YSK You can search the Fediverse instead of reddit using Kagi (search engine)
Kagi has an option to search the Fediverse. This makes it a lot easier than specifying a site in the search query, which would also limit the results to a specific instance.
The idea of searching had me thinking that it would be nice to have a search-focused instance that didn't defederate from any sites (besides the illegal stuff) and auto-subscribes to every new community so it has all the information possible. Then you could do "foo bar site:searchlemmy.com" and get an effect similar to reddit
Although that's probably unnecessary. But would be kind of cool
That sounds like a pretty good idea, since most search engines don't play very well with the fediverse. Could be a good workaround.
I'm wondering how expensive it would be to host something like that. Maybe someone with experience hosting instances could give an estimate?
I like lemm.ee is as close as you can get. AFAIK it’s federated with pretty much everyone and it’s got a very large userbase so nearly every conmunity is federated.
Wait, a large userbase is required for an instance to federate with every community? I thought you could host a single user instance but still be federated with everything that you don't explicitly block.
Remote communities don't federate until a user subscribed to them. There is this tool to automate it however.
When you create a new community, it will only be available to your instance. To make it accessible to other instances, at least one user from each remote instance must follow it.
This tool automates this process by following your community from all remote instances until it gains at least one real-user follower.