The Fediverse is huge and overwhelming to a newcomer, with many different types and each with servers to pick from. Which ones would you suggest checking out or avoiding?
Assuming we're talking about instances we'd recommend to new Fediverse users, I'd recommend against lemmy.world. Not because there's anything wrong with the instance, but simply because it's the largest, by a fairly large margin. A central principal of the fediverse is decentralization, and to that end, it's healthier to spread the users across many instances than to have folks concentrated too heavily on any one.
A central principal of the fediverse is decentralization, and to that end, it's healthier to spread the users across many instances than to have folks concentrated too heavily on any one.
It's certainly healthier for the whole to have users spread across instances, but that's a matter of emergence. What's your pitch to convince an individual to choose a smaller instance, when it's far more likely that their instance will cease to exist, taking their identity, history and hosted communities with it?
Recommend:
Avoid:
I mainly dislike lemmy.world because it’s Americans owning the place like usual.
Ironically LW is run by a European team (the top admin is Dutch), but still communities like !politics@lemmy.world are only for US news...
You may disagree with communists, but we are by no means fascists. Fascism is inherently tied to protecting private property and capitalism, communists oppose that and seek to collectivize production and distribution.
Just a warning: Piefed has a lot of shady built in hidden karma. Like you posting “this” or a gif only detracts from your karma. They also block you from downvoting if you downvote more than you upvote. It’s not really free speech at all.
Personally I’d really like to see more servers physically located in privacy and free-speech friendly places like Switzerland and Iceland (for example). I’m not sure why you’d want to have your social media hosted anywhere else.
Anyone know why the recent spike? That's not negligible.
https://lemmy.world/post/43035743/22099833 Apparently old forum software was updated to use the federation and all the old users got tallied up and added. Also people flocking from Reddit and X too.
One that is not blocked by a lot of other instances....
Just FYI everyone, this spike is sort of a glitch and its quite obvious just from looking at how steep the curve is. It all comes from nodebb which is a forum software and i guess they switched on federation on 11.01.2026 which gave us this magical bump.
They are real users probably, but what i mean is that this wasnt a rush of new users, but just old (mostly inactive) users that were never considered part of the fediverse until now.
Blahaj.zone we're chill AF here
I don't like that you can't downvote, though.
I've only been outside of Hexbear (where there also are no downvotes) for a week and I hate having downvotes. Instead of people replying to something they disagree with with evidence and counterarguments, people just downvote and move on. They really shouldn't be used to downvote comments people disagree with (because that just promotes groupthink), ideally they'd just be used to downvote spam and low effort stuff; but moderators can take care of that, so what's the point?
I prefer that the community have some say in deciding what comments are objectionable rather than relying on mods for every little thing.
If something is objectional you should say something about it, it's one thing for bots and spam, but if you see someone posting an unforced error, you should tell them they're wrong
not to invoke leddit, but you should be able to communicate with other human beings
Lemmy.ml ofc. "Tankie" instance made by the actual lemmy devs.
Lemmy.ml, iirc, stopped being promoted a couple years ago because it's kind of the experimental instance of Lemmy. The developers of this instance themselves shared the idea for new users is not to be here, and use other instances to free up a bit of the server resources, but older accounts like mine, well, we are still around.
I joined lemmy.ml after the reddit APIcalypse because it was the largest one at the time, about 3 years ago. The "tankie fascist" thing has been very interesting, I see it as a very effective tool for groupthink people to out themselves on. I'm a soft-leaning socialist if anything, not very politically involved, but the angry emotional groupthink people actually gives zero fucks about what I think. They just see .ml, decide in their own heads what I think and what "team" I'm on, and call me a tankie fascist! It's hilarious actually, I don't even have to say anything and those type of thinkers just present themselves for me to block. And thank god for how easy it is to curate Lemmy with blocks!
Over time it has become a very cool place with many views and interesting people from different paths of life discussing everything quite civilly.
I especially like the meta posts about inter-instance squabbling. They're goldmines for my block list.
.ml is my preferred instance too because you get the latest updates first, you get access to all the same mainstream PieFed and Lemmy communities, and you get to choose whether to interact with communist communities like Lemmygrad or Hexbear.
I wouldn't recommend it to most people though cause most people can't handle communists. Most would prefer conservatives, even.
And the downside is that certain people will block you or judge you for your instance, even if you were here years before the other instances came to be.
Thanks
I live in the PNW. I picked an instance in the PNW. Sometimes I see local news, and often I read comments from people within a few hour drive. It's nice to have a small, local community here, while still having access to the rest of the world together. So I guess recommend picking the largest instance in your region if you don't have any other preferences.
https://lemmy.sdf.org/ has some pretty unique content, even from the normal fediverse. I like the users there. See !funhole@lemmy.sdf.org and !unix_surrealism@lemmy.sdf.org
When its up peertube.wtf is great for discovering peertube videos. I use it to find things to post on !peertube@lemmy.world
I like to spend my time on piefed. Its my favorite "threadiverse" software atm. I spent snd contributed code to lemmy for about a year but jumped over to piefed. Its fun and fedi interop was better at the time.
For everything else fediverse.party for fun software and instances!
+1 for Hexbear, check it out if .world is too liberal for you. This place really feels like reddit, but somehow even more Dem apologist
+1 Hexbear if you like increasingly abstracted inside jokes about owls and beans
For someone entirely new to this, please ELI5 why it matters?
Entirely at random I signed up at feddit.uk
Does it mean I'm walled off from specific content? Am I in a dead part of the fediverse? And how do I change if I am.
It doesn't. Pick whatever instance and if another catches your eye make an account there as well. You don't have to limit yourself to one account on one instance. I started on feddit.de, then lemm.ee now hexbear and use this account to see some posts I wouldn't from hexbear since they have more of a safe space mentality than this instance
Go for a smaller European one, the one I’m on is in Finland. Me, I like Finland, the fins are sexy. And why only use one instance, you can have a user on several, that way ~~you can downvote your own posts and discuss with a person that is as intelligent as yourself (mainly because it actually is you!) I mean:~~ you can try out the audience and communities, which are different on all servers.
Just browse Join-Lemmy and pick an instance that sticks out and you like the vibe of, with good local communities and decent federation. The only one I truly recommend avoiding is Lemmy.world, due to its size and moderation on some larger communities.
As far as I understand, lemmy instances are sort of a community with communities inside. It seems that each isntance has their own like minded userbase. .world has basich mix of everyone due to popularity, .ml holds strong beliefs politically, blahaj.zone is more progressive in gender identity, piefed.social is more mainstream decentralized instance. And of course there are more I didn't mention.
I am on dbzer0 because I am into selfhosting and sailing the seas. It fits me well. Tied to one instance doesn't stop me from engaging on other instances except the ones I blacklisted.
Check the instances and their descriptions and find something that fits you.
In addition to being a themed community of communities, instances also have different federation/defederation policy. dbzer0 is defederated from Lemmygrad.ml, for example, while being federated with Hexbear.net. There's also the differences on how upvoting and downvoting is treated among instances, with some disabling downvotes and some disabling voting altogether.
I think the best thing is to choose one and hang around and if you like where you land then go forward but once you learn how to look them over and what makes them different then evaluate and decide on one and make a new account that becomes your main.
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