Does it actually matter?
I’m on sh.itjust.works. Not gonna lie, related to that name naturally.
Exactly the same for me. Choosing an instance based on values, content, or location is so lame. I chose my instance based on the funny name.
Although sh.itjust.works democratic moderation is pretty based.
There is several of factors you should consider:
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Does it have a healthy amount of users: between 1k-10k users are probably the sweet spot right now. You don’t want too many users because it will cause performance problems. And instances with too few users has too many unknowns.
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read the rules see if you agree: servers can have wildy different rules ranging from no NSFW to no downvotes. If they don’t have any rules that is a red flag too. You want an active moderation so the instance doesn’t get run over by bots.
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Does it look low effort: check the banner, how the announcement formatted.
That is probably all the basics
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Lemmy.world because lemmy.ML recommended it when I tried to sign up there. I’m considering moving to a smaller server though since this one seems to be getting overloaded.
Yea, for whatever reason, lemmy.world became the sort of de facto “main” instance, which isn’t a bad thing and lemmy.world isn’t a bad choice at all, ruud AFAICT is a dedicated and experienced fediverse admin.
There may be issues to centralising the user load too much. I don’t have the technical knowledge to back this up, but it probably makes sense that there is such a thing as too much for one server to handle. If it has to handle all of the user requests as well has syncing all of the large and popular communities that a “main” instance is likely to host, then it’s just a lot and probably requires technical solutions and investment beyond what one admin/team is willing or capable of doing. Plus, lemmy the software may not be designed for that sort of load, which probably requires a distinct architecture from that of a smaller instance.
So it probably, at point at least, makes sense to spread the load of both the users and the communities. However, it seems that redditors as accustomed to a “central” and singular service as they are have kind of opted in to re-creating a central “main” instance like they’re used to. It may very well be a bad habit, as it presumes that there’s just some giant server and a dedicated tech team sitting there waiting to scale up at a moment’s notice. Of course, lemmy.world are free to halt sign ups and encourage users to pick other instances. But it remains to be seen how lemmy, its software and the fediverse/threadiverse in general handles communities/groups/magazines at this new scale.
In the mean time, intentionally spreading the load might help. As would donating to the developers and your admin!!
Same, feeling really slow for me
Yeah I’ve noticed some issues lately with lemmy.world. I assume it has to do the quick growth from the great Reddit migration.
I registered during very early days, so I signed up for the instance run by devs because there wasn’t much choice. Today I would choose a smaller one
Lemmy.ml and lemmygrad as well as tech.de (or something similar) I might host myself sometime later. I was on mastodont a while before , went back and tired of proprietary again. This time I am thoroughly fed up and will stay.
For me federation is good. I see the problem with filterbubbles but I’m to old for this shit. I rather be in my bubble.
I’m in Canada, so I’m using and supporting Lemmy.ca
One of the points of using a distributed system is to not centralize the userbase.
I also have a account on lemmynsfw but that’s just for research purposes.
Gotta support the ‘.ca’ anyway we can! Underutilized domain imo
- Googled “Lemmy” to see what it even is
- “wtf is an instance”
- Checked some of the most used instances. At this point I wasn’t sure if it matters much, but I just figured it’s best to just pick a popular instance.
- found lemmy.world, and the description goes “The World’s Internet Frontpage - Lemmy.world is a general-purpose Lemmy instance of various topics, for the entire world to use.”
- “sounds good enough”, created account
The final update message given out on RIF suggested Lemmy.World and so, here I am.
Does it matter?
As I have found with a few niches I’ve been looking for and only found communities on other instances, it may matter. I can see this post even though I am on Lemmy.World and not Lemmy.ml; but some of the other places I’ve wanted to look at are not federated with Lemmy.World or are semi-private and require manual authorization by an admin before you can do anything; and they can’t authorize a user that doesn’t interact with them somehow so I had to make a new account for those instances.
Lemmy.ml and lemmygrad as well as tech.de (or something similar) I might host myself sometime later. I was on mastodont a while before , went back and tired of proprietary again. This time I am thoroughly fed up and will stay.
For me federation is good. I see the problem with filterbubbles but I’m to old for this shit. I rather be in my bubble.
I made my first account on lemmy.ml because it had a commitment to free and open-source software with a focus on privacy.
Went Lemmy.world because I had no idea how any of this worked.
Gonna stick with it for now, because there isn’t really a reason to switch. In the future I might switch or host my own.
Lemmy.ml and lemmygrad as well as tech.de (or something similar) I might host myself sometime later. I was on mastodont a while before , went back and tired of proprietary again. This time I am thoroughly fed up and will stay.
For me federation is good. I see the problem with filterbubbles but I’m to old for this shit. I rather be in my bubble.
I joined lemmy.world because when I first signed up it was still quite a bit smaller than lemmy.ml. I heard that new users should try to make lemmy grow horizontally by joining other instances. I guess joining world wasn’t the best choice for achieving that in retrospect 🙂
Lemmy.ml and lemmygrad as well as tech.de (or something similar) I might host myself sometime later. I was on mastodont a while before , went back and tired of proprietary again. This time I am thoroughly fed up and will stay.
For me federation is good. I see the problem with filterbubbles but I’m to old for this shit. I rather be in my bubble.
Signed up this account on .world because it was quite small (lol) but seemed competently run. This decision has not worked out great!
Had my other account on Beehaw so after that whole debacle I had to migrate. Moved that one to lemm.ee because again small and competently run. It’s worked out much better over there, people seem to keep flocking to .world for whatever reason so lemm.ee is staying nice and manageable (for now).
