Yeah. join-lemmy.org unfortunately isn’t great because it often points to random semi dead instances.
Something like,
The instance you join doesn’t matter much — because you can access all content no matter what instance you are on — but it can be nice to be on an instance that shares you interests and values, because you will have to conform to the rules of that instance.
Think of it like your clan — it’s like your email being yourname@yourworkplace — you can still email everyone else and see their emails, but it signals something about you, and it has different rules.
But I think part of the problem is the domain names on so many instances are so odd. Lemmy.world is very clean and easy to tell someone verbally, as opposed to say sopudi.xvz or dbzer0 or blahaj.zone.
I suppose “discuss.online” isn’t such a bad name. And “midwest.social” but people who are not in the Midwest might not feel like they identify with that geographically.
More than a little concerning, it’s happened plenty of times before. People see that BS on the Tankie Triad and then leave thinking Lemmy is just a bunch of tankies
Sometimes they try another non-Tankie instance and realize that we’re not all like that, but I’m sure a majority never return always thinking that all of Lemmy is “that Tankie hangout” or worse, a Voat 2.0
It’s controversial. It was created by the creators of Lemmy and has some techbro feelings about a lot of stuff. I’m not trying to start an .ml fight, I’m against pushing for any particular instance.
I would recommend new users to stay away from the biggest ones and steer towards one level down. You want enough communities and instances to line your front page, but the big ones are big enough. Let’s spread the load.
I don’t think you need any communities to line your front page until you get subscriptions going. I think going a level down from the biggest ones is still too big and will still lead to giant instances as they inevitably grow over time. Same with putting practically all the communities on lemmy.world or lemmy.ml.
That’s concentrating a lot of people and content in a handful of places, and slightly-less-centralized is still effectively centralized. No instance admins should have that much power.
I was referencing to when I signed up for Lemmy. I really missed the front page of r/ and was looking for that. I didn’t realize that the default would be so dead and also, I was on a really small instance, so the page was suuuuper dead since nothing was referenced yet. People can switch to smaller, but we don’t want to overwhelm them or make it look way worse populated than it is. I get your concern, but that’s why I recommend it to be mid level. You may not care if your front page is dead, but the newbies do.
No matter what advice you give people, they’re still basically going to do what they want. Many will prefer to join larger servers, and some will always prefer smaller ones.
Honestly I think we should worry way less about this, because Lemmy is FOSS and we have enough solid instances already. People will naturally find their way and if larger instances get power drunk, people will leave. We don’t need to try to orchestrate and fine tune what instances people use. Let them do what they want, and trust that the decentralized and redundant federated structure will function as intended.
It should only come into play if large instances actually can’t keep up with their userbase growth from a technological standpoint. But again that problem solves itself because they can just close sign ups.
There are already tools for that, and it will probably get easier with time. In general, people should be encouraged to create multiple accounts on different servers from the beginning, so they already have built in options if they want to leave.
I use different sorting algorithms on my different accounts and also have different subscriptions, so the front page often looks totally different when I sign into my alts. Some of them are even federated with hexbear 🫣. I always find interesting posts that I missed by doing that.
Yeah, that’s kind of my point. A lot of people have no clue how the Fediverse works, and so they see that an instance is big and maybe has the name Lemmy in it, and they think that that’s going to be the one to give them the best experience.
Letting people know that they can get basically the same experience without having to go with the big ones is something I think everybody should know, since it’s such a foreign concept to centralized social media. They have choice in the matter.
And if they want to stick with the big ones, because they like some aspect, then they’ve at least been made aware of what their options are. People should be able to make informed decisions.
We read and comprehend the Communist Manifesto with some level of agreement and usually quite a bit more. But it’s mostly privacy focused. Full disclosure: vegan anarchist.
I don’t understand how you could possibly think this. Literally any discussion of China, even non-political that does not conform to the admins beliefs results in an immediate instance-wide ban. It is one of the most censored spaces on the internet and absolutely not safe for anarchist ideas.
Besides, there’s more to .ml than a love of authoritarian
Not really, back in the day yea, but over the past year as other comm’s have grown on other instances their influence has been waning and all that’s left is the Tankie ideology
Programming.dev has taken over for FOSS and programming topics in general, other instances are taking over memes, and I’m even seeing more and more non-.ml privacy subs rise
If you look at MAUs, even the .ml memes comm (once THE most popular comm) doesn’t crack the top 10 anymore. Not a single .ml comm does
Having them pointed towards lemmy.ml is a little concerning.
Whatever, infighting gets us nowhere , down with the big bad
I made an alternative linking to lemm.ee
because in general this is a good flyer
We should do a bunch of them with varying non-Tankie instances
Like programming.dev or lemmy.blahaj.zone
Or maybe even better, have a small table at the bottom with their focuses
Yeah. join-lemmy.org unfortunately isn’t great because it often points to random semi dead instances.
Something like,
The instance you join doesn’t matter much — because you can access all content no matter what instance you are on — but it can be nice to be on an instance that shares you interests and values, because you will have to conform to the rules of that instance. Think of it like your clan — it’s like your email being yourname@yourworkplace — you can still email everyone else and see their emails, but it signals something about you, and it has different rules.
Here are a couple options:
General Purpose:
Interests:
Diversity:
Regions/Langauges:
Ideology:
Please copypaste my comment and add instances / improve it
I like the idea, but people have said several times that choosing an instance is a barrier for them.
I usually go with
"Lemmy has 42k monthly active users
Feel free if you have any questions"
Yeah I think I elaborated too much. Let’s just keep recommending small instances — because the current centralisation on world sucks.
I’ve been thinking of switching instances.
But I think part of the problem is the domain names on so many instances are so odd. Lemmy.world is very clean and easy to tell someone verbally, as opposed to say sopudi.xvz or dbzer0 or blahaj.zone.
I suppose “discuss.online” isn’t such a bad name. And “midwest.social” but people who are not in the Midwest might not feel like they identify with that geographically.
Lemm.ee
I think I have seen your posts on reddit before haha
Oh definitely !
More than a little concerning, it’s happened plenty of times before. People see that BS on the Tankie Triad and then leave thinking Lemmy is just a bunch of tankies
Sometimes they try another non-Tankie instance and realize that we’re not all like that, but I’m sure a majority never return always thinking that all of Lemmy is “that Tankie hangout” or worse, a Voat 2.0
I’m not very into Lemmy, what’s so bad about lemmy.ml?
They’re part of the Tankie Triad who deny the human rights violations of the CCP and hold them up as the gold standard.
Basically Authoritarian bootlickers pretending to not be authoritarians
It’s a tankie instance. “ML” as in Marxism-Leninism.
And here I was thinking it was just a cheap ccTLD to use.
If only :(
and in practice they are more MLM (maoism) or MLS (stalinism).
Yeah if they were run of the mill Marxists it’d be one thing, but it’s an authoritarian mess
It’s controversial. It was created by the creators of Lemmy and has some techbro feelings about a lot of stuff. I’m not trying to start an .ml fight, I’m against pushing for any particular instance.
I would recommend new users to stay away from the biggest ones and steer towards one level down. You want enough communities and instances to line your front page, but the big ones are big enough. Let’s spread the load.
I don’t think you need any communities to line your front page until you get subscriptions going. I think going a level down from the biggest ones is still too big and will still lead to giant instances as they inevitably grow over time. Same with putting practically all the communities on lemmy.world or lemmy.ml.
That’s concentrating a lot of people and content in a handful of places, and slightly-less-centralized is still effectively centralized. No instance admins should have that much power.
I was referencing to when I signed up for Lemmy. I really missed the front page of r/ and was looking for that. I didn’t realize that the default would be so dead and also, I was on a really small instance, so the page was suuuuper dead since nothing was referenced yet. People can switch to smaller, but we don’t want to overwhelm them or make it look way worse populated than it is. I get your concern, but that’s why I recommend it to be mid level. You may not care if your front page is dead, but the newbies do.
I get that. I think it is therefore incumbent upon us and the people running instances to inform new users how to do this new thing.
I’m not saying your way is wrong, just that I think inertia will ultimately win out over ideology.
Anyway, have a lovely day!
No matter what advice you give people, they’re still basically going to do what they want. Many will prefer to join larger servers, and some will always prefer smaller ones.
Honestly I think we should worry way less about this, because Lemmy is FOSS and we have enough solid instances already. People will naturally find their way and if larger instances get power drunk, people will leave. We don’t need to try to orchestrate and fine tune what instances people use. Let them do what they want, and trust that the decentralized and redundant federated structure will function as intended.
It should only come into play if large instances actually can’t keep up with their userbase growth from a technological standpoint. But again that problem solves itself because they can just close sign ups.
Will they though? I’ve seen people wanting to leave the bigger ones and don’t know how to transfer all of their subs and stuff.
There are already tools for that, and it will probably get easier with time. In general, people should be encouraged to create multiple accounts on different servers from the beginning, so they already have built in options if they want to leave.
I use different sorting algorithms on my different accounts and also have different subscriptions, so the front page often looks totally different when I sign into my alts. Some of them are even federated with hexbear 🫣. I always find interesting posts that I missed by doing that.
What tools and where can I find them?
Yeah, that’s kind of my point. A lot of people have no clue how the Fediverse works, and so they see that an instance is big and maybe has the name Lemmy in it, and they think that that’s going to be the one to give them the best experience.
Letting people know that they can get basically the same experience without having to go with the big ones is something I think everybody should know, since it’s such a foreign concept to centralized social media. They have choice in the matter.
And if they want to stick with the big ones, because they like some aspect, then they’ve at least been made aware of what their options are. People should be able to make informed decisions.
Finding an instance that fits you is also significantly more difficult than even mastodon too.
https://feddit.nl/post/16246531
We read and comprehend the Communist Manifesto with some level of agreement and usually quite a bit more. But it’s mostly privacy focused. Full disclosure: vegan anarchist.
I don’t understand how you could possibly think this. Literally any discussion of China, even non-political that does not conform to the admins beliefs results in an immediate instance-wide ban. It is one of the most censored spaces on the internet and absolutely not safe for anarchist ideas.
My account is 3 years old and have talked about anarchist ideas with them in the past and haven’t been banned. Don’t know what to tell you hoss
It’s mostly Tankie focused, Tiananmen square massacre happened, and the CCP and Russia are Authoritarian dictatorships
Who cares, just get them onboarded and we can deal with orientation later
Because they’ll onboard see the Tankie bullshit and go “oh it’s just Voat 2.0 :/” and leave before ever making it to orientation
I think you’re overestimating the repulsion/ attraction of the tankies. Besides, there’s more to .ml than a love of authoritarian socialism (i assume)
Not really. I mean they do discuss other topics but the ideology flows through everything there.
Not really, back in the day yea, but over the past year as other comm’s have grown on other instances their influence has been waning and all that’s left is the Tankie ideology
Programming.dev has taken over for FOSS and programming topics in general, other instances are taking over memes, and I’m even seeing more and more non-.ml privacy subs rise
If you look at MAUs, even the .ml memes comm (once THE most popular comm) doesn’t crack the top 10 anymore. Not a single .ml comm does