current lemmy status

tbf people just wanna sign up and click on funny links, not browse through 100 rando instances to find the one that lines up with their exact interests and wait for approval and worry about uptime and whether their instance will still exist in a year
- Let me see if I underatand this correctly:
  If I create an account on a random, small instance. And then go to the "all communities" feed. I can automatically see all communities that are in my instance. In addition to that, I can see all communities of other Lemmy instances, that are "federated". But I cannot see other communities from other nstances, unless I go on there, find the communitis and manually subscribe to them (I believe there are other ways to get them to show up, like using the search etc.?)
  So, as a normal user. Who's just looking for a replacement for /r/all, wouldn't joining the largest lemmy instance that is fedarated to many others (Just by how many users it has, because it's the users who link instances by their actions?) make perfect sense?
  
  The all communities tab should be showing you communities from every instance you are federated with. It's true that they won't show up in your feed until someone on your instance connects to the instance it's on at least once, but you don't need to be on a massive server to be connected to all the major communities right from the start.
- Very true. It would be sad to build up a persona on a smaller instance to then have it go dark and take your user with it. Other than losing your collection of "upvotes," you can just recreate a new user with the same display name on another instance and keep going. 👍
  Holy crap, you can do Slack style emoticons? Huzzah! 🎉
- I feel that, while lemmy is still a work in progress, it is already pretty adequate for solving this need. If you want to subscribe to other instances you can do it from within your insance by going up to communities and searching. You can also click the all tab and see a bunch of instances from around lemmy that your instance is federated with.
  I think mastadon struggled with this because the twitter model is to follow people and depending how far removed the servers are this can be trickier. Compared to lemmy where people interested in a single subject will likely target and find the subject theyre interested in and bring themselves together naturally.
  Furthermore I think some people are splitting up and dividing into sub instances and tiny subjects a little prematurely. Reddit didnt get super esoteric with it's subs until it got big and the larger subs either declined or got too noisy to talk about certain things. Like for example how beehaw has an operatingsystems instance instead of a linux, ubuntu, macos, windows, fedora, archinux, opensuse, openbsd, etc. Right now there arent enough of us that we dont need to subdivide.
  
  I've seen people literally signing up here just to make like 50 empty communities and not post or comment on anything at all. Definitely a lot of folks just trying to stake some territory that they think will be valuable in the future.
  
  I like how Beehaw is doing it. Slowly introducing new servers as there is demand for it.

As someone who intentionally joined a different instance, the biggest issue is the “federation” doesn’t allow cross-authentication. Clicking a link to another instance moves me to that instance where I’m not logged in. Authentication should really be cross-instance.
- assuming the servers are properly federated you should be getting a link that is still on your server. i mean, you got to this lemmy.ml link alright at least
  wait, i think i get what you mean, like if you get an external link while not browsing on your instance? you should just be able to paste that link into the search function to find your instance's version of the post
  
  From my instance, I've been crossing to other instances fine to post, upvote, etc.
  
  Yeah, I can manually search and find communities, but hyperlinks move you to the other instance (on a webpage; browsing within an app like mlem seems to work)
  
  If I click the link you provided, my browser takes me to Lenny.ml. There I am not logged in and my credentials from feddit.de are not working. So I cannot post there.
  I think it only works if the link points to a community on another instance. Like !memes@lemmy.ml . Maybe this is the intended behavior.
  The downside is, you can not visit an instance and view the local communities and their post and interact with them. This makes it a lot more attractive to join the instance where the communities are you want to frequent.
  Edit: the link to the community does not work either for me. But I am kind of sure, that there are links that work as intended and make you just view the community from your own insurance…
- I think this occurs because people haven't gotten used to linking to communities on other instances properly.
  They usually post the direct link like beehaw.org/c/technology . Instead they should start using the federated link which is more instance agnostic like this: /c/technology@beehaw.org . This link will load the community from your instance.
- This is something I also find strange. If I click a link to an instance, I want to view their content and not visit their homepage, where I am not logged in and cannot do anything.
- Can you elaborate on your experience a bit more? I can't say I have had any issues as you've described. If something doesn't look right, or isn't working the way you expect, it might actually be a bug.
- I agree with you

Lemmy.world checking in

I joined mander.xyz because it has a lot of science oriented communities and that's why I'm here. Super happy to have found it.

New feddit.de user reporting in
Ze Germans seem to have their own monopolistic instance
- Created mine on feddit.de to get the german equivalent of Catastrophe as a username. And also because I live in Germany
  
  German "Catastrophe" is "Katastrophe". "Katzastrophe" is "Katze"+"Katastrophe", which in english would be "cat" + "catastrophe"... oh.
- To potential new users, also consider https://discuss.tchncs.de/ as Feddit gets hit really hard currently

First I created account there and then landed on my current instance, because lemmy.ml's admin views looks sketchy for me. Been living in ex-ussr for all my life I just cant accept all that communists and marxists and the fact that lemmy.ml has /c/Communism on it.
I know that's silly but that's why I'm not there anymore.
- Oh no ;_;
  Any recommended communities? (or ones to avoid)
  
  Everything from beehaw.org is nice. Even stuff on lemmy.ml is okay as long you don't bring up politics. Stay away from news or politics subs on this instance. And I hope we will get bigger communities on other servers than lemmy.ml or beehaw.org.
  
  I'm currently on lemmy.world. You can create communities and people are chill over here.
  
  All I know is that you should avoid lemmy.ml. In their /c/WorldNews community, an admin gave a four day ban to a user for posting an Axios article about the Chinese succession plan for the reason of "Orientalism". Those guys are tankie shills. In my experience, lemmy.ca, sh.itjust.works, and lemmy.one seem solid. Obviously I personally went with lemmy.ca. But you should check out the admin profiles before you join any instance. That will tell you most of what you need to know. That and the modlogs (found at the bottom of the page) that will tell you what posts have been taken down and what people have been banned by mods on various communities.
- Profit motive ruined Reddit so you’ve come to a place created by communist then get upset that the people who made and operate it are communists. Yeah that’s more than a little silly.
  
  There's a difference between being a communist and blindly supporting authoritarian dictatorships wearing communist masks.
- It's not silly at all. I also made an account there before realizing the admins are tankies. It honestly sketches me out about Lemmy in general considering they're the two lead (and currently only?) devs. Casts a big shadow over all of Lemmy when the devs are posting Xinjiang genocide denialism and their instance is at the top of the recommendations on join-lemmy.org. With lemmy.grad pretty high up there too.
  
  At least with the way Lemmy is designed it doesn't seem like even the main devs can have much of an impact.
  They even write themselves that if they made changes to the Lemmy codebase that some instance admins didn't like, then those admins can decide not to upgrade their instance. The code is also open sourced so anyone with some tech know-how can fork the codebase and remove whatever they don't like.
  
  Yeah that’s what Lemmy started out as. The thing is with all the Reddit refugees flooding in it is diluting out the tankies. Besides, lemmygrad.ml is blocked by many instances. As for the values of the devs the great thing is that Lemmy is FOSS so if they go rouge someone will just make a fork of Lemmy.
- Is it possible to move instances once I'm registered or do I have to create totally new account on other instance?
  
  You'd need to sign up for a totally new account. There is talk of adding a migration feature but obviously that'll require a bit of patience, they've got a long list of feature requests!

hi from other fediverse server

I definitely didnt pick sh.itjust.works for the funny name, naaaaaaaaah
- you are marked as 'robot account' on leemy.sdf.org
  
  at a guess, I think its because I'm using Jerboa for Lemmy but I don't know for sure, I haven't done anything to become one.
- I picked it because all the other instances asked a bunch of questions and then you had to wait for approval.

I'm in lemmy.world. they have an associated mastodon as well.

Lemmy.world gang
- .world rise up!
- .world reporting in

The dude on the left is too happy about it to be a lemmy.ml admin.

lemmy.ca - Hailing from beautiful Nova Scotia! 🇨🇦

I tried to make an account on lemmy.ml and it looks like their servers are (understandably) overloaded
I ended up choosing lemmy.world instead
My understanding is I'm not missing out on anything by chosing a less-popular instance. Did I get that right?
- yes!
  lemmy.world in particular doesn't block any instances
  see for comparison:
  https://lemmy.world/instances
  https://lemmy.ml/instances
  https://beehaw.org/instances
  
  Oof, I can see why some of those instances are blocked, though. Since I'm on Beehaw, I checked their block list and...wow. Scrolled through each one for a few minutes and now I'm hoping I'm not on some kind FBI list for it. A few highlights from my research expedition:
  A meme featuring various characters (MLP, Vaporeon, Peter Griffin, etc) unironically mourning Ted Kaczynski
  NSFL gore
  People calling for the execution of cops who stopped rioters on Jan 6
  SO. MUCH. LOLICON.
  "Hahaha look at this WOKE LIB 🤣🤣🤣"
  QANON. QANON EVERYWHERE.
  I was only on each one for a minute or so. I don't think I'm missing out on anything except maybe being put on some kind of list.

I signed up for another one, but they haven't approved me yet!

It's at the top of the list on join-lemmy.org's popular server list, next to lemmy.world and beehaw.org, of course new users will sign up on the more popular ones. Plus, a few posts on reddit called out these three which set everything in motion.
Once folks start to understand how it works, they might start to sign up on other ones, for a "cooler handle @ address" for their user, or register a domain and start their own instance like I did.
Anyway, welcome aboard, right?
- Yes

And I thought I had choose the wrong one....

proudly hailing from NOT lemmy.ml 🤗

Lemmy world was the only one that let me sign up lol
- Same

- You could always create an account for your username on multiple popular servers if you wanted to. Can't stop it on small servers but having multiple accounts in the Fediverse is not a crime.
  
  Nah, I can't see any reason to make more than one account.

I created my own server...
- This is the way. If you don't like the moderators, don't play on their servers. It's that simple.

I like lemmy.world, because anyone can create their own community.

I was advised by a redditor to join '.word' because ml was overwhelmed
Not really sure what the difference is tbh. I'm here interacting with an ml community so why not?
I'd like to know if I can make my own subreddit equivalent though?
- Functionally it's not very different. Everyone on a different federated server can access all the other "subreddits." However, your account is hosted by the server you joined. If it were to go down, I suppose your account would disappear.
  Good question, it varies by server. Beehaw.org for example limits sub creation to admins.

Hello from lemmy.ca

I joined sopuli.xyz because they have a cute fuzzy animal in a hat as their logo.

Proud to be a sh.itjust.works user

I guess many newcomers just go the easy way

The documentation explaining how fediverse works is so bad. It's so long and convoluted anyone new just can't be bothered reading it.
- Docu-what now?
  Seriously, if the average user needs to understand distributed systems to play in the fediverse pool, they are going to land back at Reddit. Just get people in the door (any door) and fight the technical debt that creates later.
  Sure, it's a shit plan. But, it's the only way to really capitalise on the current moment. With both Twitter and Reddit blasting away at their own feet, there is a real opportunity for something better to step up. The fediverse can be that thing. But, not if people end up gatekeeping it. Less Stallman style, "RTFM!" And more, "hey, welcome. Let's get you set up."
  
  Idk what's going on, I just know I'm ready for open source options. I'm signed up here and mastodon now and plan to use the duration of the reddit strike to learn more about these platforms, delete my activity on others, and slowly build communities so I'm not reliant on others for news and learning.
  I don't think it's too difficult to figure out. Seems more like a matter of shifting activity to keep people engaged. I'm far from tech literate, though.
  
  Well, that's my point. We need a cheat sheet easy to read that gives most of the necessary information to create an account and use different instances and how to post from one to another.
  https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/index.html is good but way too much for newcomers
- Yeah. It needs to be explained much better. Compare it to email or something
- bro' i didn't even knew that there was a documentation
  
  https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/index.html
  No, one will read that
  We need a way simpler cheat sheet to get people in and leave that documentation for later
- I recognize it's easier said than done obviously and I don't have a good solution to propose; but if there was a way to make the app UI more user friendly it might help the understandability of the fediverse and subsequently lower the barrier to entry. Unless someone can figure out how to make it more seemless of an experience, it's gonna be hard to get massive traction

Other servers are snappier than lemmy.ml

lemmy.world unite!

I use lemmy.world. they have an associated mastodon as well.
- Same here, except I have no interest in Mastodon.

Hello from lemmy.world! Don't come here, I think it's starting to get overloaded too. Lemmy.one looks like it may be in a good "growing but not snowballing yet" position, go over there and get that ball rolling.

Problem is that a) new users don’t know that they can join communities across servers, and b) it is intuitive use start with the servers that a lot of people like.
Instance browsing and onboarding is probably the biggest challenge to Lemmy’s growth. The current experience either scares new people away, or encourages them to congregate on a limited set of instances.
- If the registration process just picked a random instance for you, maybe something nearby, and assured new users that they can visit communities and interact with users across instances, very few would pick the biggest instance.

Hello from beehaw.org!

They need to do away with the ridiculous manual approval process on most servers and recommend servers that forego it on the main site.

Well, hello from feddit.de! Since I'm a german user I thought it'd be only logical to register on a german instance. While new registrations are semi-locked, the criteria for being let in are quite easy to pass and they are mostly in place to filter out spam. Got my account approved right on the next day

After reading the "we are full" notices and doing some research I was able to easily create an account on lemmy.ca increasing the represention for BC.

Solution: change servers

New lemmy.ca member checking in! This is pretty cool.
- Screw your generic server URIs...
  Iusearchlinux.fyi has a meme in its name!

Beehaw seems pretty dope
- They actually defederated with lemmy.world due to spam, kindof sucks, as users will miss out on communities on lemmy.world, lots of which were not spam.

My work blocks lemmy.ml but not many other instances. Unfortunately all the heaviest memes are on lemmy.ml ! I just want to look at fun memes instead of my lame ass patients what’s wrong with that

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com for generative ai, neurodivergence, and anarchism and copylefts

This is something that lemmy devs need to better address. This is an "Eternal September" kind of situation. People (me included) are not used to the fediverse. They think you can participate only if you're in that instance. And people want content, so they think "why's the instance with most people? Ahh lemmy.ml? Cool, let's join.
- yeah. i think the other problem is that people don't know if the instance would be good performance wise. i.e. i joined lemmy.ml because it was the one i found first.
  A good way to handle it would be to have an instance list. with number of users vs maximum users. like joining a server in a video game. if i see its super full, i'll pick another server. of course, we'd need some large banners to make sure people know they won't be missing out on other instances.

Whaaat there are alternatives?
- You can join any Lemmy instance! They all talk with each other.
  
  Or kbin. Or if you're really ambitious, one of the non-link aggregation products.

I created my account at sh.itjust.works but I don't fully understand Lemmy yet. Finding communities seems confusing.
- +1 for sh.itjust.works no wait for approval and a bit active. I tried to start a community but it didn't work, but then I searched for the communit (audiobooks) and there was one already on lemmy.ml so all good in the end!

How easy is it to migrate yourself from one to another?
- Pretty sure you just have to create a new account. There's no 'migration'.

If I want to comment on another insurance such as beehaw.org, do I need to create a different account or can I log in with one that I created on lemmy.ml?
- No you don't need an additional account. You can follow communities from wherever** you are.
  ** some instances might be blocked

We could use alternatives, but Lemmy is the best!

I just don't get why every other reasonably big alternative bans lemmygrad.
- Redditors and their eternal addiction to echo chambers.
  Also Hexbear >

Yeah I have been finding it hard to wrap my head around this federation part.
- I tried subscribing to a specific feddit.de community using Jerboa and I haven't been able to yet. Not sure whether I'm misunderstanding something or whether that's not possible.
  
  Jerboa doesn't let you create an account. Just do that step on the web first.
  I joined lemmy.world and it took 2 minutes.

Hello from tchncs.de!!
- Hello, kumpel.
  
  Totally didn't see the .de at the end lol. I don't even speak German! >.<

lemm.ee gang

Sopuli.xyz has been a reliable instance :)