This site is currently struggling to handle the amount of new users. I have already upgraded the server, but it will go down regardless if half of Reddit tries to join.
However Lemmy is federated software, meaning you can interact seamlessly with communities on other instances like beehaw.org or lemmy.one. The documentation explains in more detail how this works. Use the instance list to find one where you can register. Then use the Community Browser to find interesting communities. Paste the community url into the search field to follow it.
You can help other Reddit refugees by inviting them to the same Lemmy instance where you joined. This way we can spread the load across many different servers. And users with similar interests will end up together on the same instances. Others on the same instance can also automatically see posts from all the communities that you follow.
Edit: If you moderate a large subreddit, do not link your users directly to lemmy.ml in your announcements. That way the server will only go down sooner.
These are some issues I've been thinking about as well.
What's to stop someone from impersonating another user on a different instance? Maybe there should be a distributed user index amongst instances to prevent duplicate usernames?
I think making the federalized infrastructure incumbent upon users to understand and select is not something the average user is going to bother with. This is complicated problem, I don't know the answer might be off the top of my head.
And what happens when an instance goes down? Does every user and their history get torched? Is there a migration process or at least a decommissioning policy in place?
Trolls impersonating the Lemmy developers has happened in the past. best is to report this to the instance admins who can delete the accounts as from the post history it is usually clear who the imposter is. Not sure if there can be a better way to handle this, probably not?
As @RagingNerdoholic@lemmy.ml says, create a distributed index of usernames, and do not allow the same username to be registered twice.
I'd also propose at the same time to create a Discord style username system to avoid potential clashes - if this system is going to become large (mainstream) then eventually available usernames will be hard to choose from.
But I’ve already signed up as GuyDudeman on every Lemmy instance! What happens to all those accounts? 🤪
They become the components of a giant Combining Mecha.
There can be a manual process for anything, but could be a major issue if lemmy receives a big influx of "redfugees" in the coming weeks.
Like I said, something like a distributed user index across instances could address this.
Then people would start name-squatting and you would end up with people having to resort to tom123@lemmy.ml just because someone on a totally different instance already registered tom@example.com. The instance already signifies that it is a different user and it is rather the exception that someone intentionally tries to impersonate a user by copying the avatar etc.
How is that ultimately any different from how usernames work in a centralized system? If you have a username on reddit, that's your username no matter what the subreddit/community. I understand how lemmy is analogous to email, but I'm not sure it's the right model for a link aggregator and discussion system.
I guess what I'm saying is that decentralization may be better served if instances operated as an internal load balancing system rather than strictly separate servers. This would also help with an influx of new users, so you can just spin up a new instance and lemmy just flexes up without having to manually direct users to sign up on a specific server/instance.
Mastodon can have (has?) the same problem. This is somewhat solved with the self-verification process though, so it could be done similarly on Lemmy.