Remote View

2y ago

New User's guide

Quick post to answer some basic usage questions that can throw off new users.

Where should I register?

The age old question of fediverse. The answer is pick an instance that is not right-wing and you should be fine.

https://join-lemmy.org/instances makes this very easy. Once you find an instance, just go to its /signup endpoint. For the instance you're reading right now, it would be: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/signup. Another great option is to use the lemmyverse which provides a lot more info about potential instances and communities, including a trust score.

Do I need to create a profile for each instance?

No! Each instance can access each other instance, unless it's been defederated because its admins are toxic (this is why I told you not to join right-wing instances earlier).

I joined an instance, but the community I am interested in is in a different instance

No problem. Simply add the instance domain at the end of the url endpoint.

For example, say you're in lemmy.ml and you realized that stable_diffusion is in lemmy.dbzer0.com. To access it, simply add @lemmy.dbzer0.com at the end of the url after the community name. So:

https://lemmy.ml/c/stable_diffusion@lemmy.dbzer0.com

Or to put it differently, you can access any community, in any instance by adding /c/ (The requivalet of reddit /r/) and then community_name@instance.domain

If this doesn't work, then it's likely this instance is not yet federated with yours. To solve this, you need to search for it. See the next section.

But how do I even find the community I want to if it exists in any of hundreds of instances?

One option is to use the lemmyverse, as it's very user friendly, if you specify which instance if your home, it will automatically convert all links to your own instance.

Alternatively use the use the built-in search.

Note that if you search for an community in an lemmy instance your own instance doesn't yet know about, it won't find it. You need to give it more precice instructions to find it, which require the whole "address". To follow our example above, you would put !stable_diffusion@lemmy.dbzer0.com in your search field.

When searching for a community in a new instance, it might take a few minutes to take effect. The first search will not return anything, but if you search again after a couple of minutes, it should appear.

How do I find my community from reddit?

https://sub.rehab allows you to search for any subreddit and see if its official community exists in the threadiverse. You can then search for it specifically to subscribe. If you've already registered an account somewhere, make sure you visit the settings in sub.rehab and set your home instance there, so that all links go through it.

Community? Instance?

An instance is a lemmy server hosted by someone. it has its own set of users and communities. lemmy.dbzer0.com is an instance. You can access (almost) every instance from any other instance.

a community is like a subreddit in reddit, or a channel in discord. It's a topic in inside an instance. stable_diffusion is a community inside the instance lemmy.dbzer0.com.

In more plain terms, consider a lemmy instance like a street, and a community like a number on that street. When you write !stable_diffusion@lemmy.dbzer0.com you are giving the exact address and number to search for.

I keep seeing the same posts

In you're in a smaller instance and you've subscribed to communities in other places, you might have set up your default visibility to not show them.

Switch your view to Subscribed/Hot to get a similar view like the reddit frontpage.

Switch to All/Hot to get a similar view to reddit /r/all

You can store this setting permanently as default in your user settings

Tips and PSA

Also see

Lemmy.world starting guide

83 comments

I wish I read this before I made 8 accounts lmao
- Lfg

Many many thanks for this. Got up and running in no time. Loving the communities and the lack of toxicity in the posts and comments. What a breath of fresh air!
Just needs traction and more users. Doing my bit posting and getting involved in the discussions. Really scratches that Reddit itch without the dirty feeling that I am supporting some wanker CEO.
- that's the spitit!

This whole fediverse thing is bizarre to me, and learning how to navigate it and understanding what the hell is going on is weird. Ive signed up like 4 different instances without realising they interconnect and now i feel like i gotta choose one.
- I mean, you registered already. The only thing to choose is which one to use as your main "portal" to the fediverse.

Hey everyone & Thanks for the instance db0!

I'm confused about the exclamation point. Can you explain what that does? Thanks.
- It's just a formatting thing, like the @ in an email address. It makes it easier to tell apart users @kholdstayr@lemmy.dbzer0.com vs. communities !div0@lemmy.dbzer0.com.

One correction/clarification and some tips:
For example, say you’re in lemmy.ml and you realized that stable_diffusion is in lemmy.dbzer0.com. To access it, simply add lemmy.dbzer0.com at the end of the url. So
https://lemmy.ml/c/stable_diffusion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
For now this seems only work if the community has already been federated. The first subscriber needs to use the search with either the !stable_diffusion@lemmy.dbzer0.com format or the community's url. Make sure you have "all" selected so that it's not just searching locally. Then the search results usually show "No results" even if it's syncing in the background. After it's been federated it'll show up in searches, in the communities list, and will work with those /c/ style links. The UI for federating new communities definitely needs a bunch of work.
To find and subscribe to communities go to https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/communities, then selecting 'All' to look through any that are already federated. If you want to find more, https://browse.feddit.de/ has a mostly complete list of communities. Just watch out though, because it includes instances that are blocked from most sites for obvious reasons.
A few instances I've found centered around various topics:
https://slrpnk.net - Solarpunk
https://mander.xyz - Science
https://programming.dev - Programming
https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech - Pop Music
https://pathfinder.social - Pathfinder/Starfinder TTRPGs
https://sub.wetshaving.social - Wet Shaving
https://pawb.social - Furry
https://lemmy.studio - Music
There's more for other topics, but a lot of them don't have any moderation policies listed so I'm not going to recommend them yet. There's also a bunch of general purpose instances, as well as location based ones.
One thing that a lot of people find confusing is how there can be multiple communities with the same name, just hosted on different sites. In those cases it's not a single community viewed in two places. For example !technology@lemmy.ml and !technology@beehaw.org are two separate communities that both exist, and you can subscribe to either or both. Each will have different rules, mods, posts and comments. The full name of a community includes the domain, sort of like an email address.
I'd also recommend people change their default settings to 'Subscribed' so it's not just showing the posts hosted here. You might also want to set sorting to 'Hot', since 'Active' tends to show the same threads for days at a time as long as people keep posting in them.
Right now the federation with kbin.social seems to be broken since they added cloudflare protection. We probably need to wait for them to remove that before communities there can be federated.
- Thanks. Adjusted my post a bit

Thanks for this, I was quickly able to understand what I needed to know.

Sorry, I'm just stupid.
So I made a lemmy acccount in this instance lemmy.dbzer0.com. From my very limited research, apparently I can just login to other "federated" instances, but I can't login (infinite time "loading circle" in login page) with the same username and password in both https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/login and https://lemmy.ml/login. Why is that? Any help would be appreciated, sorry if it's obvious because it's not to me
- Don't try to log in with your lemmy.dbzer0.com account in lemmy.fmhy.ml. It won't work and the login error report is broken (which is why you get the infinite spinny).
  If you want to subscribe to a fmhy community, simply search for its url in the lemmy.dbzer0.com search and then click the link in that. This will take you to that community via lemmy.dbzer0.com, which will allow you to subscribe to it.
  Alternatively, just go to that community via URL like so: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/freemediaheckyeah@lemmy.fmhy.ml
  I.e. simply add @lemmy.fmhy.ml at the end of the community name, if it's a community hosted in fmhy
  
  Ah ok, thx :)

Thank you this guide has been very helpful.

Thank you for the guide. I have plenty of friends still on Reddit but they are reluctant. Hope to see more guides in the future.

I made a userscript (Lemmy post) which rewrites all links everywhere (not only on Lemmy) to always point to your home instance. It helps a lot with subscribing to communities and in general makes browsing the web and finding Lemmy links nicer.
- Full extension when? :)
  
  Also, this userscript also works on Firefox on Android with the Tampermonkey extension, which wouldn't be possible with a regular extension since those have to be separately approved.
  
  I'm not sure why? This is already fully featured.

Is there a possibility to hide this post?
I've seen, read and (hopefully 😅) understood it, I would just like to see content straight away instead of this post all the time.
If not, would this be a server or a client feature? So I could perhaps add it to their issue tracker, if it doesn't exist yet.
- unfortunately you can't hide posts yet, but there's a feature request for it yes

hello! hey db0, im here because of you... literally. I was starting in the r/piracy and ~~spez happened~~... then, a few days later, i saw ur post about moving to this platform (which i honestly had never heard about, but that doenst matter)... and since i was really upset with the way that motherfucker dealt with was, to me, a sacred thing in reddit: the decade-long golden relationship between company and users (so much so that Reddit itself could capitalize on ads using sheer amounts of "good will" bcs of how the community and therefore the world saw the company)... and throw it in a river of radioactive poo aka his mom, so i decided to join here and try to help in anyway i can! problem is... im kinda noob to the whole piracy, datamining, AI and whatever other tendencies nowadays, so im not sure how much (nor where) i can help... and thats why im writing this: do you mind if we chat a bit in private so u can explain the whole situation, its ramifications and propose ways that i could do my part? it would be great.
lmk yeah? a handshake from brazil
- Hey mate, I'd love to chat, unfortunately I'm up to my nose in work. I suggest you post in /c/piracy with your questions, or with a general post with a similar vibe as this comment. I'm sure others will join in to chat. Or you can post in /c/div0 instead.
  
  Ill do that, thanks. But i still would like to chat w u about all the stuff thats happening, in order to get a wider POV, then try to deduce whats going to be their next steps and its overall impact to, finally, try help by making suggestions, debating, brainstorming etc. Talking to you specifically is a key point bcs i cant think of another person thats more "in the eye of the storm" than u (maybe other former top mods from different subs, but i dont know them), so u can be REALLY enlightening. If ure wonder what i have to gain with this, its simple: knowledge. as i said, im a noob in this area but my interest on it is huge, so the mere act of chatting with u and other veteran guys will be insanely helpful for me (and ultimately for everyone here, as more knowledge = more ways to help). its a win-win.
  i understand u have ur pants full of work (dunno if its IRL or online, but nvm its work anyway), so i will wait until u can talk. seems good? in the meantime, i will do what u suggested and try to check out this platform.
  do u have an idea of when things will slow down for u? approximately or not, whatever. if no, then ill just msg u from time to time, ok? i hope i don't bother u.
  knr

W dbzer0
- ?
  
  "Winner" Glad to be aboard Cap'n

Could you help me figure what I'm doing wrong when it comes to adding the anarchy chess instance? I have and have been trying the exclamation point thing, but it doesn't seem to want add on Jerboa. Is it not federated or am I just not doing it right?
- For now there's a bug in the app that doesn't let you subscribe to communities that haven't been federated. Until they fix it you have to go to the website if nobody here searched for it from the site yet.
  I searched for !anarchychess@sopuli.xyz now though so you should be able to subscribe through the app.
  
  Sorry for the late reply. Thank you so much for the answer. I guess with how active and busy lemmy has gotten, that it might be overwhelming/over loading the system until it catches up and federates everything. I'm on the good ol' anarchy chess now.
- what is the community name and instance?
  
  Thanks for asking and I really appreciate everything you're doing here and and for the community. Sorry I wasn't able to respond sooner. Some IRL things got in the way. Underscores kind of came to the rescue with the insight I needed. Guess the instance hadn't federated yet, but now it's showing and I'm subscribed. Still getting used to this lemmy thing.

I'm migrating here from lemmy.world. Is there any way to import the communities I followed there? Or do I have to search and follow them manually?
- Unfortunately not. Hopefully in the future we can get at least an export/import mechanism, if not a direct account migration tool
  
  An export/import mechanism would be neat. I guess I'll follow one by one when I'm bored.
  Thanks!

When I'm browsing "All" I'll get half way down the page and it'll start federating/updating from another instance. Is there a way to set this to only happen on refresh? It a bit of a pain when your feed is regularly quickly expanding from the top. It makes scrolling a pita.

let me know other questions that might be useful
- Can I check if I want to use the same image repeatedly for each post I need to re-upload it each time to get a unique url? as using the same one seems to make the post invisible within the same community?
  
  I think you need to re-upload each time. But why would you want to reuse the same image each time?
- Trying to understand how to add a new community in jerboa. I search for something but cannot find the community. Also once inside a community how do you searxh within it like say I'm in a community that's about food how would I searxh within it for steak?
  
  I think you to ask ina specific community for jerboa.
  
  For now the app only searches communities that have already been federated. Until someone fixes that you need to use the website to find new communities and search through posts.

Hello, this is my first comment. I hope this works. Also, can we ping someone by doing: @dbzer0 ?
- I believe it will ping someone, but you have to let lemmy do the linking with autocomplete

So I'm using the progressive web app for Lemmy , which does not have a URL bar. How am I supposed to subscribe to a community if it's not showing up in search? It is way too much work to find and subscribe to communities

Huh, didn't realize this instance was SFW only before I signed up. If I'm browsing a verifiably NSFW community on another instance, I can still participate as long as I'm not breaking their rules, right? Sorry if that's a really stupid question.
- The part about the rules is more about the behaviour. I.e if anyone goes and is a bigot somewhere else they're gonna get banned
  
  Thank you for the clarifications.
  bigot
  Wasn't planning on it!
- Yes that's fine

I have several accounts for all the different lemmy sites, i dont know if that was a good idea, and im probably gonna use this as my main.

I'm trying this sole android app in playstore for Lenmy and so far it's working fine. I did have to register thru browser tho.

New to lemmy system. Trying to subscribe to You Should Know@lemmy.world via communities from dbzer0 says " Subscribe Pending " . Is this because of dbzer0 settings or because of lemmy.world?
- either or both. It's a bit random. Try to press it again and resubscribe.
  
  Went to the community pages and clicked the pending button and subscribe again that worked, thanks

Im trying to find UKpolitics magazine on kbin.social
Ive tried the following on search page "UKpolitics" - [No result] "UKpolitics@kbin.social" - [No result] "!UKpolitics@kbin.social" - [No result]
Am i doing something wrong?
- kbin has shut off their federation.

So I'm logged into dbzer0 and I've managed to subscribe to ELI5 on kbin. When I go to https://kbin.social/m/ELI5 I can see posts etc but when I try to access the page from dbzer0 it's not showing any posts or subscribers, what gives?
- It takes a bit for the federation to kick in
  
  I really have a hard time finding stuff. Like Privacy sub, MeIRL, Dank Memes, just the important stuff? If there is nothing similar, how do I start one?

Do we have a decent Lemmy app for iOS yet?
- Disclaimer: spent <20 minutes looking this up for myself.
  From what I could gather, all the iOS apps are either in invite-only mode via Test Flight or were under closed development. “Mlem” is supposedly full, while “Memmy” sounded like they still had slots open.
  The other option, which I’ve been using, is using it as a progressive web app. In Safari: share page -> add to home screen. It’s a nicer form of the web page, but it’s nothing like a native app.
  Hopefully someone else can chime in to share more

Do I need to create a profile for each instance? No! Each instance can access each other instance, unless it’s been defederated because its admins are toxic (this is why I told you not to join right-wing instances earlier).
me who has created 4 different accounts in different instances...
Well shit now what do I do with this?
- Nothing, just keep using the domain you prefer

An idea to make it simple is make a folder in your favorites bar called lemmy and add all your favorite communities in it

Hello again,
So I am trying to subscribe to the Lakers community:
!lakers@lemmy.world
But for whatever reason it's not letting me or coming up in search. Anybody know what's going on?
Edit: after posting the link here, I was able to sign up. Weird. Still won't bring up the instance from search however.
Edit again:
Can't seem to get this one to with either. Strange. Not sure why. Tried wefwef, jerboa, and connect
!fantasyfootball@fanaticus.social
- Thank god for your comment lol I was having the same issue but could get there from the !lakers@lemmy.world link 🫠
- It seems like you’re the first one here to search and subscribe to it. When I searched for it, it came up immediately. At this point, it could be a caching issue, but it’s hard to say when I’m not seeing the same issue.
  Looking forward to the next season!

83 comments