After spending a few days learning about lemmy and other fediverse websites, I was curious about people's processes for picking a server that is right for them. I've seen most posts say to pick one that is not too big or small and that has similar interests as yourself. But if we are all mostly federated, doesn't it make the most sense to join the biggest or likeliest server to stay around and federated with the most other servers? Then you can just travel to the instances you share interests in. I chose this instance because you could just sign up and be in it, and that was all I needed to check things out. And although I found many communities in other instances, even if let's say all of my subscribed communities are on other instances, doesn't it make sense to just stay here so long as they are federated with sh.itjust.works? It may be too early to know for sure, but it seems like this instance is going to stick around for the foreseeable future, why risk joining the smaller instances that might not be here for long. Also, if you have subscribed communities in several instances, I assume you have to follow all the different server's rules. I'd be curious to hear other people's thoughts in regards to picking a home instance.
Edit: Are there any restrictions to interacting with communities on other instances?
Honestly for the new user thinking to join just picking something, anything is all that matters.
Each user has very little content on here right now, so if for some reason they don't like the way things are run on the one they chose they can easily choose a different one without losing much. Profile migration (i.e. copy all your stuff to a different lemmy server) is also something coming that I'm looking forward to.
As a sh.itjust.works user you can see almost anything in this network of websites (500+ servers) except lemmygrad and beehaw. Also the server admin here is pretty cool and seems to know what he's doing, so I'm pretty smitten with my choice.
As far as the likelihood of a server going down, that's hard to say as you have no real way of knowing one will be more reliable than another at first glance. TBH I think the smaller servers in the network have the advantage here, their costs to run the server are lower since they have fewer users and less traffic. If they have the creation of new communities turned off, the space required is far less than otherwise. The main detractor with tiny servers is easily discovering whats on other servers. That's a longer explanation why that is, but it's like that and I've gone on too long already.
My main worry with smaller servers is that whoever is running them may lose interest and decide to shut down permanently. It does seem that the pros and cons tip in either direction as a server's population grows.
I get that worry, but I honestly can't say that I think a small server with little interest is more likely to shut down than a server with huge interest (and it's associated hosting bills). For ex. I'm panning on deploying my own lemmy instance soon, it's going to have signups turned off, but if I left them on I wouldn't really care how popular my server is. The less the better imo because it becomes cheap enough for me to forget I'm admining it until update time comes around and fewer interpersonal issues to deal with because fewer users. Maybe I'm in the minority here, but becoming a huge server with a lot of users doesn't appeal to me like at all, and having a small user base is only upsides. Once I deploy it's going to be running for a long time.
Edit: I should have asked if you meant user interest or low admin interest
This is one concern I have. There's a certain utility in Reddit as an archive; there's actually a lot of good reference material out there. Meanwhile the rest of the internet SEO'd itself to death so Google almost doesn't work anymore, the only worthwhile results are either Youtube videos or Reddit posts.
I don't think I see Lemmy taking on that same permanent archive factor the way Reddit (almost) did.
It seems kind of inevitable that there will be a bit of a period of instability before things settle a bit, and it that time maintaining accounts on multiple instances is inevitable. I am running into a few reasonable issues with federation in lemmy that I am sure will be ironed out eventually.
But yeah, it is kind of a bummer to set yourself up on one instance, and then watch it get defederated from a another major instance, even if it is for ultimately justified reasons.
Good point, I expect things to look very different a year from now. I'm honestly not sure if it will continue to grow or if its just a fad. I hope for the former.
Mastodon still seems to be getting better and growing every day. I think there is definitely some work that is going to have to be done to set up sustainable development of Lemmy.
I avoided the bigger ones because they seemed to be under the heaviest load and thus most buggy/quirky.
I also wanted one to be more apolitical. So I went there first. Then that one had a multi-day outage. Then tried kbin but became flustered by its own immaturity (code wise) and struggles.
Eventually I just built my own instance.
@OP. Id pick an instance mostly open and federated with the larger communities. Even smaller instances are good here. The. Head to this page: https://lemmyverse.net/
Hit the house button and type your instance url and load up on subscriptions.
I hadn't considered making my own instance for private use. Not sure if that was what you meant or not. But it may be the safest way of ensuring your data doesn't get lost. My worry with small servers is that who ever is running them might lose interest and shut down permanently. But if a server is too big, there may be disagreements that lead to de-federating. Thanks for the tips.
Yep. That’s exactly what I did. So I can control my backups etc. their Ansible docs are solid and work fine. I would imagine the docker are as well since the Ansible docs just initiate a remote docker install.
I’ve done some setup and have been chewing on opening it up come July if there’s a huge flood.
But it’s gonna be a user only instance in that case. I have no time or desire to moderate people’s nonsense in communities. Heck even the prospect of moderating reports of their nonsense in other communities isn’t really appealing.
So the concern on smaller ones petering out, may not be too far off. Mine will likely be up for at least a year. And I will let folks know before I shut it down, if it’s opened up.
Mines on a cloud instance. I have a lab and such. But my power is shoddy during the rainy season and as a result internet can be too. I also have asymmetrical internet so upload is constrained at times.
So mines on a VPS. Specifically a linode. I used the Ansible server in my lab to run through the Ansible setup.
Currently it’s the 2cpu/4gb of ram dedicated instance. 36/month. But ram usage is hovering around 768 MB. Cpu is averaging 8-10%. Im gonna leave it there until at least the hard app/api cut with Reddit. Still haven’t decided on whether I’m going to open it up or just keep it personal and what that commitment entails. I’ve hosted stuff before, there’s pros and cons. But I’m slammed at work and personal life. So really not wanting to take on more responsibility.
I only have one lemmy account right now, but I'm definitely open to trying out other instances, I'm just not sure what the point is as long as you're not stuck on one that has been blocked by several others. I've subscribed to many communities across several instances. It seems to me aside from making sure you don't end up on a blocked server, you just want to make sure you pick a server that is in it for the long haul. From what I can tell you're also on sh.itjust.works, but have you tried making an account on any other servers?
It was important for me to pick an instance that allowed nsfw content fairly liberally so I could post/share art I make. I also personally like to be able to talk to the server owner and didn't see having to be given access as a downside
NSFW friendly content is a big factor for sure. I've seen a few complaints about hiding nsfw content not working too well, so it seems many servers are totally against it. I hope that gets straightened out soon.
Personally, I think that concern is a bit odd. I have 2 reddit accounts, one normal and one NSFW. I've already started the same on Lemmy. If someone is trying to cram both onto one feed that's kinda on them imo
I just picked the first one that let me in on the list. Federation is not as tight as I had imagined. I’ve been using mastodon for a few months only got here in the 12th.
I run my own services then just use federation to connect with many different instances. That way my instances stay up as long as I want them, and I can participate on my own terms without someone else telling me how I'm allowed to exist on the internet.
Only decentralization will prevent the platform from being broken by a few bad actors.
My process was searching for a reddit alternative, finding Lemmy (generic) and somehow getting redirected to Lemmy.one sign up. I may make an account on another instance as Lemmy.one has community creation by users disabled but community creation isn't my motivation right now.
Because of federation, I just didn't think about it too hard. I clicked on Sh.itjust.works because the name made me giggle when I saw it, and signed up immediately because the first post I saw was the boss sharing server stats and being totally transparent about operations and intentions. At the time, it was one of the smaller instances that might not last.
Choosing "wrong" never seemed like a big deal, it's not hard to start fresh somewhere else if needed.
I honestly picked this one purely because it was performant on the day I switched from Reddit. Thankfully I've ended out really liking the direction it's going in too. I wouldn't be too worried about picking the right instance, just look for one you generally agree with the moderation and pick it. You can always switch to another one or have multiple accounts.
If instance X is federated with Y but not Z and instance Y and Z are federated with everyone. In that example people from Z can reply to posts on X or Y but only people from Y and Z will see the comments and (that's the part I'm not clear about) people from X could still reply on Z and everyone would see their comments.
Keep in mind your access to communities on other instances depends on other people on your instance behaving themselves. If an instance defederates with yours because they don't like somebody's comment, you also won't see any posts. Don't join any instances centered around polarizing topics unless you plan on only having discussions within local communities. Also at the moment it's not really possible for a single instance to support much more than 100K users, so Lemmy.ml and lemmy.world don't really want the signups.
Kbin is really only one instance (kbin.social - the only alternatives are alt language instances, I think?) so just use kbin social because it's 100% unfettered access then sub to what you want and block what you don't. It's just like Reddit/Twitter and it's nice not having head mods rule what you can and can't see