I signed up for lemmy.world because I don't want to write an essay. Shout out to the lazy people.

I signed up for Lemmy.world, because not having downvotes is stupid and leads to a shitty community.

Ironic that three people downvoted this. But I agree, a "no downvotes" rule is designed to avoid disagreement and conflict, which is impossible on a public forum without extremely restricted expression. If the point is to be always be nice, why not disable open commenting and make users select their replies from a list of canned positive comments. 100% safety and positivity.
- I'm torn on the whole no downvote button thing (I missed that when I signed up), but you can be still nice while having a discussion and disagreeing with people.
  I would argue that the downvote button can lead to exactly what you are describing though, no disagreement or conflict.
  Someone posts a unpopular opinion, a bunch of users downvote it to hell and poof!, no discussion or exchange of ideas. Just out of mind, out of sight.
Wait. Some instances disabled downvoting?
- Yes, beehaw one of them.
  Maybe when they were a bunch of users it might have been a good idea to prevent brigading, but imho now that there is 1000x user activity it's needed. I already saw the first spambots posting spam for meds....
I do kinda wonder if beehaw actually has downvotes not do anything for comment ranking and such, or if they just hid the button for it's users. Because I can still see a downvote button on beehaw communities, being from a different instance, and I often notice comments on that instance that do have a downvote or two, which seems to imply that it does actually record and send data about downvotes from other users
- Disabling downvotes is a feature in the lemmy software afaik, but apparently it affects the users on that instance rather than its communities, which certainly seems like it should be the other way around.
It's actually the opposite.
Hexbear would like a word with you
- Whoever or whatever that is can suck my dick.

All I put was "I like bees and to yeehaw proudly". Its probably just a way to filter out bot accounts.

Ok now I'm embarrassed about how strongly I pitched myself to get on lemmy.ml. I was like overcaffeinated on the first five minutes of a blind date!
- You mean I didn't have to type out the entire script to Bee Movie?
- Lol people treating it like a cover letter hahahah! For the instances I joined I just said one or two sentences of what I wanted out of it.
I think things have tightened up a lot over there in the last 5 or so days. I don't even remember what I put (definitely nothing more substantial than yours) and I have an account over there of similar to age. People who have tried to sign up more recently have mentioned being rejected after multiple serious looking responses.
- I put a serious response and was snubbed. Only put a sentence or two so maybe they were looking for something more.
- Yeah I got in by saying it was a funny name and I hated reddit. But I got here early. I understand why things have tightened.

I like lemmy.world so far - relatively neutral admins, no weird stuff like disabling downvotes, you can create communities and post nsfw!

And the only blocked instance is full of pedos and nazis, so kudos for lemmy.world!

I signed up to lemmy world because I thought it was Lemmy's World which sounds like Wayne's World. I like Wayne's World.

Party time!
- Excellent!
I thought of ebaumsworld. The internet was a simpler place back when we were on ebaumsworld. This place feels strangely similar somehow?

I'm here because I didn't know what I was doing when I signed up.

Also because because beehaw has sownvotes disabled. Imo downvotes are an integral part of the Lemmy experience. As it is for reddit.

The issue lies with what downvotes really mean. We've all seen instances on Reddit where where downvoted to hell because it was an idea contrary to the majority of the sub/echo chamber even though they were totally valid.
- I would very much like a world where upvotes and downvotes are not symmetric. As is we say total is upvotes minus downvotes, but in reality upvotes exist to say "good job" and downvotes should exist to say "this is spam or unnecessary"
  A better system, IMO, would be to make downvoting closer to reporting, a little harder to do, but if the ratio of down to up passes a certain threshold, the comment is then flagged for review and/or just massively downgraded.
  Oh, and you cannot do that to something you reply to. Either say "this is trash not worth engaging with" and move on, thus ensuring trolls do not get fed, or reply but acknowledge it was worth engagement.
- Honestly it was kinda foolish for Reddit to ever think it was going to be otherwise. People are inherently tribal by nature.
- It was absolutely impossible to have a constructive conversation between two opposing beliefs on reddit partly because of that system, it was really infuriating. On the other hand, beehaw seems to outright block the instances where users don't subscribe to their echo chamber, and I don't think that's good either.
- That's always distressing to see, but if it keeps happening it's also evidence that community isn't worth the time to visit.
- basically every thread i was apart of.
I don't really care about the lack of downvotes but the reason I didn't join beehaw was because users are not allowed to create new communities there, you have to ask the admins for permission
not that I wanted to spam a bunch of stupid communities but I prefer a more organic approach to growth than constant applications to get anything done
reminds me of intentionally obtuse government functions where everything has to go through committee before approval
I do respect their intentions though wanting a more curated experience, just not for me at this time
I just think its fantastic that instances can try different things and users can (actually, really, for real this time) easily vote with their feet.

Working as intended then. Because in general most instance admins just care that you've put in at least a little effort to answer their questions, which in their eye makes it less likely that you're a spammer or troll.

This. Lemmy.ca also had questions which were clearly just a check that you were a human
- Yeah, I just said that I'm coming from Reddit and my username is what I've always used, and I got approved within a minute.
I agree with this. One of the more irritating things about places like Reddit is that they're full of low effort content and conversations get filled with a lot of noise from people who don't really want to meaningfully contribute.

A more serious reply than my last comment – I've been on the fediverse for over 5 years, and on "Twitter-like" instances (GNU Social/Pleroma/Mastodon) there are some communities that either over-police language and have an extremely restrictive CoC, or the absolutely opposite with quite literal nazis spewing nonsense. I just wanted to make sure I found a chill Lemmy server full of mostly regular folk, and lemmy.world seems to fit that description.

I wrote 1 sentence and was accepted.

TIL people think 1 sentence constitutes an essay.

Are you Shakespeare?
I wrote one and never got a response, and it was a respectable answer lol..
- I wrote a bunch of sentences with honest responses to their questions. But crickets...
  TBF I'm sure they're dealing with a lot of new signups rn.
- Has anyone tried to see if ChatGPT could write that answer? lol
Seriously. Tell me you're lazy without telling me you're lazy, OP.

I didn’t know there are major differences between the instances (like the voting system). I’m basically here because the join-page suggested lemmy.world 🤷🏻‍♂️. But I like it here :). Still haven’t fully understood how these instances work or work not together but I like that you don’t need accounts everywhere you want to post something. Is there a single server that handles user authentication or how do other instances know my account? 🧐

Yeah. Each instance is able to run their local communities how they want. Basically each instance is it’s own thing with its own rules and subs (communities). You can join that instance by creating an account there and your settings, saves etc will be maintained there.
You can’t use that login to log onto another instance, but your posts and any communities on that instance are shared with other instances so people on other instances can see your posts. The other instances don’t know about you directly, but since your instance name is there in your account name e.g. MoonKitten@lemmy.world, an instance knows it can go ask lemmy.world about MoonKitten to get information.
tldr; accounts only work on the instance you signed up on, but instances talk to each other and exchange posts, user info etc.
- Ah, so I’m basically posting into foreign communities through my home-instance :).
- What happens if a certain instance goes down? Is everything posted by this instance then gone? Can there be duplicate usernames across different instances? What about the email address you need to provide during sign up? Does is do anything?

Wow. I didn't realize beehaw has over 380 instances blocked! Now I feel like I'm missing out on the Lemmy fediverse.

I don't think you're missing out on much. Most aren't even lemmy instances.
I received this reply about this from Alyaza:
this is because we started using a heavily curated blocklist for the worst mastodon instances (they can interoperate with us). we didn’t expect any trouble from any of them, but any instance in the new batch of banned instances can be safely assumed to be quite bad and it’s better to be proactive than not.
link https://beehaw.org/comment/176651
edit:
checking into a few of the listed blocks now... most of them don't seem to be operating anymore.
- Still I'd like to have a choice in the matter lemmy.ml unfortunately also has a lot of blocked instances, and alot of the other instances are overloaded right now. I'll probably wait a week or so until this craze blows over and sign up w/ a newer and smaller instance
That's the reason I didn't join there, they try to be this wholesome safespace with heavy moderation and it's just not my vibe.
I prefer minimal policing, I don't mind seeing opposing views even if I think they are stupid, I can just scroll pass it and ignore.
- I think a lot of it comes down to people who want to have a like minded experience; which can be good and bad. It essentially enforces to them that they're in the right regardless without seeing the big picture. And that can be dangerous.
Shame the instances list doesn't include reason for blocking. Looking at the names most seem obvious (and I don't feel like I'm missing out on those) but there must be some grey areas.
- Having a reason listed would be nice. I picked one off the list that I couldn't figure out from the name alone why it would be banned and decided to take a look and see why. I was apprehensive. What horrors was I about to see?
  Couldn't figure out why it was banned from the content alone. I looked it up and found a website that has their defederated instances list and the reasons. I didn't see anything that matched the reason given, but I didn't care enough to keep digging further.
  I think the list is shared among a few instances.
- Is there any chance instances will start (or already are) blocking other instances based on instances they're linked to? Similar to the way some subreddits would automatically ban users for participation in other subs, it could further enforce echo chambers. If Lemmy.world is a little more open, I'd hate for it to get blocked by somewhere like Beehaw just for that.
How can you see what has been blocked?
- /instances url of a server shows both linked and blocked instances for a particular node. For example: https://lemmy.world/instances shows them for lemmy.world, https://beehaw.org/instances for beehaw.
- Under "Instances" (at the bottom of the website).
  lemmy.world Instances
- kbin.social is on beehaw's linked list, not the blocked list

I spent 2 days trying to get my reverse proxy running with my own server just so I didn't have to write 2 sentences lol

I signed up for beehaw initially, got in, but wasn't a fan of some of their rules and how they police speech in their community.

All good, I can still view and participate in their comments, but Lemmy.world had more of the vibe i was looking for

ya im just figuring out all this but the fact i can still see and post on the beehaw instance makes lemmy.world the jammy on day one. people commenting and shit
i still dont really understand it but its social media and im feeding my addiction.
I tried to sign up for beehaw 2 days ago, but still haven't been approved. I guess my statement about wanting to discuss science and philosophy and videogames wasn't good enough :(

I wrote like 2 lines and got accepted immediately, you don't need to write an essay

Idk I tried a few times on that one and never got approved. I like the concept of it but at the end of the day I just want an account so I can finally interact with you fine folks over here.
- You may have been approved without getting an email. That is how it was for me.
Yeah I doubt the admins would appreciate anybody who actually did write an essay

You don't have to write an essay. I literally just wrote "because I'm leaving reddit" and got in a couple days later. Makes sense that approval times may be longer with more people leaving. But, I agree it is a bit much. I use Lemmy.world too just because I didn't want to initially wait a couple days to be approved.

I got my first attempt on beehaw rejected because I said I was a reddit refugee. Apparently that means I cannot have that user name at all now.
- Hm, that's definitely not true. Just ask the admins to remove that user and let you try again.
I also wrote something like that and i was approved in like ten minutes. But it was around the 8th of June, before the user explosion

LMAO, felt this.

The last time I had to write a Statement of Intent was to get into grad school and I sure as shit ain't doing homework for a free online community.

Yeah I originally created an account at beehaw.org before coming over to lemmy.world. The main reason I moved was because I wasn't a fan of the fact I couldn't freely create new communities over there (and I don't think you can create communities on other instances?), but also just vibes.

To be fair, this is actually kinda great to see - it's one of the strengths of this federated system. The folks that run these instances are being pretty generous already to just let us talk and share whatever the heck we want, and it's perfectly reasonable for a host to want to be selective about who they let use their resources.

I have accounts on a few different communities. Mostly because there is no real way to know how the community is until you start interacting with it and it starts interacting with with other communities.
Beehaw is nice because they are actually trying to cultivate a friendly community and moderate a lot of the trash out. But also... sometimes you dont want that hand holding...
- I'm on beehaw mostly because I don't want my lemmy experience to mirror my reddit experience: ie getting into 10 comment arguments with bigots over things like "trans people deserve to live" or "art is inherently political". I've had enough of that for a lifetime.

I'm here cause i was completely ignorant of lemmy and it just so happened to be the link I came across on reddit at the moment I decided to give it a try. I been enjoying my stay so far.

I started in lemmy.ml

Applied to beehaw, deleted my account, then joined again lol

But I think I’ll stay in lemmy.world.

I started in lemmy.ml too. I might stay here cause the instance has had a 502 error all day yesterday for me.

I wrote:

Reddit refugee, let me in!

I wrote 'Fuck u/Spez'
- Bravo!
I wrote something similar and was accepted lol
- Surely at some point with the influx of users they quit reading or just scan the replies to make sure they don't look too weird.
- Nice

I went through the application process on Beehaw and they never got back to me, so it seems the answers I wrote weren't satisfactory.

That's okay.

I'm fine right here.

same. super annoying precedent for them to set
- I get that they don't want to platform toxic people. As long as there's an alternative it doesn't bug me too much.
There’s a good chance your account was activated. I don’t think notifications were going out for a bit.

I almost made a Beehaw account since I saw a bunch of the communities I wanted to join were on there and it kept logging me out when I went to them.

I managed to figure it out after seeing that making an account there needs an essay. So I guess I’m just gonna stay based here, waiting to see if and when kbin opens itself up to the rest of the fediverse (since I joined there first but came here when I saw that kbin is currently blocking itself off from everyone else, which is exactly what I didn’t want when making the jump from Reddit to the fediverse).

You can still follow Beehaw communities (or ones on any other instance) from this instance, you just have to view them from lemmy.world. If you check the "all" tab under "communities" you should be able to see some of them and also search for them.
- ^^ facts. It took me a little bit to figure out the community search, but it connects to all available instances.
I have a Beehaw account and an account here (I know I know, sorry, but I like having 2 accounts to keep certain things separate). I think I wrote like 2 sentences and got accepted in 5 minutes.
- I tried many times over 2 - 3 days to get a beehaw account but it just didn't happen, quite happy on lemmy.uk and Lemmy.world
- I don't think multiple accounts are a problem unless you're sockpuppeting, upvoting yourself or doing anything similar.

I hopped over from Mastodon.world Ruud does a great job with that one so made sense to join his lemmy instance

I picked lemmy.one at random. Somewhat reduced features for some reason, but otherwise functional. I'm not really clear on what the advantages and disadvantages of any give instance might be.

Here's a list https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances/
Lemmy.one doesn't allow creation of communities, you cannot downvote and three other instances are blocked.
Right now, not much, I think? But since Lemmy is open source, instances may begin to form with new functionality as long as the core protocols preserve federation?

The email requirement was annoying but this instance is fast.

Some villainous instances should be defederated tho.

which ones in particular?
- Beehaw, the one you're on, has a big list of blocked instances but even a couple of the biggest could be deferedated on other instances as well to clean a lot of bad actors.
- Burgitt.moe seems bad but idk if it's bad enough. They're really into the whole free speech thing (and they ignore DMCA which is nice) but usually the ultra free speech places get overrun and polarized very quickly (see 4chan)

I did the essay for a couple of the popular instances and still didn't get approved

Thank god for lemmy.fmhy.ml

Thank god for lemmy.fmhy.ml
This instance has gotten me to don my eye patch and sail the seven seas for the first time in years.
- Yeah Im dusting off the surfer after a few years of just making sure the battery is good...
  This instance reminded me one of the main reasons I cared about computers was sailing the seas.
  Edit: sugarification
i just put my in for lemmy.ml and got approved in like half an hour
Yes fmhy all day 🙌

*ChatGPT intensifies

Those of us who did write an essay still haven't heard anything back yet, so don't feel like you're missing anything for being lazy.

FYI I never got any email and thought I was rejected/pending too. But I signed in the next day and it worked. So it might just be the notifications that aren't going out. Also I only had to write like one sentence.
- So that's what happened. Thanks for giving me the push to try.
I wrote two or three sentences I think, got accepted quickly. Maybe they're dealing with an influx of applications.
- I'm guessing. I've been waiting 2 days on anything from Beehaw. Meanwhile, signing up on lemmy.world took 10 seconds.
- From what I've heard, there's thousands of applications they are working through so it may take a bit to get caught up.
- I wrote three sentences too, got approved within 12 hours. I assume people writing essays are going to take longer since someone has to read it.
I registered at lemmy.ml, on 6/9. Wrote a sentence or 2 per question. Never heard anything back by email but I tried logging in the next day and I was in. Either they aren’t sending emails or something is broken with the mail flow. Either way took me less than 5 minutes to say I wasn’t a complete fuck and was looking to move away from Reddit. Actually this response might be longer than what I wrote to register lol
- Lemmy.ca has email optional, so I didn't add one (might later). I answered the questions, tried to log in 15 or 30 minutes later, and here I am. I'd be unsurprised if there are a few people waiting g for their approval notifications who didn't actually provide one.
  Also, there was a bug that affected email notifications or something? I remember seeing something like that when I joined last weekend.

I didn’t know there was an entrance quiz on the others!

I'm on two, this and sopuli.xyz - which I joined on a whim before even knowing what lemmy was. I'm pretty sure my personal statement was merely "I miss usenet". And, it's weird, but the community search function is...inconsistent at best. I've tried searches on three different instances for a common term and come up with nothing (sopuli), 4 communities (.world), and 6 communities (.ml). .world seems like a more generic fit and, um, yeah - no personal statement.

I never know what I "can contribute". However I have Opinions That Must Be Heard. That's probably sufficient.

Regardless, lemmy.world rocks.

me too lol. no ill intentions but just cba to apply for an account

I wrote a essay with a million grammatical errors, then decided I'd prefer to have my account on a instance that is smaller and in the EU as I have that option :)

Also part of it was anxiety of who saw and approved 👍

- @Maxatal @lemmyworld I was doing some research on the fedeverse today and saw lemmy was in Germany lol

i wrote about two or three sentences for every question, neatly formatted into three tiny paragraphs, got accepted within 5 minutes!

Exactly why I choosed lemmy.world. I looked for something less busy, but justification for account? C'mon...

I've been having a good time on vlemmy.net. It's small, has a fairly active admin, and seems to be fostering a healthy community with a reasonable number of restrictions.

You haven't seen the lemmygrad join requirements.

I kinda dig this new (compared to Reddit) "friendly competition" dynamic between servers.

I tried signing up here twice and wrote an essay both times and didn’t get accepted before I found lemmy.world. That’s alright I love it here anyway

I signed up for both lemmy.ml and lemmy.world instances. I actually got accepted in like 12 hours on lemmy.ml which is pretty good despite the small team and the flood of new users.

I started in lemmy.ml

Applied to beehaw, deleted my account, then joined again lol

But I think I’ll stay in lemmy.world.

deleted by creator

"Ok great! This is looking good so far. So, all we need now I 3 professional references and a personal reference or two, and we're all set here."
-lemmy world probably
- deleted by creator

Same 😁

still waiting for the adm to approve the account (4 days now), ain't nobody got time for that

What's the criteria? Who are they trying to weed out?
- It's probably supposed to filter out people who won't put any effort into contributing content.
- its the default setting of every new instance to require approval, on my instance i dont require email verification so i thought i could at least have people write something to let me know they're human. in the end no one uses my instance so I just opened it up, maybe after some registrations ill make it an application again.

The Dude abides.. just sayin.

I tried lemmy.one, wrote like 3 short sentences to answer their questions, and never got a response.

Same here. Maybe they're just overloaded? I mostly just wanted a login somewhere to try and get the handle on lemmy in general.
- Moat likely answer. It's like people complaining the nurses suck when their grandma is sitting in a dirty diaper at the nursing home and they have 2 nurses for the whole building.

I wrote the essay for lemmy.ml and got accepted within an hour or so. But then the next day i couldn't view anything in jerboa because lemmy.ml was overloaded. Made an account here and i was glad to skip this essay this time.

Before I got in here, I tried to get into there. Glad they didn't let me in!

A couple of days ago I applied with an answer but I guess they didn't approve me since I could never get sign in to work there. And that was after having issues signing up at kbin... Now both those instances seem to actively block Tor Browser users.

Lemmy's lazy world!

Yeah same. I can feel myself becoming a Lemmy world patriot.

I wrote “bye reddit”

that actually makes sense

I wrote like... 4 sentences and got approved lol.

ayy lmao

This entire post seems sus.

why?

As a lemmygrad user it really just took a one paragraph summary of myself to get in, not too hard and was approved I think within the hour. They just want to keep out the trouble makers and I've done WAY MORE for low pop discord servers so no biggie.

It does require an email.

I used a throwaway one, is that allowed? It still appears on my settings, and I wonder if they'll make me verify again when I won't be able to access the same throwaway account...

That's why I have an address just for this stuff. Never seen a use for a throwaway unless I'm gonna scam someone and I'm not doing that hahahh.
Only used for password resets as far as I know. Don't think you can change the email without it sending a verification again.
- yeah, there are a few established, moderately large, sane instances that don't even require an email addy (sh.itjust.works being one of them). search and ye shall find.

hope lemmy.ml won't defederate lemmy.world like beehaw did

hehe but do you have a lemmy.ml account?

For those having problems with applications, I think I remember having problems in the past due to .ml TLD often being blocked my mail servers, due to being used by SPAMmers and other evil-doers. Maybe those awaiting for a reply should look into the SPAM folder if they have one.

Also, essays aren't needed. You just have to show you aren't a bot or troll and actually want to be on the instance. 3 (three) or 4 (four) sentences in my experience should be enough.

u.fail doesn't have the textbox either. I'm till waiting on Midwest.social to even get past the application page...

I started in lemmy.ml

Applied to beehaw, deleted my account, then joined again lol

But I think I’ll stay in lemmy.world.

Same. Especially considering that lemmy.ml has been down pretty much all day. Plus, lemmy.world has the more aesthetically pleasing URL.

I never got the approval. I joined another instance.

I signed up to lemmy world because I thought it was Lemmy's World which sounds like Wayne's World. I like Wayne's World.

same :P

Use chatgpt? I didn't make an account there because of their safe space bullshit