1d ago

Which Server to Pick

Hey everyone. I'm a new to Lemmy after making a start to remove myself from big tech. Sorry if the questions are basic. First question is- how to choose which server as your 'home'. I chose feddit because I'm from the UK, but I live abroad- does that mean I should chose one only from the country I live in? And if you use a VPN does it matter anyway?

I came from reddit and it's not anywhere near as good unfortunately and obviously there are far fewer people on here, but I'm here to stay so want to make the best of it. TIA

6 comments

The geography of your home instance only matters if you decide you care about it.
No VPNs needed.
I'm using an account on a finnish instance, currently hosted in germany (used to be in Finland, but the admin moved to get a better deal on the hardware running it).
The only practical difference what instance your account is on makes, is what other instances it federates with.
That might matter depending on what you want to access, but it probably doesn't. Any reputable instance federates with all other reputable ones, while blocking the disreputable ones.
AFAIK, feddit.uk is a perfectly good choice.
- Can confirm this is a very good instance. Admin team is competent, we seemingly have a decent level of funding going through donations to keep things afoat, and in general things flow nicely in a no nonsense way.
  And you can of course always switch to another instance (with some effort in migrating your settings) in the unlikely event something starts bothering you in this particular shire.

The main thing is that it is federated with instances you want to see stuff from and defederated from instances you don't. Feddit.uk is probably fine. If it isn't as active, you can browse content from other instances. Tbh I just keep my main feed on "Everything" usually and get quite a lot of content.

My best advice to people picking a server is to go with a regional one or one based on a hobby because your local feed should be manageable and somewhat relevant. you So I went with feddit.uk because it would give me UK-based news and topics (English-language places in the Web often default to America), plus there'd likely be a good dose of British humour which may not always travel well.and
So I reckon you picked well - if there are any topics you are interested in that don't appear in "local" you can always subscribe to them. We have a light defederation policy, so all the big instances are available from here, your subscribing to communities on other servers will drag the content over here.

I looked at Lemmy.world initially because it's the biggest server, but I signed up for Feddit.uk because I can see UK-related content in one place by viewing "local" posts on the home page ("local" just shows posts from your server, and "all" shows posts from across all Lemmy servers).
If I signed up for Lemmy.world then I wouldn't have that feed of just UK content when I want it. Instead I'd have to visit each UK-related community separately, I guess.

Sticking with the folks you'd be familiar with is always a good enough first step while you're poking around for anything more up to your speed.

6 comments