How should we be using Lemmy?

I'm one of the people who has very recently tried Lemmy and decided to drop Reddit. Initially because I will no longer be able to use SyncForReddit, but now also because I just like the vibe a lot more here than Reddit.

I'm not a massively technical person, but I understood the broad concept of federation - different instances/servers that sync to form a big conversation/forum of sorts.

I heard a lot of people joining and saying positive things about lemmy.world, so I signed up there.....and that's it.

But, am I using it right? Is the idea to sign up in one place and use it to participate across the LemmyVerse/FediVerse? Or should I be seeking out lots of niche instances of interest?

I hear lemmy.world is the biggest instance. What if most people end up here, does that defeat the purpose? Is this inevitable?

You need a critical mass of users, so a quiet instance with few posts is not attractive. If I search for Xbox, there are lots of empty places or places with 3 posts. If there's one big one (often ends up being in lemmy.world) that's where I'm subscribing.

How are you using Lemmy, are you participating in a bunch of instances or just one?

kukkurovaca,
@kukkurovaca@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

What if most people end up here, does that defeat the purpose? Is this inevitable?

It is likely that most users will end up on a few big instances. That's not inherently bad, but it can be an issue if those instances have poor moderation.

You'll be able to see content from any instance that isn't defederated from your instance. The main thing this means right now is that you can't see new stuff posted to beehaw. Beehaw defederated lemmy.world and shitjustworks because of high moderation load due to open signups on those instances leading to a lot of troll users coming from them. They may refederate later when moderation tools for the platform improve or if those instances get more of a handle on the trolls, or they may not.

Since there are some big established communities on beehaw, you might benefit from having an account on an instance that is not defederated from them. Or you might not, if those specific communities don't interest you.

You need a critical mass of users, so a quiet instance with few posts is not attractive. If I search for Xbox, there are lots of empty places or places with 3 posts. If there’s one big one (often ends up being in lemmy.world) that’s where I’m subscribing.

How are you using Lemmy, are you participating in a bunch of instances or just one?

A quiet instance is fine (great, even), as long as it's federated with the busier instances that have the content you want to see. The best place on the fediverse is

  • An instance with moderation/rules that you feel comfortable with
  • Which is federated with all the instances that have communities you want to see

In terms of which communities I join, most communities aren't that active yet, so I'm joining all the ones that look remotely interesting. If the volume gets to be too much as the userbase grows, I'll drop the ones that aren't as fun/interesting.

One thing to note is that when you search from within your instance, the "subscriber" account for communities on other instances doesn't necessarily reflect the total population of subscribers, you'd need to click through to that instance to see the real number I think.

Also, since the total userbase is small relative to reddit, folks are going to be pooling more in general communities rather than specific ones. So for example, you might actually find more xbox related content in the general "gaming" community at Beehaw (20k subscribers) or the one at lemmy.ml (11k subscribers).

phosphorik,

Alright so I have a question and can’t figure out a better place to post it than this comment thread.

Kbin is neat and I’ve enjoyed it a reasonable amount for the past week or so. But 80% of my feed is either news and discussion about how bad Reddit is (I know, guys!), memes about about Reddit, and depressing climate change articles that make me panic about things I can’t change. How do I filter stuff like this out of my feed on Fediverse communities?

Thanks.

Overzeetop,
Overzeetop avatar

In a way, it's just like reddit. Subscribe to magazines and then switch your feed to Subscribed. It takes a bit to get a full, diverse feed, but then you'll be filtering by the things you like. Alternately, you can go to the magazines page and block the ones you don't want to see.

phosphorik,

Ahh, this is helpful. I looked at my kbin settings page and there isn’t an option to hide magazines, so I thought the feature might not exist. Thanks!

PKRockin,

Oh my god, same issue here. I'm just ready to use Lemmy (or KBin, or anything) and not constantly read how much better it is than Reddit and how Reddit is going down a death spiral. Let's just move on and provide our own content.

DoucheAsaurus,
DoucheAsaurus avatar

Reddit is a hot topic of discussion right now for completely obvious reasons. That will probably die down in the next couple weeks but I think there's going to be another influx of refugees on the 1st when the 3rd party apps go dark.

HulkSmashBurgers,

On desktop I'm not sure. I'm betting for each post there's an option somewhere to block that community. Is there an a way on desktop to bring up more options for a post?

I use Jerboa, and with that if I click on the community name (in the post) I'm presented with various actions, one of which is to block that community.

WThunderion,

The idea is you can subscribe and interact with any instances, no matter what instance you came from

Sure, most will jump the bandwagon into lemmy.world.. at least for the near future. I can say that with confidence because when you search "how to join Lemmy", most guide will point you to Lemmy.world instead of.. lets say.. coughLemmynsfwcough

Over time, some will eventually move to other instance (mostly just the account, because they want 'cool username' for themselves). Sooner or later, things will balance themselves out.

Maybe you can even start by deploying your own instance, for no other reason than claiming your own 'cool username'.

waterbottleonashelf,
waterbottleonashelf avatar

most guide will point you to Lemmy.world instead of.. lets say.. coughLemmynsfwcough

Quiet everyone! Let this person talk!

Please tell us of this magical place...

WhiteTiger, (edited )

Sadly I'm pretty sure it's full of beheadings, not the fun kind of NSFW. But I'm sure soon enough someone will create a lemmy.porn or something.

Dark_Blade,
@Dark_Blade@lemmy.world avatar

wdym, most of what I saw there was porn.

Floey,

I generally scroll through either local or everything sorted by “New Comments”. That’s why I’m replying to this two month old post, because someone else did, so it rose to the top. Feels like a combination of Reddit and a classic forum where you’d have posts that would get bumped by activity.

walden,

2 months old?! Oops.

walden,

I subscribe to communities on multiple instances. My main activity is on our niche instance. If people are happy signing up at lemmy.world and limiting themselves to the communities available there, I see nothing wrong with that.

That being said, I think if you search lemmy.world for wetshaving, as an example, our instance does show up in the results because there is federated cross-over (for lack of a better term).

vintprox,
@vintprox@lemmy.world avatar

know how 🥁

solidsnake2085,

Just a heads up, LJ the Dev of Sync for Reddit is doing Sync for Lemmy. I've been a Sync user for years now and am excited to see his version of Lemmy.

MusketeerX,

Yes I am super excited about that. Sync made Reddit usable for me.

BornVolcano,

Image Transcription: Text and Image

[An interconnected diagram with six cloud-shaped bubbles with text and images of the reddit mascot snoo in them are shown. There are lines going between them connecting all of the bubbles to one another in the approximate shape of the fediverse pentagram logo. The top left bubble says "r/aww" and has two images of the reddit mascot. The upper middle bubble has the text "r/gaming" and "r/Music" with one image of the mascot. The top right bubble says "r/funny" with one mascot, the lower left says "r/Pics" and "r/science" with one mascot, the lower right says "r/art" and "r/ask science" with two mascots, and the bottom centre bubble has the words "r/space" and r/videos" with one reddit mascot. The Lemmy logo, a black and white cartoon mouse head, sits in the bottom left corner of the image. Below the web of connected bubbles, there are three small cartoon drawings of people standing next to each other, with the text "Lemmy devs" beside them, and a large purple speech bubble above them that reads as follows]

We donated Lemmy to the world, we can't control what people do with it.

^I'm a human volunteer transcribing posts in a format compatible with screen readers, for blind and visually impaired users!^

MrValdez,

Thank you for your work. Love to see communities transferring.

BornVolcano,

For the moment, it's just a couple of us working freelance (I like to think of it as "going rogue", though in reality the mods are in full support of my choice to do this), but it remains to be seen if we can develop an organized system for this. A lot of people don't realize the massive amount of tech and organization behind ToR, about seven or eight bots running in synchrony in order to allow us to effective span reddit in our transcriptions. But for the time being, I'm happy to do what I can solo

irishPotato,

I love how you guys came over too! Even keeping the signature!!

BornVolcano,

I did have to alter the signature a little to fit the site haha. For the moment, only a few of us are here, as the process of moving all of the technology and organization behind ToR to a completely different platform (think seven or eight different bots, all needing to work in synchrony) is a massive undertaking for the mods, and one they aren't sure they're entirely able to do. But for the time being, I'm here transcribing freelance (I like to consider it "going rogue", though in reality the mods are very much in support of what I'm choosing to do haha), and it remains to be seen if we can form an organized group to continue these efforts.

aranym,

I personally host my own instance, from which I interact with communities on many other instances.

This ensures my Lemmy account can’t just be decimated because my admin decided to stop maintaining their instance and I avoid defederation that can block content I’m interested in (including the infighting among larger instances.)

starkcommando,

I've been debating hosting my own instance. Are you hosting on a cloud platform or a home server?

meekah,
@meekah@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah that's what I'm planning to do as well. Do you know if there's a way to transfer my current lenny.world account to my private instance, whenever I get around to it?

starkcommando,

From what I've read, account transfers are not available yet but it is on Lemmy's roadmap.

meekah,
@meekah@lemmy.world avatar

I see, thank you!

pyrojoe,

Out of curiosity, what's the disk usage from hosting your own instance like? My concern with self hosting is it'll quickly run out of control. I don't want to dedicate hundreds of gigabytes to a lemmy instance.

Rottcodd,
Rottcodd avatar

When I first started looking around here, I had no particular reason to pick one instance, so I didn't. I initially registered with three (kbin.social, lemmy.world and lemmy.one). I was sort of planning to try them out and compare them before settling on one, but I ended up just rotating through them as the mood hit me, and I still use all three. And in fact, I'm planning on adding a couple more.

The thing I like about using multiple instances is that I can change my experience quickly and easily.

Mostly I go back and forth between kbin.social and lemmy.world, and they're notably different. In the first place, they use different software, so the interfaces are quite different. The kbin software is a bit more feature rich but also a bit harder to get around in while the lemmy software is a bit simpler in both respects. And the instances are notably different, since .world is federated with virtually everyone while kbin.social has defederated from a number of instances, and most notably all of the botfarms.

So kbin.social has less content of generally higher quality, so it feels more serious and sedate, while lemmy.world has more content but a lot of it is botspam, so it feels more hectic and noisy. And I just go to whichever one appeals to me more at the moment.

And I'm actually looking for a couple more. I'd like to find one that's deliberately reserved and sort of scholarly - high standards and serious discussion - and one that's overtly goofy snd lighthearted.

And I have no doubt that if they don't exist, they will.

Marxine,
@Marxine@lemmy.world avatar

Most sane feddiverse user.

RxBrad,

People keep mentioning the botspam, but I haven't seen it.

Is it because I stick to my subscribed channels and don't just haphazardly browse the full-fat Everything feed?

Zeoic,

Its account creation spam. As far as I am aware there hasnt been much if any bots commenting.

Right now it just bogs down instances from the spam and inflates overal user numbers.

whenigrowup356,

What are the bots for? Scraping for content to repost somewhere else or something?

BornVolcano,

Idk how to switch between them. I tried signing into kbin with my Lemmy stuff and it just went nope. Maybe I messed up the password lol but I don't think so

RedSquadCampFollower,

you can't do that

(for real)

BornVolcano,

That. Really sucks. Idk it's all so fragmented, how do you know what is where and why?

RedSquadCampFollower,

But the reason you can't log in on another server is just like you can't login to your hotmail address at gmail.com.

RedSquadCampFollower,

It is very confusing. But if I reach back into my mind, I found reddit very confusing at first also.

What is where:

I found these useful to understand:

Reed,

You can't login to other instances because you don't need to. And also they don't have your login credentials (what a mess that would be). But all the content from that instance is already available to you on your homepage and you can comment on it, up vote it... Why would you want to?

BornVolcano,

I would like to provide some crucial context that I just opened Lemmy like two hours ago (made an account a week back but never actually tried to operate the site) and I am a reddifugee. I am fediverse stupid rn lol. I'm trying to learn but idk how this works and all of the examples I've seen given are other tech-based things that I don't understand either haha

xaxl,

You can interact with other instances from your home instance. However, it's easier imo to just sign up a couple of accounts across a few that you like and switch between them as you feel like it. Pretty much all the apps for you phone support multiple accounts too.

The key is to not become overly attached to one account like Reddit. Remember that any of these servers could go down permanently at any time and the important factor is the meatbag behind the account, not the account itself.

BornVolcano,

The key is to not become overly attached to one account

Unfortunately, I have a tendency to become "overly attached" to many, many things haha. But I'll do my best. Thank you!

dot20, (edited )

So you have an account at Lemmy.world. From Lemmy.world you can subscribe, post and comment in communities on ANY Lemmy or Kbin instance (except Beehaw, for reasons).

So suppose you want to subscribe to a magazine* over at Kbin.social. You can just go ahead and subscribe to it from your Lemmy.world account and it will just work and show up in your 'subscribed' feed (and you'll be able to make posts and comments there). That's what this 'federation' thing means.

In other words, since all the instances are federated, you can see and interact with content from across the federation right on your 'home' instance.

  • 'magazine' is the Kbin term for 'community', which is equivalent to a 'subreddit'
MusketeerX,

This sounds like a good comprehensive approach that embraces the concept of the Fediverse.

I think I need to get out there and explore a lot more.

pruwybn, (edited )
@pruwybn@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I signed up on a smaller instance and only follow a couple of communities there, so I had to go out and search for things I was interested in. I pretty much just subscribed to anything that sounded remotely interesting, figuring I could leave later.

i mostly found stuff with browse.feddit.de and lemmyverse.net, as well as just going to the bigger instances and looking at the local lists for anything interesting. So I’m following communities across several of the larger severs - lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, kbin.social, sh.itjust.works, lemmy.ca - and a few smaller ones that sounded interesting or relevant. Also fedidb.org is a nice tool to see info about the fediverse in general, including stats on Lemmy and Kbin servers.

MusketeerX,

This seems like a good comprehensive approach. I need to explore more I think.

MusketeerX,

This seems like a good comprehensive approach. I need to explore more I think.

MusketeerX,

This seems like a good comprehensive approach. I need to explore more I think.

Mintyy,

Is there a downside to being on a smaller instance that I'm not seeing or is it kinda irrelevant?

pruwybn,
@pruwybn@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Maybe just the “Local” tab not being very useful. Although if you can find a server that fits your interests that may not be the case. I just picked one that seemed well run.

Ignacio,
Ignacio avatar

I'm on kbin.social. When I browse the tag "All", I can see all Lemmy communities that federate with kbin.social and all kbin magazines that federate with kbin.social (including those belonging to kbin.social). It's very seamlessly, and at some point you don't realise you're commenting in a post from a different server. But you can also browse those communities and/or magazines you're subscribed to, in a similar fashion to Reddit.

ekZepp,
@ekZepp@lemmy.world avatar

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/afddfbbf-5aeb-4e81-923f-466f54e55fb7.jpeg

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

I'd argue one of the most pressing concerns right now is the lack of migration tools

Currently you can't just create an account on instance X and move to Y. You need to create a new account. Eventually if we get the functionality to migrate from one place to another, people will be able to spread out across the fediverse and the risk of a single big server going belly up reduced.

From a technical standpoint if one instance gets defederated from other instances, all the users on that instance are stuffed. Their content won't appear in the wider fediverse (so less engagement)

WhiteTiger, (edited )

This feels like the same concept as Von Neumann probes

RedSquadCampFollower,

A lot of the fediverse reminds me of usenet and usenet was destroyed by spam. (Not by september(s).)

For my own purposes as a flesh n blood user I agree with you. However when I consider spam and its modern descendants, idk. Would it then be the case that any spam (etc) instance could just transport all its "user" data to a new instance?

Rottcodd,
Rottcodd avatar

Currently you can't just create an account on instance X and move to Y. You need to create a new account.

I don't see how that's a problem. It's entirely painless to create a new account or to switch between accounts. I do it all the time.

I guess if a particular instance folds, I'll lose the stuff I posted there, but I don't see how that's a problem either. I've written countless thousands of forum posts over almost thirty years, and the vast majority of them are undoubtedly gone. What difference does it make? I didn't write them in some vain bid for some sort of immortality - I wrote them because there were specific things I wanted to say at specific moments, and because I enjoy writing. So they've already served their purpose.

RedSquadCampFollower,

There are different ways of relating to online content.

In some contexts I am more motivated to make contributions when I have reason to believe they will be persistent for years. I post on forums that have been around for 20+ years, where I search for things and come up with posts from that whole time. So when I write on there I kind of do it with care because I am thinking of people in the future who will find my stuff.

OTOH there is also a place for ephemeral communications. That is the whole draw of snapchat for example. The promise this will be deleted soon. Whether that is true or not is another thing.... But people do want it sometimes.

HulkSmashBurgers,

I'd like to see some sort of export/import functionality as well. Instances will come and go, and it would suck for people on those to just lose their stuff with out having a way to back up/restore it.

ike,

i think the whole design of most of these the platforms missed out a better paradigm. It's super restrictive and terrible for global discovery to have content communities and account communities be one thing. To me the design only really creates a good experience if you don't need the fediverse and what's outside your instance's walls. Instances that people browse should ideally act more like a subreddit vs an entire reddit. People should add different servers from people or groups that run a community that you want to see posts from. Your main feed app would aggregate the diverse set of communities that make up a persons interests. the current system forces you to pick which restrictive box you describe yourself as, and then makes discover-ability and interactivity of everything outside of that bubble a terrible chore. I think maybe one day Nostr might be able to do something like that with its relay technology. Right now the relays focus more on being like a customized redundancy, but I think that community relays could work similarly. Nostr is weird because in ways it's simpler but also not packaged so that it feels that way. It feels more complicated, but it's early days.

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