2y ago

We've grown an absolute shit ton of people the past day, insanely nuts to see how active World is.

462 comments

You all might not be aware, but I think Rudd started this server only at the beginning of June for funsies, probably only expecting a couple of hundred users.
Then, of course, came Reddit API-calypse. Now, here we are barely 4 weeks later, almost 80k users on the instance. From nothing, to a respectable chuck of the fediverse, just that fast. Pretty amazing.
- True, I opened my account June 1st on Beehaw, lemmy.world didn't exist yet. But I had to open an account on LW when BH defederated them...
  
  I'm happy to see .world growing for this reason. There has to be a neutral ground for everyone. The gatekeeping of communities like Beehaw are fine for them, but in order for the lemmy to grow, it has to be shapeable by the community. Moderation screening, content rigidity, and walled gardens are antithetical to the type of social network that people are looking for as a replacement to Reddit. The community has to be allowed to make the place its own.
  Edit: For the record, I'm perfectly aware they plan to refederate once they get their "moderation" tools. I just question what tools they deem sufficient to permit refederation. Moderation tools on Lemmy will be extremely powerful thanks to votes being public, and I don't trust admins of some of these instances to be responsible or fair with them, or to only use them on the most toxic elements. Petty, groundless shadowbanning and admin "curation" is going to plague Lemmy going forward, mark my words. That's why we need some neutral ground.
  
  Can you (or anyone else) explain the circumstances around them defederating? More specifically, why would they do that, and what exactly is their benefit?
- Make sure you throw him a dollar or two on patreon if you can. We don't want this all to come crashing down around us or be loaded down by ads.
  
  I was going to ask, is there a place where I can go in like pitch in some money or something to help with the server? I want to keep this place running and I want to do what I can to help
- Kbin didn't even exist a couple months ago. I can only imagine the pressure to get it polished and ready for the migration.
- It’ll be very interesting to see how the scalability shakes out over the next several months and beyond and what sort of growing pains there end up being with a system like this growing, especially so quickly. I’m a new user here just regularly reminding myself to be patient when things aren’t always snappy.
- For real? It was suggested by some people to me because it was the biggest; and that was the day of the API switch. To have only begun at the start of the month is wild.
- Yeah, the growth of world, ml, beehaw, and Lemmy in general over the last month is pretty incredible. I'm on five instances. And they've all grown incredibly.
- The timing sure as hell worked out!

Guess I will make my first comment. Hi everyone :)

Keep in mind, dear folks, simply coming ain't enough. Be sure to stay and visit often, otherwise the rich assholes win ;)
- And vote! And comment!
  
  And post
  
  Smash that like button and subscribe!
- "Stay awhile and listen!"
- I wanna shitpost more but why can't I upload pictures? Is the server at it's limit or something?
  
  Lemmy doesn’t like jpegs for some ungodly reason
- I’m here every day!
- "Why are you scrolling gonewild again?" "freedom depends on it" "oh. Carry on, I guess"

This is not a good thing. Part of the problem is third-party apps like Sync and other Fediverse advocates that direct Reddit users to sign up on only one instance, lemmy.world. This is understandable to keep things simple for the Redditors but it hurts lemmy.world (cost and performance-wise) and the Fediverse as a whole (centralization) to have a lot of accounts on one instance. I hope lemmy.world can make an announcement or guide to encourage users to spread out to more instances.
- I think another reason too is that .world is run by Ruud who is a trusted actor in the space (he already runs Mastodon.world, a large mastodon instance), and so many (including me) probably felt it would be a safe harbor and not likely to get shut down or run poorly.
  
  Maybe ony Lemmy.world's registration page thay can list other instances that they trust and endorse.
  
  I stumbled into lemmy disoriented and just went with lemmy.ca because I always want to support 'local' domains. I'm surprised people go for for something like '.world' tbh. Although, I think your logic makes sense I also know how little people read and its safer to say people just signed up for the instance that was the path of least resistance (low application threshold, links guiding them in, etc)
- For anyone that's using Lemmy.world and wants to lessen their burden on the admins, look for a Lemmy instance closer to you (in the physical world) using this site:
  https://fediverse.observer/map
  Sign up on that instance, sign in on your Lemmy app, sort based on All, and you should be able to see the same content as if you were on Lemmy.world!
  
  Me just now - Oh that's a good idea! (Looks up the instances near me and sees the names) Oh, that's right. I live in conservative hell. :(
  I'll go a little further and find a less crazy instance...
  
  I only have Mastodon instances near me. Can Mastodon instances browse Lemmy instances?
  
  It would be helpful if they would allow you to filter by which instances allow sign ups. Unless I’m just not seeing it.
- I tried lemmy.world, it seemed to slow. So I signed up to lemmy.nz... much quicker and more relevant to me.
  
  Kia ora, Greetings from another lemmy.nz user!
  
  Similar-ish for me. Although not speed, just saw lemmy.ca and couldn't not support the 'local' domain. Understanding the fediverse enough to know I can still access it all (for the msot part) helped.
- Some degree of centralization is inevitable. I think it may be 2-4 main instances that people will predominately use.
  
  I think the best approach might be general subject-specific instances? Like, video.games with a main games community, meme community, then smaller communities for various games - or sports.social, with communities for each sport.
  I feel like we're going to end up with a particular community on a particular instance ending up as the "default" community for that subject, but it'd probably be better (in an ideal world) to have those on separate instances to maintain some degree of decentralization
  
  I know that it's inevitable, but the signup flow should try to weaken that effect instead of contribute to it. An example of how not to do it is Mastodon's old homepage which led to only one instance, mastodon.social, to "make onboarding easier".
- I think we're trusting them to crunch the numbers and simply shut off registration if it gets out of control. At least, I'd hope so.
  
  That wouldn't be good either if third parties are still funnelling new users to lemmy.world. They'll see a "sign ups closed" message, assume there is only one forum and it's closed, then go back to Reddit.
- Hi, I'm new here. How can I move to another instance? Is there a way to migrate, or do I just have to register another account somewhere else? Thanks :)
  
  I'm new, but slightly less so, and haven't yet found a way to migrate my account to a new instance. But it's also fairly trivial to just create a new account on another instance, especially when you don't yet have a ton of subscriptions or much of a reply history to lose. Lemmy doesn't have a running karma like reddit did, so it's not like you're even losing fake internet points in the process.
  
  I don't think you can migrate, since if that was possible your "karma" would also be able to move with you. People have been asking for that recently, but others have been saying that the Lemmy software doesn't support that.
  I think the best thing you can do is make a new account on a new instance and look back at the rest of the fediverse from that instance.
  
  I think there was word that they were going to add that functionality at some point.
- I gotta give it to this instance tho. Right now it has the fastest loading time ive ever experienced on the internet in a long time. Dont browse too fast tho, or you might get rate limited.
- How is it possible to decentralise sign ups and see/searchable content and tabs? I used to be tech savvy but these days I struggle a bit. Turning into a dinosaur.
  
  I have a "when I stop being bad at web development" project idea for this, hopefully someone who has a development background can pick it up.
  The idea is an open-source onboarding portal that takes all Lemmy instances from awesome-lemmy-instances and Kbin instances from FediDB and lets their admins tag their instances with what the instance is focused on, maybe through a dedicated community or something. This list of instances and tags is public so instances can't cheat the system with fake tags or get secretly blacklisted just because the project maintainer disagrees with them.
  Users get directed to the portal and fill out a quiz with questions like "what are your hobbies", "do you prefer strict or lax moderation", and get matched to a list of the closest servers and recommended communities. There will also be a simple load balancing algorithm to make large instances less likely to be recommended. Of course, because it's open source, the algorithm and list of instances can be changed if someone wants to host their own portal.
  Basically, something like Spread Mastodon that covers the entire known network and not just a few of the largest instances that are approved by mastodon.social.
  
  Find instances on https://join-lemmy.org
  Find subs (communities) on https://browse.feddit.de
- At least, users of lemmy.world (and from different servers when we are at it) should be educated, so they feel relatively confident to switch and understand why this is important.
- Why not have a central hub though? I'd much prefer communities with higher populations

I have tried many forum-styled site over the years including the politically more questionable ones, and from what I see theres 3 hurdles a site need to pass in order to be good:
it needs good infrastructure, especially user interface (where 4ch, most forum, and now reddit fail)
it has some gatekeeping to filter out the "order consumers", but not too much that it drives user away, including having a toxic environment (where 4ch and .win fail)
it needs to have enough user generated content so thay theres actually reasons to use the site (whre most reddit clones fail)
from what I see lemmy has passed all the hurdles, and I have good hope the fediverse will stick around
- What is an order consumer
  
  In a community, whether if it’s online or your local club or just society in general, it requires admin/moderator/judges/law enforcement etc. to put in hard work to create rules and order so everything function smoothly. In a sense, the “order” they create here can be treated as a commodity.
  A user can do things that helps out the moderators and create order (e.g. taxes, volunteering), or break rules and cause chaos, which “consumes” order (e.g. criminal activity, riots, trolling etc.) . Order consumers refers to people who consumes more order than they create.
  E: typo
- What is .win fail?
  
  Where the_donald migrates to after they left reddit

I just really hope the engagement continues and grows.
- I'm pretty sure I've commented more within the last 2 days than my 8 years on Reddit lol. Engagement is definitely higher
  
  Yeah same. When the network errors level out it will be better as well. For example anytime I comment I see an error but it actually posts.
  
  Me too. Has more of a small town feel. Usually, because I’m in Australia, my comments are buried and never get replied to because the US is sleeping. Here, people are actually engaging. Loving it so far.
  Wish the sorting worked a little better in wefwef so I’m not scrolling past the same posts each time, but otherwise feels like the reddit I joined 16 years ago (or slightly thereafter when comments were added)
  
  Lol same here. I've actively upvoted and commented more then I've ever had. I really want this place to work and trying to be the change I wanna see
  
  Another “same” from me. I’m really trying to not lurk as much as I did on Reddit. Every bit of engagement helps.
  
  Same. I mostly lurked on Reddit. I’ve been way more engaged here.
  
  What kinds of posts do you comment on? I’m finding it a bit difficult to find always active communities and discussions, which is the only thing preventing me from commenting as much as I used to with Apollo. Things like tipofmytongue, cringe, IsitBullshit, and outoftheloop along with movie and tv discussions were my frequent haunts, particularly when I can’t sleep at night, but sadly I’m not finding the same amount of engagement here. Hopefully as we grow we can find that same level of engagement.
  
  Same. I mostly lurked on Reddit. I’ve been way more engaged here.
  
  Lol same here. I've actively upvoted and commented more then I've ever had. I really want this place to work and trying to be the change I wanna see
- I just see no reason to go back to reddit so at least you're stuck with me
  
  No take backs :)
- I'm seeing some very encouraging signs here. There's a lot of discussion about the platform itself on the platform (I'm looking at you Ham Radio nuts talking about talking on the radio...) but there's a fair chunk of people discussing links and topics of interest, the thing it needs most to survive. In other words, people are actually using it for its intended purpose and seeing some success in doing so.
  The technical issues are actively being solved as the platform explodes in size practically overnight.
  As for that ineffable quality of how the community feels? That has yet to be determined. The bots are on the way, and it's up to humans to choose how they will conduct themselves in the face of hostile bots and astroturfers who wish to sow discord.
- The level of overall 'civic engagement ' on Lemmy has been pretty great.

Lemmy perfectly represents the adage "building the plane as you fly it" and it's been so much fun seeing it take shape.
- It's great. In weeks people has packed their bags and badabing badaboom new community. The party continues as reddit never happened (besides the gloating ofc)

I suppose this is a good place for my first post. I'm happy to be here. This has saved me from the withdrawals of losing reddit. I hope we can make this an active community.
- Glad to have you, bag of buttholes!
  
  /r/rimjobsteve wait...

As a refugee myself, it’s amazing to see the growth. In just the four days I’ve been here, there’s been sensuous growth seen.
- I dunno if we want to see sensuous growth...
  
  Omg…. What a typo! I’m leaving it.
  
  I think we might..
  
  There are NSFW instances for that
  
  How did you do italics by the way?
- Very reminiscent of the moment/ jump to reddit from digg.

Really interested to hear about the plans and costs to scale up and grow in a stable, reliable, and safe way. Hopefully Patreon membership grows too and allows continued performance improvements.
I think for more casual users, continued degraded performance - or worse, an instance being stopped for whatever reason and the content and accounts being lost - would probably stop the platform being a true replacement. Casual users would head back to Reddit.
I think having a public roadmap and backlog, good communication and transparency will be super important, particularly in these early stages.
Great job so far, this kind of sudden growth is not easy to manage!
- I'm hopeful it could be a fresh start like before reddit was really popular and there were a lot more discussions being surfaced to all page over reposts.
  It was how I would find new subs and rabbit holes.
- I wonder to what extent causal users contribute to the health of the platform. May depend on how "casual" they are, but it may be possible that their absence won't be that detrimental.

Honestly, I also try to be more active as a user in Lemmy, and it feels way more rewarding because it feels like a more tight-knitly community here. Like it a lot!
- It checks all the boxes for me. No bots, no spam, mostly coherent adults, feels just like using reddit.
  I hate to sound all hipster, but a super big community does typically end up ruining themselves. It's nothing against the fandom itself or even the majority of people in it, it's just that eventually more toxic people will be included as popularity increases.
  That was my biggest gripe nearing the end of reddit and how all subs past 250k subs felt like they either became /r/pics, /r/videos, or /r/funny
  
  i really like it without the bots. what worries me is that with influx of users eventually bots will arrive. but hopefully without karma system atleast karmafarming bots won't materialise
- The breadth and depth of comments is what I've missed most from the past. Really happy to see these posts in the 1000s of upvotes with 100s of comments. I'll try to do my part.
  
  I also find it refreshing to see, what I assume is, the actual amount of votes on posts and comments again. Makes it more human maybe instead of an arbitrary number
- Same here.

Love the decentralized model. I’m so over corporate run sites looking to make a profit

I joined this morning and this is my first comment this afternoon. Fuck spez, this place seems much nicer.
- Also just joined and this is my first Lemmy comment. 11 years on my main Rif account. 14 years on my desktop account. Uncountable hours spent browsing everything alongside my finely curated mix of content. It was never about karma or likes, it was about engaging with a wide range of people with similar and dissimilar interests, opinions, views, and experiences. The crossover from that online interaction to real world impact was tremendous in my life. Fuck spez. I'm excited for a new wholesome experience.
  
  Well said!
- Also just joined and this is my first Lemmy comment. 11 years on my main Rif account. 14 years on my desktop account. Uncountable hours spent browsing everything alongside my finely curated mix of content. It was never about karma or likes, it was about engaging with a wide range of people with similar and dissimilar interests, opinions, views, and experiences. The crossover from that online interaction to real world impact was tremendous in my life. Fuck spez. I'm excited for a new wholesome experience.
  
  So much so you said it twice!

I'm very excited to see how this all develops. Right now it's pretty rough and the constant failure to load/comments getting duplicated or disappearing hurts a lot but it does have potential. Let the Lemmy's free!
- Let the Lemmy’s free!
  I believe "Lemmings" is the preferred nomenclature :P
  
  I'd rather not be called a lemming tbh. Especially during these times online

Not too long ago I was worried that this place may get deserted after a first boost, but it is awesome to see that more and more people are coming. So glad this is happening and it already feels like a really good alternative to Reddit!
- I think we will probably continue to see the numbers growing. When moving over, looking for an active instance was important. Lemmy.World definitely stood out over most for me, which is why I registered here.
- Always have hope! I don't think Lemmy will die at all in the near couple months, but it will be a test of time.
- Well I'm a refugee and I'm here to stay. Sucks to be you.

This is pretty awesome. I've tried mastodon when Twitter shit the bed a few months back and it never really launched the way I'd hoped.
Lemmy seems pretty lively. At first I was a bit disillusioned with the fact that it's not as active as reddit, but I feel the caliber of user that's come over is better than who we've all been dealing with the past 3-5 years over there. I'm happy to be here and there's palpable excitement
- Does Mastodon even have a filter so I can view all tweets from every instance like Lemmy does for posts? Because, if it does, I haven't found it.
  
  Your client should have All and Local feeds, All being for everything your instance is federated with
  
  I mean, yeah, that is the whole point.
  You need to search for key words or alternative just press a hashtag you see on a post, hashtags is how all instances communicate since there isn't a proper text only searcher across instances.
  Hashtags are extremely important if you want people from outside your own instance to find your posts and they are heavily used by everyone for that reason.
  Of course you can manually search for users, or go to other instances and follow people from those, that way yohr own timeline will be filled with people outside your own instance.
- You know I did the same thing made an account for mastodon and never really used it. But since coming over here after leaving reddit and seeing how enjoyable it was I went back to the mastodon app and I have to say now that I'm familiar with lemmy mastodon made more sense to me.

I mean, if Reddit blocks 3rd party apps, I ain’t staying. I’ll just come here which appears to basically be a better version of Reddit.
- If?
  Mate, they've already done it.

For reference point:
On July first 1 am, we had 62k people.
As of right now, we're at 75k
80k
- And on June ~10th we first got 2k people. This growth is equal parts insane and inspiring.
  The most impressive thing is that ruud has kept up with the growth and this instance is still running.

It's nice seeing how much Lemmy is growing. I knew there would be an influx of new users from the 30th, but it's honestly nice seeing more comments overall and posts getting upvoted.
- Yeah, I was expecting a small bump of new people when the 3PAs shut down, but the absolute deluge we've been getting is a pleasant surprise. RIF sending its users here has a lot to do with it, I think.
  
  That's why I'm here. Just opened the app for the first time since the beginning of the month and was sent here. It's a bit strange, but I'm sure I'll figure it out.
  
  I didn't know RIF sent peeps here, but funnily enough I was a RIF user and now I'm here.
  
  3PA?
  
  Will the folks at RIF make an app?
  
  Sync is also sending users here

We all be going to Reddit and letting people know about the migration to Lemmy.... And make sure to promote one of the 3rd party apps to the redditors. The best one I've tried so far is Connect for Lemmy on the Google play store.
- Wefwef is really good too…feels like Apollo
  
  Yo thanks for recommending wefwef. I think its the best way to view lemmy and now I've stopped using Connect for Lemmy. Still waiting on Sync for Lemmy though.
  
  it's not available on ios. i tried :(
- I'm using Connect right now and I'm quite happy with it. Though when Sync launches I'll be switching to that. I used Sync pro for reddit for years and would be happy to pay for that again.
  
  Ayy another Syncer in the wild. Can't wait till it releases.
- Try out Liftoff. I like it quite a bit. Jerboa kept crashing on me, and Liftoff had a certain feature that Connect doesn't have (yet?)
  I'll keep bouncing around and checking them all out over the next few months
  
  Have tried most and Liftoff is easily the best I've found so far. Former Sync Pro user.

My addiction have new management. A lot more community driven than the last one 😁

I did my part. By which I mean I made an account and made a single comment (well, two now.)
Still hoping to find a good comparable app to Slide for Reddit. Liftoff for Lemmy has fairly similar comment layout at least.
- Sync for Lemmy is coming. It was my favourite Reddit app. Should be good here too.
  
  I’m using wefwef. Having used Apollo for almost 7 years, it makes Lemmy feels just like home!
  
  Sync will be the game changer
  
  Can't wait for sync
  
  Never tried Sync, I think. Maybe I'll give it a try for Lemmy some point.
- Connect and Jerboa are also alright. I think i like Jerboa the most so far
  
  WefWef seemed pretty good. But wefwef being a web app just disappeared from my phone, along with a convention web app, after I restarted. Weird.
  I'll look up your suggestions. Liftoff doesn't appear to have an inbox right now. At least not one I didn't see.
  
  Started with Connect and didn't find anything lacking that would make me want go looking for something else. Figure I will stay with it until the former reddit apps complete their ports.
- Slide for Lemmy is in development, see /c/slide@feddit.uk
  
  Dope. Had to hunt down the uh... "Sublemmy" I guess we'd call it? Maybe not. Community, anyway.
  Link is being read as an email and Liftoff wants to open up Gmail for it. Which I get, looks like one.
- Nobody mentioned Thunder so I'm going to mention it!
  
  Nevermind heard of it. What's your opinion?
  Like how's it compare to the others?
- Same here Re: Slide, Liftoff does the trick for me and runs on android 7
  
  It feels closer to it. I'm really looking forward to Slide for Lemmy to get completed.
  Feels like home.
  Still completely broken right now. Only version 0.0.2. can't even access a "sublemmy" without it crashing. Good enough to browse the frontpage and look at posts. Nothing else for now.
  Using Connect at the moment. Bouncing between it and Liftoff.

Made the jump, hello everyone!
- Same. Hi!
  
  G'day!

My prediction is the .world will become a default sort of federation for popular communities until the Apps join in and we then start forming smaller communities under .Apollo and .Sync.
I want to see the App developers being the leaders on here
- I would be so happy if Apollo just became a Lemmy app. My only issue so far is that there aren't really any apps (yet)
  
  Thirding Wefwef.app. It doesn’t have all the extra features but it looks exactly like Apollo, which I’m missing too. Type in wefwef.app and when you’re on the website, hit share, then add to homepage. It basically turns into an app once you use it from the app icon. Hope it scratches a little of the itch while we all mourn haha.
  
  Check out wefwef, it's just like Apollo UX-wise.
  
  @khajimak @RatzChatsubo WefWef is pretty similar but it’s a webapp. I’m using the beta for Memmy and have liked it a lot so far, similar to Apollo but not an exact clone
  
  I'm reading this on Liftoff. I would say there are several apps, with more on the way. But they are all very new, with varying levels of functionality and maturity.
  
  Connect for Lemmy had almost daily updates and is pretty usable already
  
  There is like 5 apps I think available on android.

The fact that the server is still running is impressive!
- Challenge accepted.
- The fact you bagged that username is also impressive!
  
  Federation makes usernames a lot less rare.

Glad to see Refugees like myself finding a new home. I'd be interested in sporting some merchandise it some of the proceeds go back into covering costs etc..
- Understand the sentiment, but hey, in the meantime you could go old school and make some promo stuff yourself to sport if you're crafty. It'd be even more in the spirit of this space than merch tbh!

Also please consider using other instances for your account. Lemmy.world is struggling and the costs will keep rising for Ruud.
- People need to donate. This is really the first test to see if Lemmy can become a true alternative. If the first popular instance collapses, that is going to discourage non-tech people who are already skeptical. I doubt that most want to have to maintain accounts of multiple instances, myself included.
  
  We don't really want any one instance getting too big, it betrays the goal of the fediverse which is decentralization. Lemmy will never become a viable if everyone jumps to [insert flagship instance] and the admin is stuck with a thousands of dollars bill every month.
  Yes donate to the instance your using, but don't get tied to an account until there's a way to migrate them. Ideally join something a little smaller to share the load. You have to rethink the capitalistic "there can be only one" mindset if you delve into the fediverse.
  
  Seems like they have a decent clip of donations so far. But if they need to sell memberships or put up some innocuous banner ads to keep the service free, I'm okay with that too.
  
  I haven’t seen any official posts linking to the Patreon made since this influx. People lurking aren't very likely to think about it and seek that out. If it becomes a problem then I think making some sort of official announcement encouraging donations would go a long way. I personally already donated to the Patreon.
  
  I think people would be willing to but I'm not seeing any links being passed around by the admin
- As someone who's new to the fediverse, can you (or others) explain a bit more about how the costs of an instance might affect us? I was pondering this a bit yesterday; at the end of the day, hosting an interactive site at scale can get very expensive.
  Specifically:
  how does the fediverse model address costs at scale?
  what happens if an instance closes? How does that affect content hosted there, as well as user accounts registered there?
  I figured joining a large instance would be the best thing to do (more content and engagement), but now I'm wondering if that's at all true. Maybe a smaller instance is less likely to grow so much that costs are a problem, and the fediverse model itself provides the cross instance content?
  
  Federation addresses the cost of large scale hosting by allowing smaller severs (with less users) to connect and form a greater whole. While a flagship Lemmy instance will form and likely already has with .world, in an ideal world users are spread across variety of different instances. In an even more ideal, different topics will have their own instances and general purpose ones are secondary. If you want anime you to to lemmyime, if you want recipes you to lemmecipes. Not, if you want anime and recipes go to lemmy.world. Essentially you want to spread the burden as evenly as possible.
  With instances closing, as it stands you lose your account and all things tied to it. Lemmy is still new and I image this will be addressed with something like account migration. So for now, don't get too attached to any singular account. I've recently switched my browsing from lemmy.world to lemm.ee, but remember I still have access to all content from lemmy.world and other instances (addressing your point about more content and engagement).
  It's perfectly fine to use large instances, they're likely to have solid footing. Just know theirs going to be growing pains as Reddit becomes more shite. Donate if you can.
  
  The first two points could be answered better by other people than me, since I'm not super sure on them either. But the third one is basically that. You can subscribe to all other instances' communities regardless of which community you make an account on, so the lemmy model/fediverse itself is the solution/answer to how distributing wouldn't make you lose any data. As long as even one person from your instance is subscribed to a particular community on a particular instance, that content will show up on your instance too, it's basically instances that subscribe to each other. Having bigger instances doesn't really affect on the amount of in-house content as much as the costs of keeping up with it.
- What's another good instance?
  
  FMHY works fine and it allows nsfw which is always nice.
  
  Use your local country, I used Lemmy.ca

I guess that's because "World" is a pretty bold statement and suggests an expanse that can accommodate a truckload of migrants. Add to that the open signups and my natural aversion to smaller instances (I tend to think someone with a few users may feel tempted to pull the plug at any moment), and here we are. By the way, I have had a great experience with Connect for Lemmy - if anyone is interested.

congrats from .ca!
while im here: does anybody actually know why lemmy.world grew the fastest out of all of the instances? its not the "main" instance like .ml, not a safe space like beehaw, and a normal general instance like itjust.works. im curious why out of all places, .world got the main influx
- I think it was the instance referenced in the RIF goodbye message. That's what got me here, anyway.
  
  Same here. Still haven't figured Lemmy out, though. I figure it's going to take a good while
  
  Same with Sync, as well
  
  Yep, same here.
- .world is biggest because it's the biggest. Also RIF.
  
  Sync set up its community on .world, too. It's essentially the go-to fleddit community.
  
  oh damn a rif redirect happened?
- Because on the main Lenny website world shows up as recommended. The other recommended sites want users to put an email in addition to a write up on what they can offer. Which totally kills interest for any new people.
  I think the main Lenny website is to blame here tbh. It pushing users towards a few preset instances that are not really new user friendly.
  Some are not accepting sign ups at all.
  
  join-lemmy.org shows a few instances at the top of its join page:
  lemmy.fmhy.ml (which is based)
  sh.itjust.works which im pretty sure is having a free speech or too much user choice problem atm
  lemm.ee, a general instance
  sopuli.xyz, which i know nothing about (who is finn???)
  i dont see .world until a further scroll down from those. did they change it?
- .world sounded like it was the most "official" on a way? Maybe just bias but sometimes the shorthanded/links make web links sound less credible or not as major of a spot. Kbin.social kinda has that working for it too, .social and .world sounded like official gathering grounds by their naming.
- For me it was the default option when I was trying to figure out how to create a login. When I googled "how to sign up for Lemmy" world was the top search result. Before signing up, I had a basic understanding of how this this worked from when I tried out Mastadon. I had read that it mattered way less which instance you chose because most of them spoke to each other unlike Mastadon, which was a big reason Mastadon failed to hold my interest. Since the instance doesn't really matter, world was simply the easiest choice. I signed up, and downloaded the Connect app since it looks the most like Bacon Reader. So far everything works, makes sense, and I'm really enjoying everything!!
  
  Oooh I have been waiting to see someone mention a BaconReader clone. I'm running Liftoff and it is perfectly serviceable and I appreciate the work the dev did to rejuvenate it from it's defunct state, but I miss BaconReader. Is it easy to download and install?
- For what it's worth what sold me on .world is the slogan, front-page of the internet. It may or may not be misleading but I'm after a Reddit replacement with a mix of all communities.
  As I explore more I may go elsewhere but so far it has the Reddit feel.
  
  is the slogan, front-page of the internet
  so far it has the Reddit feel
  isnt that reddits slogan? no kidding, buddy. no kidding. (i mean this in a positive way)
- For someone who just wanted to be able to interact and hadn't a clue what anything was I figured world was the biggest. I think I kind of underatand how this works now? Though making a log in was much less intuitive and simple than anything else I feel I've ever come across.
  Basically thought process was the word "world" encompasses a lot of places. It's probably big and I'm tired of scrolling through stuff so I'll use that.
  Edit so if I make a new account or transfer this one or something to whatever the main one is will stuff load faster?
  
  Going to a smaller instance might make things load faster because the smaller servers are under less strain. Tho some of the bigger servers are handling the influx of new users really well.
  It also depends on what app youre using. I found jebora to be very slow/buggy. Connect for lemmy has wirked alot better for me.
  Also a heads up: i think tools for transfering accounts to another server are still in development. So for the times being going to a different server means making a new account.
- Personally speaking, at the time I made this account it seemed one of the better open, general instances with a home domain that wouldn't be kinda clunky to tell others about. Folks I'd suggest this to wouldn't care about the shit just works jokey name, but they'd probably be a little annoyed at the whole sh dot itjust dot works formatting...Which even just saying that aloud kinda sucks.
  If it were shit.just.works no big deal, but it's not, so lemmy.world is easier to write & say by comparison. That all said, even more important to me than the name was whether the admin had any experience running a federated server before for awhile, which lemmy.world's had via their hosting of mastodon.world, so I opted for this instance. There may have been other general instances at the time with similar experience that I overlooked tbh, and I may still hop over to another at some point, but so far this one works decently enough to me.
  -I know of some "legacy" lemmy instances that kinda fit this description, like .ca or midwest.social, but I regarded those as more for folks from those areas, and Beehaw is a little too positivity focused for my tastes (I also don't know that I'm "nice" enough to get along well there).
  
  sh.itjust.works is an unbearable name to read. i read dots in a website link like the end of a sentence (ex lemmy.world would be lemmy {break} dot {break} world.) good instance, despise the name
- .ml doesn’t have open signups rn iirc and .world was the most popular after that. I think that’s probably got something to do with it.

It might be a little cringe but I embrace being a lemming.

Shame about World's stability issues. Probably brought on by its popularity.
- Better to be broken and full than stable and empty.
- Better to be broken and full than stable and empty.

Migrated here from RIF (RIP), lemmy.world being suggested on top of the how to join guide definitely played a part in choosing this instance along with all the recommendations from other users.
Definitely feel much more inclined to comment here than on Reddit as of late, all the regurgitated meme shitposts and karma farming bot comments were getting really old. If it takes donating / paying a sub to keep Lemmy human discussion focused, that's what I will do.

I've signed up to lemmy.world don't know what an instance is or why it might be important to sign up to something different. Want to help as much as possible. Please educate me!
- Whereas you signed up on lemmy.world, I signed up on lemmy.ca.
  Our accounts live on these different instances of the same platform.
  Someone else may have an account on sh.itjust.works.
  Each of these instances can have communities (subreddit equivalent). Through federation (essentially agreement to talk with eachother). We (account holders on different instances) can interact, post and comment anywhere on these and other federated instances.
  In a weird way, these instances are an adhoc load balancer since I am using resources primarily from lemmy.ca and you are using resources from lemmy.world. This last piece is most relevant to the potential issue stated. A good load balancer, balances the load efficiently and effectively. If everyone made an account on lemmy.world it would get an uneven share of the load and struggle to keep its infrastructure alive or scaled well. Additionally, it goes against the decentralized nature of federated instances.
  Now please take this all with a grain of salt, I have been here since july 1 and so am taking the rough concept I've learned and tried to explain it. Likely missing critical technical details and the analogies may be imperfect. :)
- The best analogy I've seen is "think of your lemmy instance as your email provider". Your account "lives" in your home instance, but no matter which instance you are you can see content and interact with all instances that are connected.
  Since the instance you are doesn't matter much, people recommend spreading simply to avoid overloading one instance with too many users.
  
  Email analogy is good to explain the systems architecture, but it still doesn't communicate ethics of proper use (decentralization). Just look how many people have gmail or outlook as their mail account.

I'd move to a closer instance, if I new they were in it for the long run and not shut down when they get bored after a few months. What happens if the instance I'm registered to decides to shut down?
- I have to agree here. I went through this same issue with Mastodon when I joined a smaller instance "mastodon.lol". It shut down without any apparent notice to me (using a third-party app). I had to start from scratch and mastodon even has an account migration feature.
  I can't in good conscience tell a less technical friend "oh go use a smaller instance" when that means they can come across a dead-looking thread or community (that just hasn't been federated to them yet) or suddenly lose their account when their instance disappears with little to no notice.
  
  I'm starting to realize that it's only the links that are decentralized and not, what I'd hoped for but was maybe obvious, my data/account.
  I've asked over at !fediverse@lemmy.world if anyone can register any nickname on any instance - essentially spoofing a user but on a different instance. Or if a username is "taken" across the fediverse.
  Edit: anyone can register any ones username on a different instance. Spoofing/scamming isn't handled very good?
  Edit2: post and comment data is federated too, so your posts won't dissappear, but might dis-converge(?) into multiple versions depending on things? :) This post helped me understand some of it: https://lemmy.world/comment/205763
- What happens if the instance I’m registered to decides to shut down?
  You'll have to sign up to a new instance and will lose your post history, etc.
  
  I’m experimenting hosting my own instance, not to build communities, just as a “gateway” to federate to other instances, in case one of them is unreachable, I still get posts from the ones which are still available. When lemmy.world clogged up a few hours ago, I couldn’t see posts from lemmy.ml since basic operations on lemmy.world timeouted and my feed couldn’t be loaded. Am I using Lemmy wrong, or are these galaxy brain moves (honest question)?

Hi new person from reddit here! Can't wait for this place to grow

Heck yeah, hello everyone fleeing reddit!

Congratulations from sh.itjust.works!

Reddit refugee here. F spez.

If you use it YOU GOTTA GIVE. EVERYBODY GIVES!

Really hope Lemmy overtakes Reddit. I just need a working app.
- wefwef is working well for me so far. Worth a look
- wefwef is working well for me so far. Worth a look

...and it'll only get better from now on.

Thank you for having us.

The activity would be so huge today if the servers could cope. I've had to give up on so many comments.
- I have that too, but despite the error prompts seems that they are being posted 🤔
  
  Just noticed that, my repeated comments can't be helping the servers... Oops

Yeah it's really amazing to see the growth. I switched to my lemmy.ca account for now as I started to really feel the server bog down. Hopefully things go well.

The activity would be so huge today if the servers could cope. I've had to give up on so many comments.

Friendly reminder to donate to your home instance if possible! Every little bit helps :)

im really liking how lemmy works and i think its interesting to learn about the details and i like the philosophy it runs on. im glad to be a part of this community!
- Now if we can just revamp world civilisations to be decentralized then we will really be getting somewhere!

I'm here to stay, I love semi-niche social media sites :)

Guys we need more activity on the One Piece communities. I'm one of two people who actually posts there
- I'm the only contributor so far on the !vans@lemmy.world community I created.. r/vans was in the top 5% largest subs. Where my r/vans refugees at??

I love it here! Keep being awesome, people. And to new beginnings 🎊

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