It’s controversial. It was created by the creators of Lemmy and has some techbro feelings about a lot of stuff. I’m not trying to start an .ml fight, I’m against pushing for any particular instance.
I would recommend new users to stay away from the biggest ones and steer towards one level down. You want enough communities and instances to line your front page, but the big ones are big enough. Let’s spread the load.
I don’t think you need any communities to line your front page until you get subscriptions going. I think going a level down from the biggest ones is still too big and will still lead to giant instances as they inevitably grow over time. Same with putting practically all the communities on lemmy.world or lemmy.ml.
That’s concentrating a lot of people and content in a handful of places, and slightly-less-centralized is still effectively centralized. No instance admins should have that much power.
I was referencing to when I signed up for Lemmy. I really missed the front page of r/ and was looking for that. I didn’t realize that the default would be so dead and also, I was on a really small instance, so the page was suuuuper dead since nothing was referenced yet. People can switch to smaller, but we don’t want to overwhelm them or make it look way worse populated than it is. I get your concern, but that’s why I recommend it to be mid level. You may not care if your front page is dead, but the newbies do.
It took a few times for me to cross over because it was completely new to me. I guess that might not be the case for every crossover. You have a lovely day too.
No matter what advice you give people, they’re still basically going to do what they want. Many will prefer to join larger servers, and some will always prefer smaller ones.
Honestly I think we should worry way less about this, because Lemmy is FOSS and we have enough solid instances already. People will naturally find their way and if larger instances get power drunk, people will leave. We don’t need to try to orchestrate and fine tune what instances people use. Let them do what they want, and trust that the decentralized and redundant federated structure will function as intended.
It should only come into play if large instances actually can’t keep up with their userbase growth from a technological standpoint. But again that problem solves itself because they can just close sign ups.
He answers a little bit down. You go to settings and there’s an export button. Save that to your drive, sign up for the new instance you’d like to go to and then import that .json file.
There are already tools for that, and it will probably get easier with time. In general, people should be encouraged to create multiple accounts on different servers from the beginning, so they already have built in options if they want to leave.
I use different sorting algorithms on my different accounts and also have different subscriptions, so the front page often looks totally different when I sign into my alts. Some of them are even federated with hexbear 🫣. I always find interesting posts that I missed by doing that.
Yeah, that’s kind of my point. A lot of people have no clue how the Fediverse works, and so they see that an instance is big and maybe has the name Lemmy in it, and they think that that’s going to be the one to give them the best experience.
Letting people know that they can get basically the same experience without having to go with the big ones is something I think everybody should know, since it’s such a foreign concept to centralized social media. They have choice in the matter.
And if they want to stick with the big ones, because they like some aspect, then they’ve at least been made aware of what their options are. People should be able to make informed decisions.
It’s controversial. It was created by the creators of Lemmy and has some techbro feelings about a lot of stuff. I’m not trying to start an .ml fight, I’m against pushing for any particular instance.
I would recommend new users to stay away from the biggest ones and steer towards one level down. You want enough communities and instances to line your front page, but the big ones are big enough. Let’s spread the load.
I don’t think you need any communities to line your front page until you get subscriptions going. I think going a level down from the biggest ones is still too big and will still lead to giant instances as they inevitably grow over time. Same with putting practically all the communities on lemmy.world or lemmy.ml.
That’s concentrating a lot of people and content in a handful of places, and slightly-less-centralized is still effectively centralized. No instance admins should have that much power.
I was referencing to when I signed up for Lemmy. I really missed the front page of r/ and was looking for that. I didn’t realize that the default would be so dead and also, I was on a really small instance, so the page was suuuuper dead since nothing was referenced yet. People can switch to smaller, but we don’t want to overwhelm them or make it look way worse populated than it is. I get your concern, but that’s why I recommend it to be mid level. You may not care if your front page is dead, but the newbies do.
I get that. I think it is therefore incumbent upon us and the people running instances to inform new users how to do this new thing.
I’m not saying your way is wrong, just that I think inertia will ultimately win out over ideology.
Anyway, have a lovely day!
It took a few times for me to cross over because it was completely new to me. I guess that might not be the case for every crossover. You have a lovely day too.
No matter what advice you give people, they’re still basically going to do what they want. Many will prefer to join larger servers, and some will always prefer smaller ones.
Honestly I think we should worry way less about this, because Lemmy is FOSS and we have enough solid instances already. People will naturally find their way and if larger instances get power drunk, people will leave. We don’t need to try to orchestrate and fine tune what instances people use. Let them do what they want, and trust that the decentralized and redundant federated structure will function as intended.
It should only come into play if large instances actually can’t keep up with their userbase growth from a technological standpoint. But again that problem solves itself because they can just close sign ups.
Will they though? I’ve seen people wanting to leave the bigger ones and don’t know how to transfer all of their subs and stuff.
I have no idea how this is done, or that it was a thing.
He answers a little bit down. You go to settings and there’s an export button. Save that to your drive, sign up for the new instance you’d like to go to and then import that .json file.
There are already tools for that, and it will probably get easier with time. In general, people should be encouraged to create multiple accounts on different servers from the beginning, so they already have built in options if they want to leave.
I use different sorting algorithms on my different accounts and also have different subscriptions, so the front page often looks totally different when I sign into my alts. Some of them are even federated with hexbear 🫣. I always find interesting posts that I missed by doing that.
What tools and where can I find them?
Yeah, that’s kind of my point. A lot of people have no clue how the Fediverse works, and so they see that an instance is big and maybe has the name Lemmy in it, and they think that that’s going to be the one to give them the best experience.
Letting people know that they can get basically the same experience without having to go with the big ones is something I think everybody should know, since it’s such a foreign concept to centralized social media. They have choice in the matter.
And if they want to stick with the big ones, because they like some aspect, then they’ve at least been made aware of what their options are. People should be able to make informed decisions.
Finding an instance that fits you is also significantly more difficult than even mastodon too.