This is a more focused revision of a post I made a few months ago, with an aim to help with discovery across the fediverse.
List of various directory/index-style sites to help find people/communities of interest
Software overview
Finding instances/software-agnostic
Microblog specific
- Fedi Directory
- Fediverse Info - Note: also includes Pixelfed people.
- Trunk
- Guppe Groups - Workaround to post to groups across microblogging sites, useful to push posts to remote instances.
Forum/link aggregator specific
Video/Streaming specific
Searching and Following methods
This will vary across software, and may change as it changes, so take note of when this was written (end of March 2025).
By default, ActivityPub sites don't know of other, remote sites. Any remote site stuff you're seeing is because somehow the site your on was made aware of the other's stuff. Typically this may be that a user learns of a remote site's stuff in some way and decides to follow from their home site by looking it up via their site's search then subscribing/following.
All of the above format-specific links I've provided above are means of finding some remote sites' stuff to follow on one's home site. Below are some additional tools and methods to further help when using some of these different sites.
Microblog Tools and Methods
Tools
- StreetPass for Mastodon - detects Mastodon accounts on websites visited.
- Graze for Mastodon - Firefox Add-on - enables remote instance interactions for when viewing another instance.
- Graze - Chrome Extension - for those using Chrome variants.
- Phanpy frontend for Mastodon - has a variety of features that may help find what the default interface doesn't help to find.
Methods
- On Mastodon: follow hashtags to surface other accounts you might want to follow.
- Also make use of its keyword/hashtag filters to cut down on the sorts of posts you don't want to see by going to account preferences, filters.
- On Misskey & forks: create custom feeds via the "antenna" feature by choosing keywords and hashtags to track while using the same to exclude/filter out posts with other keywords/hashtags.
- Also make use of its mute/block settings to cut down on the sorts of posts you don't want to see by going to settings, under other settings, mutes and blocks.
- Post with hashtags more to help others searching by or following them find your posts. Even if it's just someone else on your home instance, if they share (boost/repost) your post and they have remote followers, it may help increase your visibility across the network.
Forum/link aggregator Tools and Methods
Tools
- Lemmyverse Communities
- Piefed Feeds - if you're not on Piefed, these may still be helpful for finding different communities by viewing a feed's collected communities.
- Quiblr frontend for Lemmy - a unique frontend with a privacy-respecting recommendation engine.
Methods
- Follow the aforementioned communities under Forum/link aggregator specific above, or ask in !lemmy411@lemmy.ca or !communitypromo@lemmy.ca about communities.
- On Piefed/Mbin sites, use the keyword filtering feature to filter out posts you're uninterested in.
- On Lemmy sites use clients (e.g. Interstellar - Mobile/Desktop, Thunder - Mobile, Voyager - Mobile/Web) that provide keyword filtering, as default UI lacks this useful feature.
- Browse Local or All with sort set to New to see if any unfamiliar communities show up that you may want to follow.
- Block communities/instances you're uninterested in to help improve potential communities of interest visibility as you browse.
If you're aware of other resources, tools, or methods that I've not mentioned here, please mention them in the comments! There's undoubtedly more to add that I've not come across.