dedicated GenAI communities, but it's more widespread than that, showing up in unrelated comms, being used to generate community icons and banners.

And of course an instance isn't homogenous with regard to its users, and I don't condemn people for using db0, but IIRC the host of db0 is supportive of GenAI, which is what I primarily referred to, and what steers the direction the instance is taking.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 34 minutes ago* (last edited 32 minutes ago)

I see any use of GenAI as support and endorsement of the technology, and I see the technology as a systemic attack on creative work by real people.

I mean personally, I do as well.

But... it's Pandora's box.

You can't uninvent it, basically.

We could theoretically limit or heavily regulate its further development, but again realistically, with how much money and power tech corporations have, how much influence they have over lawmakers...

... unless you're gonna go find an 'AI' datacenter and put salt or sulfuric acid or something into the cooling loops, no you probably can't really do much to effectively impede it.

I do block dedicated GenAI communities, but it's more widespread than that, showing up in unrelated comms, being used to generate community icons and banners.

I've also seen a bit of this, and I also find it annoying... though 99% of the time that I see something like this, its some kind of like cryptobro, when lambo, diamond hands, type person.

I don't know that it like, stems or comes from GenAI comms on db0.

but IIRC the host of db0 is supportive of GenAI, which is what I primarily referred to, and what steers the direction the instance is taking.

Well I don't know precisely what db0's (the admin) exact stance on GenAI is, but I do know that db0 the instance and community has a highly involved and active goverance model for instance rules and associations. There are fairly often major discussions and votes on a good deal of issues... as opposed to many other instances that basically just come down to the whims of the admin + a clique of powermods.

db0 themself has done more than any other instance admin I am aware of to make it so that if the community itself opposes their own personal opinion, they'll adopt the community's opinion and simply be an executor/facilitator of it.

[–] Apytele@sh.itjust.works 4 points 21 hours ago

db0 and sh. are my viiiibbbbbee

[–] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 56 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (7 children)

Assuming we're talking about instances we'd recommend to new Fediverse users, I'd recommend against lemmy.world. Not because there's anything wrong with the instance, but simply because it's the largest, by a fairly large margin. A central principal of the fediverse is decentralization, and to that end, it's healthier to spread the users across many instances than to have folks concentrated too heavily on any one.

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[–] recursive_recursion@piefed.ca 32 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Recommend:

Avoid:

Lemmy.ml (Tankie fascist koolaid. Unless you enjoy being gaslit and manipulated similar to Trump and his fascist thugs, this should be avoided like the bubonic plague)
Lemmy.world (sorry guys but seriously please reconsider accepting literally everyone for users; it's crazy how much spam and nonsense is coming from your instance)

[–] Flames5123@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 hours ago

Just a warning: Piefed has a lot of shady built in hidden karma. Like you posting “this” or a gif only detracts from your karma. They also block you from downvoting if you downvote more than you upvote. It’s not really free speech at all.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

hexbear, lemmygrad as well. hexbear make themselves sound"cute" to hopefully trick people into engaging in thier instance, when in fact they are tankies.

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 7 points 17 hours ago

Fyi, you might to clarify that new users should avoid hexbear and lemmygrad.

If someone only skims through the comments, yours can read as an endorsement, especially since the user you replied to had endorsements at the top of their comment

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[–] q1p_@lemmy.zip 19 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I'm on Lemmy.zip and someone said that I would fit into that community. Would I recommend it? Yes.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

Zip is awesome! I switched over to db0, but simply because of a technical glitch on .zip like a year ago now, which was rapidly fixed by the admin.... and I was too impatient to withstand not being able to post, lol.

A+ instance imo.

[–] asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

What's awesome about it?

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 hours ago

Great head admin, good variety of local communities, great users?

[–] GrantUsEyes@lemmy.zip 5 points 21 hours ago

I also recommend lemmy.zip or piefed.zip

[–] guynamedzero@piefed.zeromedia.vip 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My own! I feel like I run it pretty well, I certainly trust myself with my data than others. But otherwise, id probably recommend lemmy.zip or piefed.social

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[–] undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 11 points 1 day ago

Personally I’d really like to see more servers physically located in privacy and free-speech friendly places like Switzerland and Iceland (for example). I’m not sure why you’d want to have your social media hosted anywhere else.

[–] ragingHungryPanda@piefed.keyboardvagabond.com 8 points 1 day ago

I'd like to plug the fediverse servers that I'm hosting for the traveller / digital nomad niche over at keyboard vagabond

https://piefed.keyboardvagabond.com/

https://mastodon.keyboardvagabond.com/

https://pixelfed.keyboardvagabond.com/

https://blog.keyboardvagabond.com/

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