Fediverse

I signed up for this instance because:

1. I align with its stated core interests (anti-capitalism, FOSS enthusiast, privacy enthusiast). Even if it wasn't the biggest or the flagship, it would be the most suitable in that sense.
2. It's somewhat central, so when a new instance is added there's less chance I'll need a new account to post there
3. It's not likely to fall. In my past fediverse usage, I have built up a history on a semi-random instance only for it to shut down without notice, while others became neglected by their hosts and stayed out of date. PeerTube didn't have account exporting settings so I lost what was there (luckily the raw videos were still on the hard drive).
4. There's an implication that the devs will have no problem running the instance, at least on a technical level, and (this is my opinion, it's subjective, yes) they seemed reasonable when interacting with controversial communities like wolfballs.

However, as you can already see, I'm not limiting myself to posting on this instance. The Local/All filters in Communities do a nice job of making other instances conveniently accessible, but of course there aren't many that are popular enough to rank highly on that list, or have a unique topic that I have an interest in.

from what I see, Lemmy is still too small to be a full "network", it's just a flagship instance with some satellite instances around it.

We need to help it grow in order for proper decentralised network to form.

But I don't see many people promoting it. About a year ago I made a draft for Wikipedia article about Lemmy, but I did not find much to write about. Recently I checked how it is doing, and I saw that apparently people made some questionable additions to the draft and submitted it for review. Submission got rejected, reason being that Lemmy is not "notable" enough, as in, practically no independent information sources talk about it or even mention it. Of course I went to search the internet in hopes of proving this wrong, but I was not successful. Apparently promotion of Lemmy and rest of the Fediverse is something that is not being done as much as I would have wanted.

There should probably be some Fediverse Promoting Guide that would list effective means of spreading the word about what Fediverse is and why people should use it.

When I first joined mastodon, I was on mastodon.social - I wasn't used to twitter enough for mastodon to feel familiar, having to research and pick an instance seemed like an extra stress, and I appreciated having a "default" option.

I wouldn't be surprised if Lemmy.ml stays relatively big for a while, but I do see a lot of new instances starting and I'm optimistic the network will become more diverse.

Hello from lemmygrad.ml :D When I was looking, the options were hexbear, lemmy, and lemmygrad. Hexbear didn't look like it was federating, and I wanted that in any instance I picked, so I landed on lemmygrad. I chose lemmygrad because a decent chunk of my activity is political in nature. If I wasn't as political, lemmy would probably be a better choice.

I think it's mainly because people lack a reason to do so.

I crosscomment here:

It could be weird but here[1] it seems that people who doesn’t understand federation at first use to associate the software name with the instance name.

You speak about “moving to Pixelfed” and they look and use Pixelfed.social at first.

I think that could also have happenned with Lemmy.

1- my environment

I joined Lemmy before federation worked, which is why I joined the "flagship" instance. In addition, other instances are often more localised, theme-specific or very political (Lemmygrad, Wolfballs). And some instances are poorly guarded outposts via which the troll incursions are coming in. Mind you, the admins there are probably good people but it does do little good to the name of those instances (and they risk defederation). Maybe if Lemmy as a whole grows people might successfully spread, but for now most would stick to the bigger instances with the most topics and the best moderation.

Edit: I interpreted the question as specific to Lemmy, even though the topic is in /c/fediverse.

Aren't most of the users from lemmygrad now? At any rate, for me lemmy feels like the best fit, there is no instance that better suits my interests, nor for my region.

I don't care to. I'm here to have a good time, learn different perspectives and have some debate.

If lemmy.ml goes down the toilet like Reddit and Ruqqus though, it's a big +1 that it's federated and I won't have to ditch the platform

Only one I'd heard of tbh

The idea that you're missing out? Its probably a good issue to have when things are reasonably small. Regarding the issue of a music community on lemmy ml - should this be on lemmy.ml at all? The admins have disowned 'flagship' and have clearly stated the site to be leftist/foss and have also restricted logins. Music should be maintained elsewhere on a gen pop instance like cough sopuli.

When it comes to choosing an instance I think sopuli loses a bit in translation, but when I found out sopuli means *lemming * in english it made sense. Also visiting the site it looks like there are a lot of finnish posts = finnish only server when in reality these are posted to the /suomi finnish community. Long short thats why I set up https://sopuli.xyz/c/classicalbums there and will be posting to /c/music.

I created my first Lemmy accounts in two instances hosted by people near me. I've found some problems to interact with people in other instances, except for lemmy.ml.

It could be some federation lack between instances.I don't know.

The maintenance, support and moderation of the instanc are also important to choose it for the daily use.

Finally I created an account in lemmy.ml and it's the only one I'm using now.

I use Beehaw some, but honestly I don't think federation is all that useful for this kind of site vs self hostable regular link aggregator software. Do I really want lemmy.ml's music community and 3 other instances' music communities, all of which being held up by one or two posters each? Not really. And at the moment, lemmy.ml has the only community sizable enough for regular usage.

For me this is the most appropriate instance as far as I can tell. The other instances mostly seem to be run for countries in which I do not live or for interests which I am not especially interested in

IDK what you talking about I've used like 2 lmao. Im here from the Marxist Leninist lemmy

Lemmy.ml was the first point of contact for me with Lemmy. I joined it. I liked it. I saw no reason to go looking for another instance.

What's my incentive to move to another instance supposed to be? Because I can?

What's the point of moving to other instances?

As you can see, I choose Feddit and not Lemmy.ml as my instance. One of the main reasons was exactly to avoid joining the flagship instance. I speak German so Feddit seemed fitting.

However the communiy on Feddit is really small and most posts don't get any answers. Therefore it's probably better to stick with lemmy.ml until the Lemmy galaxy in the Fediverse gets big enough to justfy more planets (instances).

How can I find big communities across instances? If I can't find communities on other instances, I will stick to the biggest instance.