How did Lemmy.world become more popular than Lemmy.ml?

Lemmy.ml actively asked people to sign up elsewhere. They have a small server and aren't meant to be a general instance.
Lemmy.world is run by people who have one of the larger Mastodon servers, and actively advertises to be open and neutral.
- It’s also the devs server and they have Lemmy code to write. Can’t be spending time moderating.
  
  And the other stuff
- It's also presented as the default on most apps, I believe
  
  That’s a big one. People tend to go with the default
- Not to mention that signups on .ml is closed so you can't join anyway
- This is the correct answer. The devs have been saying this for years but new users often weren't aware of this and saw it as the default instance. It's good to see that's changed.
- They’re not neutral though. They’ve already started defederating instances with users whose opinions they don’t like.
  
  Well I said they advertise, not that they are.

I think most of it has to do with that lemmy.world has better hardware than other instances. The admin Rudd has a lot of experience running federated services as well. So it may be his first rodeo lemmy-wise but not hosting a federated service with a large user-base.
So when a lot of smaller instances started getting overwhelmed and stopping signups, lemmy.world was going strong without the performance issues that other instances might see.
That along with the fact that NSFW content is allowed makes lemmy.world a good alternative for Reddit refugees looking for something stable with a similar set of rules as well.
I myself joined lemmy.ml at first, then beehaw.org when lemmy.ml asked everyone to spread out, and finally found home on lemmy.world because I didn’t really like how downvotes are disabled on beehaw. Not to mention the defederation that beehaw has done recently. Although I can understand and appreciate why they’ve done that.
- Indeed. Even though I'm using the Lemmy.ca instance to distribute the load, I use Ruud's Mastodon instance.
- I've signed up for a bunch of them and still haven't decided where I want to make my main. I know that annoys some people but I love it because it means I get to have a choice! I think I'll have a Lemmy world account since they're big, buti also want to find a good smaller community to have slower more meaningful conversations. I hope the Lemmy protocol adds support for account linking some day.
  
  I’ve signed up for a bunch of them and still haven’t decided where I want to make my main.
  Same story for me, although I keep coming back to Lemmy.world in the first instance, at least for the Lemmy instances (also explored kbin, tildes and squabbles). Mixed feelings about Lemmy.ml as I think there’s virtue being on the instance the devs run as it seems unlikely to go away, although there has been the talks around political views. From the political side, I do hang out more often than not in tech spaces though so I doubt it’d actually impact anything I’d want to engage in discussion about.
  Also have an account with Beehaw which was my first but silly as it may seem, the name of that one puts me off a bit. “Lemmy.world” sounds like something I can more easily communicate to a friend verbally, for whatever that is worth.
  
  I have a world and an Australian account as I am in Australia.
- I've moved once so far, but it wasn't as straightforward forward as I'd hoped. Do you know of a simple way to migrate (export/import) communities and settings across instances?
  
  There's a userscript somewhere. Check !plugins

I signed up on the 12th, after spending a little time comparing with the information I had. My thought process was:
I was uncomfortable with the fact that .ml was hosted in Malaysia
I thought a larger instance might mean it sticks around longer, but didn't really want to be on the largest (which .ml was)
Beehaw seemed otherwise a good fit, but their policies seemed too restrictive
.world seemed to have liberal policies, allowed NSFW, was large but not largest, and was hosted in a country that didn't worry me
- I was uncomfortable with the fact that .ml was hosted in Malaysia
  Not to discount your other points, but lemmy.ml isn't hosted in Malaysia. The .ml TLD is for Mali, a country in Africa. And the site is hosted by OVH, on servers in France.
  
  Wow, thanks for that, I really thought .ml was Malaysia. While I had some mild concerns about Malaysia, isn't Mali a shit show as far as human rights? If the servers are in France, that mitigates a lot, but I think I have more concerns about Mali.
  
  It's intended to stand for Marxist - Leninist, is what I heard. I didn't want to support a tankie thing which is why I went to world.
  
  I don't think it stands for either, I saw somewhere that it stands for Marx-Lenin since the founders are communists
- I love how World and Blahaj are lgbt friendly and anti authoritarianism, unlike .ml.
- Can I ask what worries you about it being hosted on Malaysia?
  
  I'm not any authority, and I could be just ignorant, but my understanding is that the Malaysian government makes liberal use of laws against sedition and that govern communication to silence dissent. There was an artist who has been jailed a couple times this year for political satire. That kind of atmosphere doesn't seem like a good place to host communities that want free discussion.
  
  It's decidedly not hosted in malaysia. I'm also unclear why that would be a problem though.
- This is pretty much the same thought pattern I had, however I made my account here after Beehaw defederated and have since decided not to use it anymore. Lemmy.world reminds me so much of the older style internet and forums and it’s a breath of fresh air.

Why did I create a Lemmy world account as opposed to beehaw or ml? Because it's the first one I saw. Because it doesn't matter. Because I don't know what ml stands for. Because Lenny world said "general use." Because I didn't have to fill out an application. Because I can still interact with everything else, and again, it doesn't matter.
- And ml is?
  
  the national tld for Mali, but the lemmy ml owners chose it for a "Marxist-Leninist" reference. no kidding.
  fun fact - they* also deny genocides committed by (even nominally) communist regimes.
  *a lot of them, and even those who don't actively, still stick with the goons who do.
  
  Motherland if I'm not mistaken.
  
  The top level domain of the Metherlands
- I joined because lemmy.sdf.org is often inaccessible. And also because lemmy.sdf.org blocked lemmy.world, so why not go straight to the source?
- Seconded

I left Beehaw because the defederated from instances where half my communities were at. Ended up on Lemmy world because they had my favorites.
- I started at BeeHaw because they have a lot of cool communities. I didn't want to write an essay (I'm exaggerating ...a little) to sign up for an account so I ended up on sh.itjust.works.
  
  Haha same. I started at beehaw but am having a hard time manually adding communities that I want to keep in that feed since they aren't onfederated instances. So I moved to sh.ithust.works and reddthat.
  I'll probably keep beehaw, I like a lot of what it has to offer and it's cool for it to be a specific corner for me. But one of the others will probably become my default home
  
  Shit just works, yo.
- At this point I don’t know how I got here and where I’m going and I’m too afraid to ask

I went for the most generic "official" sounding name.
- Underrated comment. I picked it because I had no idea what I was doing and it sounded all-encompassing and I wanted access to everything. I didn't even know what an instance was. I just picked it because it sounded like a good guess to get access to all of Lemmy.
  
  Yeah same. But from .world we're able to access all the other instances right?

- Fun fact: those tankies are also the developers of Lemmy overall… sigh
  
  The lemmy devs have said they dont bring politics into their dev work and are happy to work with anyone.
  Lemmy is also an open source application that can be forked at anytime.
  It's also using the activity pub protocol which means that any application can interact with the entire fediverse.
  You can use kbin if you are still uncomfortable with lemmy then you can sign up to a kbin instance and view all the content you would view from a lemmy instance.
  
  Kbin is an alternative. Totally different software.
  
  As long as it doesn't influence how they build the platform, them having absurd opinions isn't much of a problem for the users.
  
  Hence why I'm on Kbin. Ernest is so much better as a dev.
  
  Shitty people tend to clump together.
- I see no political posts on that instance. Might be that politics are banned on the instance?
  
  When I first can to Lemmy there was a good bit of it, I think since then it’s been drowned out by all the less extreme folks.
- I’m okay with the devs being communists as it means they aren’t likely to sell out to corporate interests!

As someone signing up for lemmy.world, my reasons were:
It sounds official or at least less obscure than ".ml" or "sh.itjust.works"
It sounded inclusive (we're all part of the world, so to speak)
It was in the list of default instances of Connect for Lemmy
Otherwise, I didn't give much though to which instance to pick.
- Someone posted it, maybe in r/piracy, and I signed up. Didn’t give any thought to which instance I was signing up for because I didn’t understand the fediverse well enough yet lol.
- Same - sounds better, like .com vs .io and similar.
- Someone posted it, maybe in r/piracy, and I signed up. Didn’t give any thought to which instance I was signing up for because I didn’t understand the fediverse well enough yet lol.
- Someone posted it, maybe in r/piracy, and I signed up. Didn’t give any thought to which instance I was signing up for because I didn’t understand the fediverse well enough yet lol.
- Someone posted it, maybe in r/piracy, and I signed up. Didn’t give any thought to which instance I was signing up for because I didn’t understand the fediverse well enough yet lol.

The developer for RIF told me to come here. I figured that I should trust the person that created the app that I've used for hundreds of hours.
- Same. Like the parent of a child grown up, RIF has been forced to let us go, but not without influencing our direction lol
- My exact reason. Had the popup show.
  Then I created my own instance
- I was already playing around with Lemmy, and after a few weeks I checked back into RIF and saw his post, so I came over to .World.

I am new like most of us. When I signed up I had no idea what an instance was. To me the name Lemmy.world sounded like it was more general and therefore would have more content so I picked that one.
- Yeah the name sounded the most inviting. It's Lemmy... That's the name of what I want... And it's world, that sounds like a generic description of "everything". But at the end of the day I just clicked a link in a comment. Seemed to me to be the more popular one suggested.

Mainly because signups were closed on Lemmy.ml and they were not on Lemmy.world.
- Ya, I applied for beehaw.org and didn't get access after a few days and lemmy.world was open so made an account there. Not much else to it.
- This is pretty much the answer. The number of people who actually made the decision based on "reasons" is very few.
- Exactly this. I tried numerous times on lemmy.ml and never got an email back for the verification, so I just gave up. World is the next logical choice. Since beehaw is already defederating, if you're coming to the fediverse, joining an instance that's already isolating itself, even if it has good reasons, doesn't seem appealing. So lemmy.world it is. Tho here I am using my kbin mostly because then I have kbin, mastodon, and Lemmy integration all in one.

- Same here!

I was overwhelmed by the options of instances. Then Reddit is Fun had a pop up message suggesting to go to lemmy.world. I trusted Reddit is Fun so I followed its suggestion.
- Plus it's easier to say and communicate "lemmy world"
  
  Funny how a lot of us originally found Reddit through watermarks on pics on Ebaum's World. Maybe worth flooding reddit with pics watermarked lemmy.world
- I open today rif accidently and it started to work again. Logged out mind you. Got a weird message with instructions to log back into my Reddit account. Was able to browse Reddit as a guest on the meanwhile. Didn't want to log back in as fuck Reddit.
  Did rif sell to Reddit? Couldn't blame him if he did but all the same I am leaving. Just can't see how rif would still work without Reddit owning his servers. Anyone know what is going on?
  
  Reddit wasn't interested in buying any of the 3rd party apps. Since you know, apparently they're so great at making apps that there were a dozen third party ones that people preferred.
  
  I don't know, but it might be that Reddit is only limiting API keys for authenticated sessions. That way the anonymous requests still work up to the free API rate limits.

Lemmy.ml are tankies anyway so, good

Regardless of the how, I think it's really cool that the top instance isn't run by the devs. Really shows off the power and appeal of decentralized services.

- Does any of that make you think it's SUPPOSED to be new user friendly?
  They don't have to be. They also don't have to be federated.
  
  Have people not learned anything from their reddit experience? Beehaw is extremely massive fed flags. Its literally the same exact toxic behavior that the uber mods that hoarded subreddits and got off from power would have.
  Its not a good look and im shocked people support it...

Probably because its name sounds official and it allows quick registration while others need approval (some never approves you).
Turns out it’s the right choice as the admin seems very active in updates and fixes. Lemmy.world also has a more chill homey vibes. At least that’s what I observed so far.

By keeping sign-ups open, mostly.
Lemmy.ml, to my understanding, was always meant to be a pilot instance from the devs of lemmy. Beehaw is kind of its own forum. There is also sh.itjust.works, but that has been caught up in some federation drama, and I don't think people like the name. Lemmy.world has been the right server at the right time to absorb everyone and I guess they have been able to keep up with sign-ups. Kudos to them.
- federation drama
  Not really. We had a thedonald community for like 5 hours before it was banned, and a tiny number of people started shouting about how terrible we are because we don't read the minds of people joining.
  Also, we're trying to run this instance democratically, and the first vote is a pretty easy no-brainer: defederate a hate speech instance. Not really "drama" as much as everyone has an opinion.
  You can check out the discussion on the agora, the vast majority of the discussion is very respectful.
  EDIT: Discussion I'm talking about is here.
  
  I'm talking about on other instances, who are trying to figure out if they are defederating.

When I had to choose I thought .world means, it‘s the central, most important place to be. Didn‘t know what the other abbreviations meant. Didn‘t care.
- They're just top Level Domains (TLDs). It's like .com, doesn't mean anything outside of a name usually.
- The other abbreviations are simply website domains. FYI the ".ml" from the mail lemmy dev means Marxist-Leninist, because they are tankies.
  
  ml is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Mali. Introduced 29 September 1993 Intended use Entities connected with Mali Actual use Sees some use in Mali and for some websites about machine learning. Use is relatively rare elsewhere. Registration restrictions Yes, for free domains only
  
  How do we know that? Have they said so?

Lemmy.ml had sign ups closed. Behaw required a short story or something to get accepted. Lemmy.world was accepting sign-ups wasn't hosted somewhere shady and had active communities. It was a pretty easy choice. Assuming the admins have a pledge drive or something to host on AWS/GCP so we can get better burst capabilities I'd love to donate.
- Donations to keep the lemmy.world instance up-and-running can be made through:
  https://opencollective.com/mastodonworld or https://patreon.com/mastodonworld
  @ruud does good work, and he's a HELL of a good admin. I'd recommend that we all contribute in order to have a place to gather. I've been looking at the various solutions to the Reddit conundrum and, personally, I think that lemmy.world is our best bet at this point...
  EDIT: I have no affiliation; I just think that we should pay it back however we can. It costs money to run servers and, even if we just "buy him a coffee," every little bit helps IMO.
  
  @Ruud has been great and Lemmy.world has very transparent so I will throw some cash their way. The mastodon.world blog is transparent with costs and financials which I appreciate.
  I would love to see if they have a roadmap of how they plan to address the current surge of traffic or if they plan to just wait it out with their current VPS.
  
  @Ruud has been great and Lemmy.world has very transparent so I will throw some cash their way. The mastodon.world blog is transparent with costs and financials which I appreciate.
  I would love to see if they have a roadmap of how they plan to address the current surge of traffic or if they plan to just wait it out with their current VPS.

I joined world before I knew what an instance was. When the RIF app shut down, the developer recommended lemmy.world. I honestly, thought it was a single website.
- Samesies

I think lemmy.world js the only one of the three that are still accepting new sign ups.
- Lemmy.ca is, but you have to write a blurb. It's a filter to keep spammers, bad actors, and bots down. Seems to be working though -- it's #8 on the population list and growing even though it is "closed".
  Charts: https://the-federation.info/platform/73
- There are lots of instances accepting sign-ups -- here's a good overview: https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances

Rif sent me to lemmy.world to make an account. Didnt know the deal here and still kinda iffy but im getting the idea.
- Just think of each separate site (AKA 'instances', like lemmy.world, sh.it.just.works) as different competing versions of Reddit. All with their own different subreddits.
  The key difference though is that these instances are all partnered together ('federated') because they are running on the same technology so you can see posts from the other instances.
  
  I'm still trying to wrap my head around this. If I understand correctly, it functionally shouldn't matter which instance you use, because the experience is supposed to be the same across them all?
  Does it matter that I'm on world? Is there a reason I might prefer a different instance? Something I'm missing?
  
  Do you also see the same comments across all instances or are those local only?

For me honestly mostly the name. World. Seems like a default instance to me. What does ml even mean?
- The name absolutely matters. Federation blah blah doesn't matter what instance blah blah and all that.
  But regular people will flock to a "normal" or "official" sounding name and url. I won't be surprised if lemmy.world becomes the defacto instance
  
  Yeah going forward I'm going to just recommend lemmy.world to people, straight to the point and avoid a lot of the confusion over what instance to pick
- That's why I went there as well. Seemed like the default.
  
  I also chose mine because the name (haha funny ArchLinux meme - iusearchlinux.fyi) . But also because it didn't sound like a default instance.
  Main reason is, you gotta spread the load, the original purpose of federation is to share the costs so we can keep things affordable and prevent enshittification - not to dump it all on one instance, otherwise we might as well just turn Lemmy into a monolithic structure like Reddit, like YouTube, like Facebook, like Instagram, like Twitter and so on and so forth. We don't want to outgrow donation funding. And we don't want to make one instance "too big to block" lest it starts to enshittify or get greedy and gain too much power over the rest.
  In my opinion, no instance should ever be considered the "default" of any federated platform.
- lol same
- That and beehive whatever sounded like a niche community and not a good launching point
- Marxism–Leninism (at least that's what I made of it after hearing about the admins being tankies)

Happens when you are one of the few allowing signups while others are blocking them.

RIF specifically directed me here. I didn't join one before that because I didn't know which one was "best". I honestly don't care which one I joined, I just wanted to be on the one everyone else is on. I know this mindset somewhat defeats part is the purpose of the federated communities. I don't care about that in the slightest I just want a clone of Reddit.
Also "world" sounds more generic/standard than ml. Most people probably think it's a military website or something.
You'll probably find 90%+ of casuals are in the same boat as me.
- Casual here, and had the exact same situation lol.
- Same, though ML made me think "Machine Learning", and that it was a more tech-focused place. This was before I realised they they're all (broadly) the same, and assumed that they were groupings of similar topics like an old web-ring.
  
  Hell I thought it meant Marxist Leninist
- Ditto

Lemmy.ml grew too large during the early days of June. They started to recommend people to NOT sign up for lemmy.ml and find another instance. The next instance that stood out was beehaw which rejected signups if they didn't like your answer as to why you wanted to join. After that, lemmy.world stood out the most.
- Also because the political leanings of the lemmy.ml mods offended a lot of former redditors, including myself.
  
  The lemmy devs are hardcore communists
  
  And why exactly did it do that? Their political stance has no part in the development or the management of the instance.

.world is a catchy top-level domain
- It's true. Before I migrated to lemmy.ca, I first subscribed to lemmy.world thinking it was the "official" instance.
  
  Is there an easy way to move my account over without just making a new account and just manually reaubbing to everything?
- They were also running on a beefier server. On my first week I tried several instances, but lemmy.world was the most consistently up that was also in jerboa.
- it's fitting too since Lemmy is soon gonna take over the world

Lemmy.ml basically shut up shop, redirecting people to other instances, because they were struggling, and the developers never really intended it to be as big as an instance as it has become.
Their registrations are still closed, so even if you wanted to join, that is not possible at the moment.

Idk about other people, but I don't really know how the instances work and the lemmy.world instance name seems the least abstract. Beehaw was confusing because it's not called lemmy so idk if it's a different thing or what, and idk what .ml means or stands for. Lemmy.world just looks like it's the default lemmy instance to me as a dunce who doesn't know how lemmy works.
- Well put! I'm still very confused about "instances," and the way people talk about them makes it seem like you need to sign up for each one? But that can't be right, that would be way too confusing! Right? Lol.
  Lemmy.world also seems like the best place to ask questions. Everyone I've encountered has been very helpful, and I see a lot of people talking about how positive the community is. So I'm trying to just sit back and enjoy the ride!
  
  Imagine phone companies. An instance is like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile or any other provider.
  If you want to talk to your friends, it doesn't really matter what instance they're on.
  A Verizon customer can still call a AT&T customer no problem. A Verizon customer doesn't need to also sign up for AT&T to do that. It all just.. works.
  People talking about different instances is like people talking about different phone companies. "Verizon's coverage is better" or "T-Mobile has better support" or that kinda thing.
  
  I signed up on lemmy.ca yet you signed up on lemmy.world. We can interact though.
  This community we are interacting on is in lemmy.world's instance but since our two instances are federated (work together like many others) we can interact in general and through any community in our instances or other instances that are federated with ours.
  
  And are usernames unique across instances or can anyone copy anyone else's username by signing up somewhere else with the same name or just making a new instance?
  
  I see nobody else explained, so I might as well.
  Each instance has their own users, communities and rules. A user can subscribe to any community on any instance that's not blocked. Sometimes it's important to know the rules of the instance the community is on, because different things are allowed.
  If I'm a user on lemmy.srv.eco, for example, I can still subscribe to any lemmy.world community and post/comment/vote just like a lemmy.world user.
  The only real downside of being on a smaller instance is that you'll have to do a bit more work actively subscribing to things. An instance only pulls in a community if at least one user subscribes to it. On a big server, your all is very full of communities as there are more people subscribing to more diverse things. On a smaller instance, you'll need to do that yourself.
  The advantage of being on a smaller instance is that with less load on the server, it'll work much faster.
- Fellow Dunce here, exact same thought process for me.
  
  Not sure what's a dunce, but I guess I'm one too as I concur
- Similar for me -- but add onto it, when I joined, lemmy.world was the only one of the top 3 most populated instances (with lemmy.ml and beehaw) that had open registration

I wasn’t able to signup to lemmy.ml the best for me was to signup on lemmy.world and I get my journey started 😃
- Same

Idk about other people, but I don't really know how the instances work and the lemmy.world instance name seems the least abstract. Beehaw was confusing because it's not called lemmy so idk if it's a different thing or what, and idk what .ml means or stands for. Lemmy.world just looks like it's the default lemmy instance to me as a dunce who doesn't know how lemmy works.
- I think you nailed it. It comes down to usability and user experience. Migrating from Reddit and not knowing shit about fuck, I obviously choose the largest sounding instance (.world). I still haven’t understood the whole thing yet, but the novelty is exciting and I’m willing to learn. Mass adoption needs a more streamlined experience though.
  
  Signups were also open and easier on Lemmy.world
  
  Honestly going for the 'largest' instance is kind of ~~dumb~~ naive. Smaller, faster instances provide a much better experience. Bigger is not better in the fediverse.
  The whole point is to decentralise power away from a single instance, CEO or monopoly. If you're on a small instance you can still see all the content you want from all the other instances and you might even get a meaningful say in how your experience develops.
  We don't want to build another Reddit we want to build an alternative that is better structured.
  
  I signed up on lemmy.ca but their sublemmys aren't as populated as here. Plus jerboa let's me pick different instances.
  
  I too do not know shit about fuck.
- LOL Reminds me of how Chlamydia sounds like a beautiful name for a baby girl.
- Ya it has a great domain name and didn't require an email when I signed up at least. I'm thinking about spinning up my own instance on AWS though since the lag and "bad gateway" stuff is annoying.

My leading theory is that both lemmy.world and lemmy.ml were in a list of 5+ “recommended” communities, and “world” is the only recognizable word that implies all-inclusivity. And now that the world population is so high, more people will assume that is the “default/correct” community.
I joined world because I figured it was a global community, and did not want to limit myself before I even knew what I was joining into. I may end up making 2 or 3 accounts just to have access to separate, possibly defederated, communities.
- When I saw the Lemmy posts making the rounds on Reddit it was all for Lemmy.World, probably why its getting more pop.
- I have active accounts in other instances to mimic the multi functionality, where I joined different communities.
- this is spot on. that's exactly how it went for me and probably most others.
- lemmy.world is defederated from beehaw, which is why I'm not on it.
  
  I chose Lemmy.ee largely because they are federated with every major instance.
  
  Precisely why I may end up with a multi-Lemmy

You can't create communities on Beehaw and they are abusing defederation, no wonder it's not growing. I don't know about lemmy.ml
- I used to be on Beehaw a lot, I have never seen a single troll or hate speech coming from lemmy.world. Being too extreme in protecting your users has the opposite of the desired effect
  
  Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. -Hanlon
  Beehaive is not defederating because they’re censorious assholes, it’s because their mod tools/skill are not up to the task.
  
  Something being within your rights doesn't automatically mean it's good.
- "abusing" defederation lol... They're using it precisely as it's intended my guy.

Rif user here. When then 429s started I clicked on the RIF announcements part of the app which had a link to lemmy.world - and here I am.

They weren't selective about who is joining (unless people were absolute douches) and the community is pretty much nice to get along with.

lemmy.ml really lagged in the early days and the first post on lemmy.world was /u/Ruud bragging about new hardware and how it’s all running smoothly with the influx
- This was my reasoning. Sounded like .ml was having trouble and lemmy.world was advertising their upgraded server and seemed to working good so it's what I went with.

Beehaw defederates like it's going out of style, Lemmy.ml doesn't allow criticism of the CCP. Lemmy.world seems much more stable and neutral.
- Alright guys the software has this defederate feature, now you do you but I suggest thinking of it like a break-glass-in-ca--
  <Beehaw swings hammer>

When I was joining ~a month ago the situation was very different
I tried lemmy.one - had some issues joining
I saw beehaw.org - no downvotes - not my jam
I saw lemmygrad.ml - too political for my tastes
I saw sopuli.xyz - most of local posts and server maintenance posts were in language I don't speak - maybe I can find something fitting me more?
I saw lemmy.world - small but not looking like private, in Europe, so pings should be ok and description seemed fine
I also saw lemmy.ml - seemed like the main instance with the most users - having some understanding of federation from Mastodon migration I decided to spread the load...
And here we are :D

When Lemmy.ml was still on top I initially tried to sign up and was unable to. They could not handle the influx when the first migration occurred during the blackout days.
Lemmy.world on the other hand worked just fine.
- during the blackout days>
  As a refugee, I feel like learning more about lemmy lore.
  
  I think they mean the reddit blackout, so its shared history.
- Same. I do like the communities in lemmy.ml but says I didn't answer questions and registration is closed now..oh well.

Lemmy.world allows creating communities, where as lemmy.ml doesn't. For me that was a big reason why I moved from lemmy.ml to lemmy.world. (I made this account after beehaw defederated lemmy.world. I would have made this my default account, but sadly there still seems to be some communication issues between instances. I have some communities on lemmy.world, but I don't see the content sync properly here.)
- Beehaw unlinked from Lemmy.world? Yeah will have to go smoke my beehaw account then if I can.
  
  From what I recall (from all of 8 days ago) Beehaw said it was because lemmy.world allowed unrestricted signups and therefore was at risk from bots or (i guess) unsavory people, while Beehaw was trying to have a curated membership to be 'safe'.
  
  It's temporary until there are better mod tools - beehaw is supposed to be a safe space but they cannot keep their promise when federating with everyone else due to the amount of posts.
- They must have just disabled it because I created my community, /c/ereader_community@lemmy.ml on lemmy.ml

Any lemm.ee gang?
- I joined lemm.ee, but on my first day (3 days ago) lemm.ee was having significant issues with basic things like image upload or creating a community. Because of that, I moved over to lemmy.world "temporarily", but now I have more content here and am likely to just stay. I would have liked to have been on a smaller instance though for sure.
  
  Yeah I feel ya, I have an account on the lemmy.world instance too. I feel like lemm.ee is faster in general, but the image upload limit does suck for this instance
- I have an account on .world but lemm.ee is a great name and the admin who runs the instance sounds like a cool guy. Plus .world is already way overloaded so I was looking for another instance.
- I've been here for almost a month now, lemm.ee represent
- I joined lemm.ee to see beehaw content again (and to take load off of .world) and all of the posts in hot and active are .world anyway. Oh well.
- Represent

Sync for Reddit suggested it, so here I am.
- Same here!

I chalk it up to the name. Your name is your central piece of branding, and can be used to your advantage. To me, when I wanted to join what I thought would probably be the largest lemmy instance, I didn't look at the stats or rules. I just looked at the names of all the not-tiny ones. This one clearly signified to me that the owner intends to become a very large Instance.
To most people, it will simply sound cool and be very easy to remember. Both of those are very important points.
Look at the automotive industry. Performance is desirable in a vehicle, certainly, but according to the market, does it seem more desirable than looking cool and having enough cup holders?

i checked out three or four instances and this one seemed to have the least amount of bullshit to deal with

Both of those instances tend to be fairly censorship heavy, so people who just want to have a chat will be less interested in joining an instance that's going to shut down a conversation that they're enjoying.
Before all this stuff with reddit went down, most of the instances on the threadiverse we're fairly censorship heavy, and so people didn't really bother coming over from the main fediverse. With the establishment of new and more liberal instances and the infusion of new users, the potential of Lemmy has really been unleashed.
I've been really happy to see it.

in my case I couldn't sign up to ML it just kept timing out. this one didn't.

The goodbye message on RIF pointed to lemmy.world so that's why I'm here.

I was introduced to lemmy.world thru RIF. Ive been trying to figure it out ever since
- Hey dude, berserk!

I heard of Beehaw first but I got rejected twice when trying to make an account, so I tried World next and here I am.
Also don't understand how things work, so wasn't really sure what lemmy.ml was but I read it didn't matter where you created an account so I just stuck with World 🤷

At this point I don’t know how I got here and where I’m going and I’m too afraid to ask

I didn’t really know what I was doing, and it sounded the most “official”.
- Paradoxal regarding Lemmy.ml is the founder's instance 😁🫠

I actually started on lemmy.ml but it was always having issues so I went to lemmy.world and had better luck. Not saying lemmy.ml is bad I’m just saying it wasn’t working when I tried!
- Same… signed up for lemmy.ml back in 2019. Didn’t use it much since there wasn’t much content being posted. After Reddit shit itself, I came back to my account and was noticing some severe slowdowns and a high error rate. Moving to lemmy.world has been better, though it also has been getting crushed. The admin seems more committed to scaling up though.
  
  In before lemmy.ml logins are sold for money

I came here from Apollo for Reddit. There’s a web app called wefwef that is a lemmy client that literally looks and works EXACTLY like Apollo. It even has apollo json import to find similar communities. Anyway, .world is the first server listed in the list so it’s where I registered.
- I’ve been using iOS safari to browse Lemmy (added to home screen) and wefwef looks good. Switched and thanks for recommending.
  From its Github, native notification is on the roadmap. That will be fantastic.