As someone who runs their own Lemmy instance, I do. People tend to join up with large instances, thus making the whole “decentralised” aspect a bit ambivalent and the system more prone to single points of failure…
But I also understand why - while my instance indeed has lots and lots of resources still available - there are many real-life advantages of choosing instances with established mod- and admin teams and an active community.
there are many real-life advantages of choosing instances with established mod- and admin teams and an active community.
This is the thing here, like, for most casual users “decentralisation and spreading the load” is not just far down the list of priorities, it’s literally nonexistent. Content, uptime, reliability, active moderation and low risk of the instance just disappearing one day is what they care about. It’s unfortunate, but I really don’t see a way around it.
Programming.dev had a database corruption issue for 4 months (see !meta@programming.dev ), 1098 MAU. And I’m not saying that people should leave PD, but that issue was concerning for quite a while.
I think on top of what you said, people just don’t want to move and only do so when the instance actually goes down.
Well yes, I was thinking more along the lines of what makes people gravitate to the already big servers when they first create an account. When people are already somewhat established there is another form of friction, or more like inertia. Like you say, people just don’t want to move once they’ve settled down somewhere. Even though it’s very easy to switch instances, and with no karma to care about there is nothing keeping you.
A proven track record, for another, and less likelihood to shut down. Many smaller instances legit did shut down over the years - like I recall one I was wondering if I should join, dmv.social, that chose to shut down during the waves of CSAM attacks, just prior to the automated tool that dbzero created to save the Fediverse.
Smaller instances may also have lesser hardware and less technically-capable admins maintaining it.
It’d be cool if we could move servers. I’m happy with where I am now; but my main reason for picking Lemmy.zip was it showed up near the top of a search. I bet that’s the case for a lot of people
You somewhat can - go to Settings -> Import/Export Settings -> Export as a JSON file and Import after you make a new account elsewhere. DMs and anyone following you won’t be redirected to the new account, but your community subscriptions and block lists will be transferred this way. Repeat as often as necessary:-).
Lemmy.zip seems an okay instance, or at least I cannot recall anything bad about it. Although it doesn’t defederate with any of the big 3 so it’s totally up to your personal efforts to avoid being trolled by users from hexbear.net, Lemmygrad.net, or Lemmy.ml (2 of those 3 are defederated from most large Lemmy instances, so lemmy.zip is a bit unusual in that regard).
I suggest at least checking out PieFed: the experience with the sign-up wizard alone is likely enough to convince you to stay, e.g. you can choose to filter All/Some/None of posts containing keywords “Trump” or “Musk” (if you wanted something like that:-), and it asks what topics you are interested in and then subscribes you to communities based on those answers, rather than leave you to have to discover and sign up to each one individually on your own.
Edit: Or even without an account, and even if you plan to stay with Lemmy, the categories of communities (pre-defined “Topics” and user customizable and shareable “Feeds”), e.g. see in action on PieFed.social, are really cool! 😎 Like multi-Reddits (I hear, I never used those:-) they both aid in community discovery and helping to separate our your interests, like you might not want to actually “subscribe” to any political communities so that those topics don’t show up in your Subscribed feed, and yet still you can read about that topic anytime you want by visiting News and Politics - so you really can both have your cake and eat it too! 😋 🍰🎂
Or for someone located in the USA (low latency ping) looking for a general-purpose Lemmy instance I highly recommend Discuss.Online, especially for a new user coming over from Reddit - it has fantastic uptime and very friendly devs who fix and improve things quickly:-). And it defederates from hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml.
Lemmy.zip is the #12 instance in terms of Monthly Active Users, so indeed a good choice in that respect - not too small or too large but in the middle:-). And a great choice for someone who exclusively loves gaming and chooses to pursue that interest by browsing Local rather than All.
Still, it is always good to know what options are available to someone:-).
(just to chime in uninvited to say that we have a bit of code that inserts blocks for hexbear and lemmygrad for new users, so the new user has the option to remove the block and see that sort of content if they want to - we’re all about choice!)
The vast majority of lemmy users are on a couple massive instances: lemmy.world, lemm.ee, sh.itjust.works etc.
There are tiny instances which would be happy to host more users and are faster than the big ones but no one joins them because most people just hear of lemmy.world or whatever is being shared on reddit and join that.
LW is also the top instance hit (for me) in a DuckDuckGo search, also being the only search result that is actually an instance. So that, plus people referring it, could keep it going.
Are perhaps apps offering it as their default recommendation? If so, perhaps that could be changed to a different one like lemm.ee or something (assuming they can only handle a singular one in that capacity). Edit: I just wiped all my data for Voyager (Android), sacrificing that to test and find that actually lemm.ee rather than LW already is its default - neat!:-)
People also continue to spread the misinformation (IMHO) that https://join-lemmy.org/ should be used to pick an instance. I just tried it now and do you want to guess which instance it pointed me towards? hexbear.net, not joking! 😺
So if you wanted to spread things out s little more, it may be time for another Lemmy post to help new Lemmings know what the factors involved are, especially the new recruits from Reddit lately.
Lemmygrad.ml also appears in that list, although unironically of the big 3 instances, that one I actually respect due to the honesty of their label:
A collection of Marxist communities, for memes, learning, news, discussion, media, or anything you like.
Someone reading that could either become enthused or conversely nope out easily, it’s when the label doesn’t match that causes the vast majority of the problems.
I’ve been considering setting up a new primary account on an instance other than .world, but there isn’t really a way for instances to effectively publicize themselves, their culture, and their mod/admin tempo and I’m honestly stumped
People are recommending for the local feed. I mostly changed for the experience. My instance has downvotes disabled, which IMO is a more pleasant experience as a casual user. And the instance mods have a more no-nonsense approach to moderation. And since I prefer quality over quantity, it’s a good thing.
One way to choose an instance might be to generally think of what instance the people and communities you like tend to be on? (obviously most ppl and comms are on a couple big instances, but apart from that.)
Also defederations are a huge part of the experience.
Hexbear users historically were allowed to troll a good portion of the Threadiverse - like Discuss.Online and StarTrek.website both have defederated from it now but a year ago had not done so yet, while others such as lemm.ee and mander.xyz still have not done so (and likely never will).
And lemmy.ml mods are free to say that they want to kill you without repercussions, and likewise many other ml users are responsible for the most bat shit insane comments that I’ve seen across the Fediverse, after discounting hexbear.net (several users on ml freely admit to having switched to their alt there after Hexbear was banned, i.e. they engage in ban evasion tactics, again without any repercussions).
And there’s lemmygrad.ml too. I almost left the Threadiverse entirely after commenting there and Hexbear.net and replies kept flooding my inbox for WEEKS and WEEKS, long past when I wanted to stop the conversation. In fairness, that’s often what people inside of those communities do on purpose for fun, so it’s less that I’m calling that aspect “bad” and more that it doesn’t fit in so well with the rest of the Threadiverse, and in particular with the rules stated on sites such as Discuss.Online.
The Federation model can get tricky, especially when the tools are lacking to describe what is going on at any given moment - like “this community is for fun, but this other community has left fun behind, prepare to be mocked for values you were taught as a child in Western society and haven’t yet questioned - surely you enjoy being ridiculed for things beyond your control, r-r-right!?”
We need to do better, by providing better tools, or else the Federation model will fail. e.g. PieFed shows the community side-bar text below each and every post, so that e.g. if you were to wander into ChapoTrapHouse@hexbear.net via a post on All, you would be able to see what you are walking into.
The Lemmy developers are also the admins of that instance, so they choose to put release announcements into communities on it.
something about the list of communities that exist (probably new ones?) also comes from that instance.
Both of these have alternatives available, but I guess you can’t really argue about conflicts of interest when Lemmy is their software, that we (freeloaders) choose to use. If we want something different, we would need to build it (as both PieFed and Mbin have done:-).
My general advice is to pick a regional one or one based on one of your hobbies. That way you’ll have a relevant “local” feed and can dip in and out of “all”. On .world there isn’t much difference between “all” and “local”.
Yes it is, and it doesn’t stop at choosing an instance - for a new user to find and add communities, and block people, and learn how things work like Hexbear users aren’t serious and instead just troll everywhere, it’s all a lot. Fortunately PieFed helps a new user a ton with the sign-up wizard and making community discovery trivial with the categories of communities feature.
And for your older Lemmy account, it’s really nice that you can simply Export your community subscriptions and block lists to a JSON file and then Import those into the new instance, whichever one you pick.
A process which may need to be multiple times - e.g. when kbin.social went down I moved to StarTrek.website, but the delays of over a minute and constant failure to do things like vote or reply to comments frustrated me so much that I moved to discuss.online. And then the lack of ability to block users from lemmy.ml enticed me to check out PieFed.social. I’m really happy with PieFed now, but I also do really strongly recommend discuss.online as well. But StarTrek.website, at least at the time, not so much - it seems to have vastly improved since though? Hence I mention it here not to say to avoid that one, these days, but rather to give an example of how you may need to hop around over and over again to find a good one, or else stay current with recommendations from people, like discuss.online I still log onto almost daily to check up on things.
Reddit takes care of its users, as they steal data and sell the userbase to advertisers. On the Threadiverse we have to be our own advocates, which requires greater amounts of effort.
I recommend PieFed rather than Lemmy tbh - it just has so many cool features that Lemmy lacks, like categories of communities and combining comments across all cross-posts, so cool!
But if sticking with Lemmy, for anyone in the USA I cannot recommend highly enough Discuss.Online - it has fantastic uptime and a very friendly admin group, both of which are somewhat rare so it’s really kinda odd why that instance has so few users on it (although understandable when most people choose Lemmy.World or lemm.ee, or coming from the EU choose a different regional instance, which is also cool:-).
I don’t understand this meme.
As someone who runs their own Lemmy instance, I do. People tend to join up with large instances, thus making the whole “decentralised” aspect a bit ambivalent and the system more prone to single points of failure…
But I also understand why - while my instance indeed has lots and lots of resources still available - there are many real-life advantages of choosing instances with established mod- and admin teams and an active community.
This is the thing here, like, for most casual users “decentralisation and spreading the load” is not just far down the list of priorities, it’s literally nonexistent. Content, uptime, reliability, active moderation and low risk of the instance just disappearing one day is what they care about. It’s unfortunate, but I really don’t see a way around it.
Lemmy.zip does an amazing job with reliability and transparency, see their latest report https://lemmy.zip/post/35411310?scrollToComments=true
They still aren’t that popular, 12th with 740 MAU https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list
Programming.dev had a database corruption issue for 4 months (see !meta@programming.dev ), 1098 MAU. And I’m not saying that people should leave PD, but that issue was concerning for quite a while.
I think on top of what you said, people just don’t want to move and only do so when the instance actually goes down.
Well yes, I was thinking more along the lines of what makes people gravitate to the already big servers when they first create an account. When people are already somewhat established there is another form of friction, or more like inertia. Like you say, people just don’t want to move once they’ve settled down somewhere. Even though it’s very easy to switch instances, and with no karma to care about there is nothing keeping you.
Name recognition, for one.
A proven track record, for another, and less likelihood to shut down. Many smaller instances legit did shut down over the years - like I recall one I was wondering if I should join, dmv.social, that chose to shut down during the waves of CSAM attacks, just prior to the automated tool that dbzero created to save the Fediverse.
Smaller instances may also have lesser hardware and less technically-capable admins maintaining it.
It’d be cool if we could move servers. I’m happy with where I am now; but my main reason for picking Lemmy.zip was it showed up near the top of a search. I bet that’s the case for a lot of people
You somewhat can - go to Settings -> Import/Export Settings -> Export as a JSON file and Import after you make a new account elsewhere. DMs and anyone following you won’t be redirected to the new account, but your community subscriptions and block lists will be transferred this way. Repeat as often as necessary:-).
Lemmy.zip seems an okay instance, or at least I cannot recall anything bad about it. Although it doesn’t defederate with any of the big 3 so it’s totally up to your personal efforts to avoid being trolled by users from hexbear.net, Lemmygrad.net, or Lemmy.ml (2 of those 3 are defederated from most large Lemmy instances, so lemmy.zip is a bit unusual in that regard).
I suggest at least checking out PieFed: the experience with the sign-up wizard alone is likely enough to convince you to stay, e.g. you can choose to filter All/Some/None of posts containing keywords “Trump” or “Musk” (if you wanted something like that:-), and it asks what topics you are interested in and then subscribes you to communities based on those answers, rather than leave you to have to discover and sign up to each one individually on your own.
Edit: Or even without an account, and even if you plan to stay with Lemmy, the categories of communities (pre-defined “Topics” and user customizable and shareable “Feeds”), e.g. see in action on PieFed.social, are really cool! 😎 Like multi-Reddits (I hear, I never used those:-) they both aid in community discovery and helping to separate our your interests, like you might not want to actually “subscribe” to any political communities so that those topics don’t show up in your Subscribed feed, and yet still you can read about that topic anytime you want by visiting News and Politics - so you really can both have your cake and eat it too! 😋 🍰🎂
Or for someone located in the USA (low latency ping) looking for a general-purpose Lemmy instance I highly recommend Discuss.Online, especially for a new user coming over from Reddit - it has fantastic uptime and very friendly devs who fix and improve things quickly:-). And it defederates from hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml.
Lemmy.zip is the #12 instance in terms of Monthly Active Users, so indeed a good choice in that respect - not too small or too large but in the middle:-). And a great choice for someone who exclusively loves gaming and chooses to pursue that interest by browsing Local rather than All.
Still, it is always good to know what options are available to someone:-).
(just to chime in uninvited to say that we have a bit of code that inserts blocks for hexbear and lemmygrad for new users, so the new user has the option to remove the block and see that sort of content if they want to - we’re all about choice!)
The vast majority of lemmy users are on a couple massive instances: lemmy.world, lemm.ee, sh.itjust.works etc.
There are tiny instances which would be happy to host more users and are faster than the big ones but no one joins them because most people just hear of lemmy.world or whatever is being shared on reddit and join that.
LW is still at 19k monthly active users, it could split in half and each of those halves would still be above lemm.ee and it’s 8k
https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list
LW is also the top instance hit (for me) in a DuckDuckGo search, also being the only search result that is actually an instance. So that, plus people referring it, could keep it going.
Are perhaps apps offering it as their default recommendation? If so, perhaps that could be changed to a different one like lemm.ee or something (assuming they can only handle a singular one in that capacity). Edit: I just wiped all my data for Voyager (Android), sacrificing that to test and find that actually lemm.ee rather than LW already is its default - neat!:-)
People also continue to spread the misinformation (IMHO) that https://join-lemmy.org/ should be used to pick an instance. I just tried it now and do you want to guess which instance it pointed me towards? hexbear.net, not joking! 😺
So if you wanted to spread things out s little more, it may be time for another Lemmy post to help new Lemmings know what the factors involved are, especially the new recruits from Reddit lately.
😂
Lemmygrad.ml also appears in that list, although unironically of the big 3 instances, that one I actually respect due to the honesty of their label:
Someone reading that could either become enthused or conversely nope out easily, it’s when the label doesn’t match that causes the vast majority of the problems.
of all the instances I tried to join after reddit fucked over 3P developers, lemmy.world was the only one that didn’t shit the bed.
Interesting, I remember LW being under huge DDoS for weeks in August 2023
OK? The fuck over was in June
I’ve been considering setting up a new primary account on an instance other than .world, but there isn’t really a way for instances to effectively publicize themselves, their culture, and their mod/admin tempo and I’m honestly stumped
People are recommending for the local feed. I mostly changed for the experience. My instance has downvotes disabled, which IMO is a more pleasant experience as a casual user. And the instance mods have a more no-nonsense approach to moderation. And since I prefer quality over quantity, it’s a good thing.
One way to choose an instance might be to generally think of what instance the people and communities you like tend to be on? (obviously most ppl and comms are on a couple big instances, but apart from that.)
Also defederations are a huge part of the experience.
Hexbear users historically were allowed to troll a good portion of the Threadiverse - like Discuss.Online and StarTrek.website both have defederated from it now but a year ago had not done so yet, while others such as lemm.ee and mander.xyz still have not done so (and likely never will).
And lemmy.ml mods are free to say that they want to kill you without repercussions, and likewise many other ml users are responsible for the most bat shit insane comments that I’ve seen across the Fediverse, after discounting hexbear.net (several users on ml freely admit to having switched to their alt there after Hexbear was banned, i.e. they engage in ban evasion tactics, again without any repercussions).
And there’s lemmygrad.ml too. I almost left the Threadiverse entirely after commenting there and Hexbear.net and replies kept flooding my inbox for WEEKS and WEEKS, long past when I wanted to stop the conversation. In fairness, that’s often what people inside of those communities do on purpose for fun, so it’s less that I’m calling that aspect “bad” and more that it doesn’t fit in so well with the rest of the Threadiverse, and in particular with the rules stated on sites such as Discuss.Online.
The Federation model can get tricky, especially when the tools are lacking to describe what is going on at any given moment - like “this community is for fun, but this other community has left fun behind, prepare to be mocked for values you were taught as a child in Western society and haven’t yet questioned - surely you enjoy being ridiculed for things beyond your control, r-r-right!?”
We need to do better, by providing better tools, or else the Federation model will fail. e.g. PieFed shows the community side-bar text below each and every post, so that e.g. if you were to wander into ChapoTrapHouse@hexbear.net via a post on All, you would be able to see what you are walking into.
Yeah. I’m really suprised how uncommon it is to defed lemmy.ml.
The Lemmy developers are also the admins of that instance, so they choose to put release announcements into communities on it.
something about the list of communities that exist (probably new ones?) also comes from that instance.
Both of these have alternatives available, but I guess you can’t really argue about conflicts of interest when Lemmy is their software, that we (freeloaders) choose to use. If we want something different, we would need to build it (as both PieFed and Mbin have done:-).
My general advice is to pick a regional one or one based on one of your hobbies. That way you’ll have a relevant “local” feed and can dip in and out of “all”. On .world there isn’t much difference between “all” and “local”.
Visit each instance and look at their Local communities, e.g.
Thanks, I guess it’s a lot of legwork on the individual
I find it fun, but If you just want short summaries you can look here: https://join-lemmy.org/instances
Yes it is, and it doesn’t stop at choosing an instance - for a new user to find and add communities, and block people, and learn how things work like Hexbear users aren’t serious and instead just troll everywhere, it’s all a lot. Fortunately PieFed helps a new user a ton with the sign-up wizard and making community discovery trivial with the categories of communities feature.
And for your older Lemmy account, it’s really nice that you can simply Export your community subscriptions and block lists to a JSON file and then Import those into the new instance, whichever one you pick.
A process which may need to be multiple times - e.g. when kbin.social went down I moved to StarTrek.website, but the delays of over a minute and constant failure to do things like vote or reply to comments frustrated me so much that I moved to discuss.online. And then the lack of ability to block users from lemmy.ml enticed me to check out PieFed.social. I’m really happy with PieFed now, but I also do really strongly recommend discuss.online as well. But StarTrek.website, at least at the time, not so much - it seems to have vastly improved since though? Hence I mention it here not to say to avoid that one, these days, but rather to give an example of how you may need to hop around over and over again to find a good one, or else stay current with recommendations from people, like discuss.online I still log onto almost daily to check up on things.
Reddit takes care of its users, as they steal data and sell the userbase to advertisers. On the Threadiverse we have to be our own advocates, which requires greater amounts of effort.
I recommend PieFed rather than Lemmy tbh - it just has so many cool features that Lemmy lacks, like categories of communities and combining comments across all cross-posts, so cool!
But if sticking with Lemmy, for anyone in the USA I cannot recommend highly enough Discuss.Online - it has fantastic uptime and a very friendly admin group, both of which are somewhat rare so it’s really kinda odd why that instance has so few users on it (although understandable when most people choose Lemmy.World or lemm.ee, or coming from the EU choose a different regional instance, which is also cool:-).
I’ll check it out