People need to realize you can use alternatives
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
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.
Good thing this is pretty pointless, since I can have the same community name in another instance.
I’m pretty confident we’ll eventually see some form of voluntary synchronization between identical communities added to either the codebase or a popular client app. “Owning” an individual instance’s community will be worthless.
(Wish I had the !remindme bot right now)
Im sure some of it is staking out territory, but I think a good chunk of it is just that modern reddit mindset. The mindset is that of course you cant have good gaming discussion on gaming you need to have truegaming, and games, and linux_gaming, and patientgamers, and etc. The thing is you can and things are small enough on all instances even lemmy.ml and beehaw that you can talk about it in one place.
The reason reddit had so many is that it would rapidly homogenise into giant echo chambers with minimal community. Minority perspectives were supressed or drowned out by lurker voting.
New subs were being made to recapture giant subs’ original intentions, or specialise, yo put minority perspectives of the Hot page and curate a community as a result.
Lemmy isn’t big enough to homogenise like that, at least not yet.
I’m personally kind of hoping that the existence of smaller instances and multiple same-niche communities on Lemmy provides a way to avoid that phenomenon. Like, it’ll probably happen to communities on the Big Instances, I imagine, but on the more limited ones… maybe not?
I like how Beehaw is doing it. Slowly introducing new servers as there is demand for it.
I also like the beehaw has a mission for community in mind, supported by having an application process; and their having prepared umbrella communities that will prevent echo chambers.
Beehaw is definitely getting hammered too though; it’s probably the second- or third-largest instance atm.
Beehaw is most definitely an echo chamber.
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! 🎉
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.
This. There’s no need to join the biggest instance, as long as you’re not among an instance’s first users you won’t notice much difference.
Idk I kind of think it having a bit more complexity might help ward off enshitification
worry about uptime and whether their instance will still exist in a year
that’s the biggest thing for me, it’s hard to sign up on smaller ones without worrying about its long-term viability
I created my own server…
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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.
agreed
yeah
yeah
same
yeah
same
Why would you need more than one?
Just if you wanted more than one. Just like u/kadu said about email. It’s like if you had your email on Google, Yahoo, and Hotmail. I know a lot of people have an alt on platforms like Discord too.
I know, look at the usernames of the replies
I hate Discord with a passion. Can’t wait for https://github.com/vector-im/element-call to be done so I can leave that behind.
I hate element so much on mobile (and desktop, but not as much). I’ve been planning on making my own Matrix client for a while.
If you can do better I’d be glad to migrate! :) As long as it is a matrix spec compliant client we don’t even need to agree which one is better so there’s that.
I sometimes have problems with notifications not going away and I hate that custom ephemeral messages hasn’t been merged but that’s about it I must say. (Multiaccount would be nice to separate work and private a little)
Wow, posting on some of the bigger instances was really slow. I guess the influx of users has caused that
It can be useful in case whatever instance you’re using defederate or is defederated by another instance you want to participate in. It’s also useful in case your instance goes the way of the dodo and shut down.
Look at the usernames in the replies to this comment
The thing that is the most annoying about the same username on different servers is that most of the time only the username part is shown (for example on feeds and comments). So a troll could make accounts with the same username on a different instance and discredit the original comment. For example, you are kadu@lemmy.world, I could create kadu@lemmy.ml and say stuff here, and both of us would just show up as “kadu” and to others it might seem that we are the same account without going into our profile to see our full “address”.
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.
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:
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.
same, I’m on Sopuli and their Blocklist is pretty short but has the worst ones.
they are really, really bad and some are straight up illegal in some countries.
Mostly far-right ones, straight up terrorism (seriously there are people with RAF and other terrorist organization’s logos on their profile pics there), nsfl gore videos (like people dying and being tortured type of stuff), and nsfw ones full of underage anime girls in suggestive poses…
lemmygrad is probably the worst one out of all of them, just because of it’s size (tankie terrorist group)
I haven’t blocked anything on my instance yet since I haven’t encountered that but maybe I should copy sopuli’s blocklist.
Lemmy grad is my favorite.
I’ve just finally caved in and visited lemmygrad for the first time and oh, boy! I’ve heard the sound of my grey matter atrophy
lemmygrad is probably the worst one out of all of them, just because of it’s size (tankie terrorist group)
Now that’s some new far-right apologism I’ve never seen before, I’m rather happy with lemmygrad being the big one and not some place like evropa.ss lmao
One fascist is one too many either way
Even if you wouldn’t like it, the cool thing here is you can decide for yourself. If… you feel the need to do so.
I saw how long the list is and got kinda concerned I might miss out on content since I’m on beehaw, but now it just sounds like I’m getting sheltered from all the internet wackjobs lol
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.
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.
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.
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.
Are you familiar with the Nayirah Testimony?
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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.
No that is not silly you got a fair point
This is why I didn’t choose lemmy.ml as my local instance.
Is it possible to move instances once I’m registered or do I have to create totally new account on other instance?
Oh no ;_;
Any recommended communities? (or ones to avoid)
I had the same exact thoughts. Liked the concept but was kinda sketched out by lemmy.ml. Hope kbin forms a nice little community
Same, I found a place that I know I’l prioritize a lot so I joinded that instance instead of the official one because ran into a post pointing out just what you said.
Also I’ve seen admins and users in the most popular/main instances acting like if not allowing adult content will keep their instances safe from NSFL or troll content or as if that will save them from the problems to moderate that kind of content, which honestly is disingenuous and/or naive (at least until the instances actually have to deal with big constant activity).Removed by mod
I’m very tempted to switch to another instance, but from what I understand, you can’t migrate your account like you can with Mastodon? That seems like something that should be expected with fediverse apps…
The documentation explaining how fediverse works is so bad. It’s so long and convoluted anyone new just can’t get bothered reading it.
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
Someone posted a good infographic about the fediverse over on kbin in RedditMigration (another complicated wrinkle in this whole fediverse thing) that did a great job explaining this whole fediverse thing.
If only I could link it.
Edit: jerboa editor doing me dirty
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.”
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
I agree, the first page is already too much text, where is the easy to consume infographic explaining it in comic style? :/
It doesn’t help that there are pictures, but they’re failing to load atm.
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.
Yeah. It needs to be explained much better. Compare it to email or something
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
Don’t look at me I’m on feddit.de
I’m on .world because I had no idea which to join. Seems to be working just fine for me; I can see tons of posts from other places!
IDK, beehaw.org and lemmy.world aren’t doing too bad
World crew
Commenting from beehaw here! I still am figuring out what’s what but super happy!
World here. I have no idea how to even Guage that lol. I wish there was a list of popular subs in sidebar. Having to type them in or search is annoying, but we’ll figure it out. So far I found 3 communities I was in before so that’s cool. I’m still figuring this out. It’s been about 1hr since I joined lol.
Check this out, they made a map:
I just got plugged into the matrix 😎
Same.
Awesome, thanks for the link :)
Proud to be a sh.itjust.works user
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.
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.
FWIW, on a browser the /c/technology link you posted isn’t a hyperlink, so I can’t actually interact with it. It doesn’t work in mlem either.
For now, as a workaround, you can manually make it a hyperlink: /c/technology@beehaw.org
Just use
[/c/technology@beehaw.org](/c/technology@beehaw.org). This should open correctly on all instances.Maybe a pull request can be made to change the auto fill behaviour. At least in the browser, start typing
!technologyand it will display a list of the technology communities. Unfortunately, selecting one, !technology@beehaw.org for example, autofills to[!technology@beehaw.org](https://beehaw.org/c/technology). This method opens up the Beehaw instance directly.Maybe it should autofill !technology@beehaw.org to
[!technology@beehaw.org](/c/technology@beehaw.org). This method opens the community through your current instance.
Seems like line 703 of https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/blob/main/src/shared/utils.ts#L703 is the relevant code. I’m away for the weekend so can’t do much myself at the moment
Yeah. A shorter-term solution might be a browser plugin that recognizes links like that and converts it to a hyperlink to that community on whatever instance you tell it. I’m not a programmer but that does seem like a relatively simple plugin for somebody that actually knows what they’re doing.
Yeah, I’m sure we’ll eventually get apps and such that handle it better.
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It also doesn’t work in the mobile app, I’d love to see it work there soon too
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.
I agree with you
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
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)
links that you find while browsing on reddthat.com will send you to other instances? that’s super odd, I’m not getting that behavior with midwest.social or lemmy.ml, using mobile or desktop firefox. just pasting the links into the search to find your instance’s version of the post is a bit of a janky workaround but it should work. you might try posting in https://reddthat.com/c/lemmy_support@lemmy.ml
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…
You can subscribe to those communities on your instance, and then interact with them.
From my instance, I’ve been crossing to other instances fine to post, upvote, etc.
How would that work?
The devs of kbin and Lemmy have that on their list of things to do, make cross-instance links work nicer. But they have a lot on their plate at a moment, so it could be some time before that comes about.
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 they way you expect, it might actually be a bug.
The hyperlink in the pic takes me outside of reddthat
Nah just register at whichever instance that sounds the coolest to append to your name. Just FYI I’m from
programming.dev.When I first looked into Lemmy I thought picking an instance confined you to that instance. I think a lot of new people don’t realize that isn’t the case.
