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How do you choose an instance and does that have a significant effect on your Lemmy experience?

I originally chose to make my account on lemmy.world since all the content seemed to come from there. But I’ve since learned that I can fill my feed with stuff from any instance so it feels like it doesn’t actually matter if I’m on lemmy.world or not. At the same time, Lemmy.world seems to be frequently under attack so I’m wondering if I should change instance but have no idea what I should even be looking for when choosing.

martinbasic ,
@martinbasic@lemmy.world avatar

For me, if you are choosing a different instances for your alt account, always have a look at the instance’s server location info and their blocked list, just in case

Jackcooper ,

I went with .world because I’m a reddit refugee and it was the easiest to find when I knew nothing about Lemmy

I now have a lemmy.ca account for when world gets ddos’d

Granixo ,
@Granixo@feddit.cl avatar

For anyone who lives outside of the US:

Choose an instance that corresponds to your country.

Atemu ,
@Atemu@lemmy.ml avatar

Yeah. I think I’d like to move to feddit.de when that becomes a possibility. Though I kinda do like my O.G. dev.lemmy.ml account too.

SirEDCaLot , (edited )

A lot of people are talking about federation and access to admins. But what’s missing is defederation policy.

Lemmy is a federated network of instances. If you’re on InstanceA and you make a community on InstanceA, and I’m on InstanceB, I can connect to your community on InstanceA. UNLESS, there’s a defederation- either InstanceA or InstanceB manually block the other. This is something the admins of the instance do.

Different instances have different policies on when (if ever) they defederate. Beehaw for example defederated a number of instances, but that’s due to the experience Beehaw is trying to create- very inclusive and affirming and whatnot. That’s their choice, but it meant defederating some of the more popular public instances (including lemmy.world).

//edit: Another thing relates to creating communities. Any communities you create will ‘live’ on your instance, and thus be under your instance’s rules. Some instancess are friendly to questionable subjects like piracy and NSFW material, others are not. So even if you don’t today intend to create any communities, it’s good to be on an instancewhose rules align with your own preferences.

curiosityLynx ,

Tbf, beehaw plans to refederate with lemmy.world once either the moderation tools for lemmy get better or lemmy.world makes it harder for trolls to just make a new lemmy.world account when banned from beehaw.

SirEDCaLot ,

True, but that brings up another point which I just edited into my parent comment- instance rules. Any communities you create will be hosted on your home instance and thus subject to your home instance’s rules. So you should make sure those rules align with the sort of activity you’ll want to be doing.

hawkwind ,
@hawkwind@lemmy.management avatar

This could always change at the whim of an admin as well. It’s good to have admin “teams” and even foundations, but a lot of the time there’s one person making those decisions.

Users and communities could be more portable. Admins should get to decide what is on their instance for sure, but right now there’s kind of a “lock in.” Which give admins disproportional control / responsibility. IMO.

curiosityLynx ,

I seem to remember account migration being something that is planned to eventually be possible, but until then, more important issues take precedence (also, many code contributors leave big things like this to the main devs and contribute small improvements instead).

OutrageousUmpire ,

Yes I agree—a big part of choosing an instance is who they are defederated with.

kimagure ,

With current synchronisation problem between instances, choosing a big instance is a no brainer. I don't want to use small instance and got 404 when searching community on other instance or when not all comments from other instances showed up.

henfredemars ,

This is a good point for not choosing too small. I’ve made a couple of accounts, and it looks like when a servers crosses that 1,000 or 2,000 user mark you start getting much better consistency than the micro instances with only a few hundred users.

I usually find that I have to reload a few times if I’m the first person to try to subscribe to a community. That happens uncomfortably too often if the instance is small. Even then, it can take a days or possibly never to properly federate.

I’m sure these issues will be fixed, but for now, I’d like myself a small instance but not too small so as to avoid issues with consistency.

phoenix591 ,

there arn’t any sync problems currently. You’re posting just fine from kbin.social onto lemmy.world and it federated just fine onto my own tiny instance and so many others.

Chickenlambchops ,

Is this why I don’t find anything when I search for Sousvide or dehydrating?

phoenix591 ,

itl only search within communities at least one person on your instance is subbed to yes. and subbing doesn’t pull in hardly any previous posts, mostly just new ones from that point on

use something like this to help find communities, and perhaps retry searching on the home instance of a relevant community to search its entire history

Chickenlambchops ,

So when I do this. It tells me to login via Lemmy.world ? I am on a smaller instance.

phoenix591 ,

you dont need to login to search.

if you do find something you want to do more than simply view, copy the post or comment url, and then search for it on your home instance for it to be pulled over so you can properly interact with it

Ghyste ,

When you go into the community search on your instance, make sure you select All instead of Local. You’ll get results from all of the instances yours is federated with then.

The community catalogs people post will often take you straight to a different instance—which is different from the one you made your account on and logged into—which is why you see a login prompt.

Searching from your instance with All selected will let you visit communities from any instances yours is connected with while you stay logged in on your home instance. Hope that helps, I tried to simply but it’s late and I’m tired.

Chickenlambchops ,

I think I know what the issue is. I’m using wefwef/voyager. I think the search there is making it hard for me to find things. I’ll try on the computer. Thank you

loobkoob ,
@loobkoob@kbin.social avatar

I personally opted for kbin.social - I like the UI more, I like the community in the kbin-specific threads, and I like that I have the option to follow Mastodon users and interact with the whole micro-blogging side of the fediverse as well as using the "threadiverse" (Lemmy, etc). I think the occasional issues are bound to happen regardless of your instance, purely because it's such a new and growing platform. kbin's largely been rather stable, though.

The biggest downside for a lot of people is that kbin isn't supported by most of the mobile apps yet. Personally, I don't mind this - there's a PWA (progressive web app - essentially just a fancy bookmark to the mobile site that keeps it in its own unique browser instance with the tabs, menus, etc, hidden so it looks like an app) that works really nicely. The mobile site is really nice to use in general, so I've no issues just using this until a killer app comes along.

macallik ,

Similar thought process for me. The only downside I've experienced thus far is that once or twice a week, I'll get error messages when I try to interact w/ content (upvote/boost/etc).

I think I'll likely create another account when Threads joins the federation but kbin.social chooses to defederate 🤔

sparklecherry ,

I chose an instance ran by the same person who owns the mastodon instance I am on, it’s not that popular compared to the big Lemmy instances.

For my mastodon instance I chose one based off of: being on the official list, region, how many people post on that instance in a day (too many posts = too many users), what kind of stuff they post and the rules I have to follow. You could follow the same idea with Lemmy.

For the most part, I ignore the main instance and just look at my subscription feeds through a 3rd party app. So far, nothing bad has occured from being in a small community.

Also, look for posts on Lemmy or Mastodon about updates for a particular instance. My instance is being updated often and is actively geared against the spam bots and ddoss attacks from the past month.

TheSaneWriter ,
@TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com avatar

Any instance, large or small, is only as good as the admin team running it. Ultimately, the larger instances have more content on their all feeds, are generally more stable, and are less likely to suddenly disappear. Smaller instances are generally faster, have more direct contact with their admins, and have more user control. Ultimately if you are having a good experience on lemmy.world you don’t have a strong impetus to switch, but I would maintain alt accounts with your subscriptions just in case. You can use a tool called lasim to port them from one account to another. Though I am biased, if you do decide to move to a smaller instance, I have a brand new one called lemmy.thesanewriter.com that I am currently the sole admin of that is accepting new users.

MaxVerstappen ,

What is the stance on federation? I’d love to find a place that doesn’t federate with all the porn and politics instances.

TheSaneWriter ,
@TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com avatar

My federation policy is currently fairly open, I’ve only defederated exploding-heads and burgitt. I’m open to making it more restrictive but would like to hear user opinions first.

ShellMonkey ,
@ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com avatar

lemmy.fediverse.observer

You could try here, it lists the uptime and geo location of plenty of fedi instances of all stripes. Take the uptimes with a grain of salt though, if they can’t reach an instance for whatever reason it gets marked down even if it was actually fine, so it can read a bit low sometimes.

Cralex ,

I joined lemmy.one because it presents itself as friendly to beginners/Reddit refugees. On the plus side, it’s worked very consistently and fast. They’re also federated with pretty much everything, so there’s plenty of content to choose from and narrow by subscribing and blocking.

On the minus side, you can’t create communities there and the only communities that exist are chat, meta, and some security and privacy focused communities. So you’ll have to get most of your content from across the ‘verce. (Which it part of the part of the point Lemmy anyway.) Also, as a beginner-friendly instance, there’s some tutorial-ish stickied messages depending on how I set my view settings.

The only significant disadvantage is if I ever want to create my own community, I need another account elsewhere. Otherwise, I’m pretty happy with my choice.

frozen ,
@frozen@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz avatar

Smaller instance is generally better. I’ve got a couple of seeder scripts automatically federating content in order to populate my All feed, which definitely helps the place feel less empty.

iwasborninafactory ,

What does this mean, exactly. I'm still trying to figure this all out. I'm on kbin.social. I'm hearing all about Lemmy and fediverse. I see helpful pictures that people post of clouds with arrows, indicating that there are different servers, but I'm confused as fuck.

I can't figure out if there are two version of /r/politics, if someone else could have my username, or if I can see everything on every server, or how do I control what I see?

If anyone reads this, which I don't think anyone will, I am really looking for a Ukraine update page. That's the thing that made me log into reddit every day.

TheSaneWriter , (edited )
@TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com avatar

Yes, there are multiple people that could have your username, and you can have multiple accounts with the same username. For example, this is my third TheSaneWriter account on this platform, my first was on the defunct instance VLemmy and my second is partially active on the instance lemm.ee. Same with /c/politics, there can be as many versions of that community as there are instances, though the largest will probably be on lemmy.ml and lemmy.world. Most Lemmy frontends have 3 feeds, Subscribed, Local, and All. Subscribed is only communities that you are subscribed to, you can subscribe to any community on any instance from any other instance as long as your instance hasn’t defederated from them. Local is all of the communities on your instance, All is all of the communities that anyone on your instance has subscribed to. You can also block communities from any instance that you would like. Here’s a fairly active Ukraine community, !ukraine. There are other ones out there, but this one is the most active. I found it here: lemmyverse.net/communities?query=ukraine. Lemmyverse can see any community on any instance that is public to the internet, so if you are ever looking for a community feel free to check there.

DashboTreeFrog OP ,

This is the best explanation of the difference between Subscribed, Local and All that I’ve run into so far. I thought I understood the All tab but apparently that was a huge misconception I had before asking this question.

HeavyRust ,
@HeavyRust@lemm.ee avatar

Reading this post should be helpful.

marzipan ,

This is super useful, thanks for sharing! This should be included in an orientation like “first time using Lemmy?” or something, though I have no idea how that would be organized.

Mookulator ,

I think a good strategy is to start on Lemmy.World until you discover a solid list of communities you want to follow. Then switch to a smaller instance that aligns with your interests and bring all your subscriptions with you.

If you start on a small instance you’ll have to do a lot more work to discover communities, since they mostly won’t appear in your All feed. Plus, you’re doing that small instance a favor by bringing interesting communities to their All feed.

DashboTreeFrog OP ,

Sounds like good advice, stick with what I’m on for now (lemmy.world) and see what smaller instances appeal to me as I explore. I’ll probably end up doing this.

I’m also realizing from your post that the All feed is different from instance to instance? I thought it’s basically everything from all federated Lemmy instances.

TheSaneWriter ,
@TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com avatar

It is, but the content that is federated varies from instance to instance. Instances only federate communities that a user on that instance is subscribed to, so the all feed is a combination of posts from every community that an instance member is subscribed to. For a large instance like lemmy.world that’s basically every community, but for medium instances there are various small communities they don’t have and for a small instance, the all feed will reflect the interests of the founding members.

Mookulator ,

Yeah the All feed shows you the communities that you and all your instance-mates follow, but not every community in existence.

henfredemars ,

All refers to everything that your instance knows about. Your instance only retrieves data for which users are actually subscribed.

All can be weird on small instances if the user subscriptions don’t have a nice distribution.

Lapus ,

Thank you for asking this. I’m that student that had the same question but was afraid to ask.

DashboTreeFrog OP ,

Then I hope the answers are enlightening to us both! Takeaways so far are just choose a smaller instance and see if you can find one that specializes in your specific interests. But making sure it’s an instance that will be well and reliably run is the part I can’t figure out yet.

DashboTreeFrog OP ,

I’m gonna take this back a bit cause my understanding of the All tab has changed significantly from people’s responses. It seems choosing a larger instance is better for discovery, cause the All tab you see is just what people in your instance are subscribed to only, not all of the federated lemmy instances and communities. So I’m going to stick with a large instance for now (lemmy.world), then if I see a lot of content better fitting what I’m looking for on another instance, join that, or at least make an alt there.

lemmy ,
@lemmy@endlesstalk.org avatar

Usually, it is correct, that the all feed would be smaller on a small instance, but “seeders”, like lcs or lemmony can make the feed in all tab much larger.

It does this by subscribing to a lot communites. Lcs does for specific communities and lemmony subscribes to everything. You can see an example of an all tab with many subscriptions(added via lemmony) at my instance

I think the easist way to check, if an instance uses one of these seeders is to check the number of subscriptions in the instance. Or just ask the admin for the instance.

activator90 ,

How does being a student and afraid to ask relate?

Lapus ,

It was a metaphore. I was describing myself as a student to afraid in class to ask.

driving_crooner ,
@driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br avatar

My instance was opened by the mod team of the Brazilian subreddit, they do a great job moderating the subreddit so I trusted them when they called us to move over here. Local experience is cool because is in Portuguese and Brazil centered, so I have a good contrast with All that is almost exclusively in English and European/US centric.

HeavyRust ,
@HeavyRust@lemm.ee avatar

You’ll probably experience more performance issues if you choose larger instances. On the other hand, it’s harder to know how reliable and stable smaller instances are.

DashboTreeFrog OP ,

Yeah, since I’ve joined lemmy.world has been down quite a few times so I can see the problem of too many people jumping onto one instance. Just figuring out how to find out if a smaller instance is both reliable and stable as you say… Not sure what metrics I can look at or if such metrics exist

HeavyRust ,
@HeavyRust@lemm.ee avatar

In my case I looked at the welcome post of my instance (lemm.ee) when it was still small and could tell it was definitely a good instance to choose.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • [email protected]
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •