I joined this one because I just followed the obvious ways to sign up after looking up what Lemmy was about. I didn’t know about instances until I tried to sign in and had to find mine.
Is there a way to mess up making an alt by joining an unfit instance? From what I’ve read, it doesn’t really matter outside of an instance going down and your profile going with it.
Any help is appreciated.
Don’t worry too much about the instances, for the most part they are not that important. There are a few outliers tho:
- lemmy.ml, lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net are politically in the Authoriarian Left extreme. Unless you either are politically close to them or like getting dunked on by people who think China and Russia are Heaven on Earth, don’t go there. Sadly the main devs for lemmy are situated on lemmy.ml.
- beehaw has a curated experience by blocking any instances which do not verify registrations (including the largest one at lemmy.world) and a different discussion culture than most. It’s a very chill place tho.
- and then you can also join instances that use PyLova (a fork of PieFed caused by … not cool actions by PieFeds dev, especially ironic since PieFed already exists partially because of lemmys roots on lemmy.ml), e.g. quokk.au. These give you a different interface and features, while giving you the same access to content.
There are also a bunch of outlaw instances, either far-right or tolerating CSAM. These you can only stumble upon if you actively search for them - they are defederated in a pretty coordinated effort, simply because due to the way lemmy works, their content would be replicated, creating a legal nightmare, and of course no respectable admin wants to touch that stuff.
Pretty much it’s like an e-mail service overall. obviously for the “MOST” part you can join any instance and it will let you view content on almost any other instance.
Like say beehaw I believe defederates from instances that don’t have verification steps at the start.
instances like, lemmygrad, hexbear etc… are considered tankie, so a handful of places defederate them. and I believe a few like that tend to lean right and get defederated by most.
Edit: fixed misassumption on what hexbear was,
“considered” lol
Nobody would be surprised if it leaked tomorrow that they’re literally operated out of the Kremlin or military city Beijing.
Wait, is “tankie” a synonym for fascist or something? I thought it meant durable. Lol
Tankie is a word coined for people who support the idea of a country using its military against its own people. A person saying that there was nothing wrong about the Tiananmen massacre is a tankie.
Yup, Red Fascists who support Russian invasion of Ukraine and think China owns Taiwan and definitely aren’t committing multiple genocides within their territories. The pretend to care about worker solidarity and international peace while they promote Donald Trump and oppose NATO. They pretend to care about civil rights but they oppose liberalism and they think Trans people are a western psyop.
Here is a megathread detailing their behavior, hosted on lemmy.world but posted to the community [email protected]
I think I should probably just keep the alt in this general instance. I’m not looking for political talk or niche interest spaces. I just want to find a consistent and dependable place for mainstream topics.
piefed.social isn’t very big on the political side last time I checked, that’s why I chose feddit.online instead, which is also a piefed instance. I highly reccomend piefed instances, or KBin/MBin, because the Lemmy instances in contrast are developed by those Tankies.
Yeah, that is likely to work. And you’ll get basically all of the same content no matter where. Some defederate the Tankie Triad, which results in better content.
I chose mine mainly based on it running on PieFed instead of Lemmy, because PieFed has a little more features and a nicer UI. And then secondly by this being hosted in the Nordic countries, where it is legal to say that genocides are always a bad thing. If there was something that defederated from the Tankie Triad, but fulfills the other two requirements I’d absolutely make the switch to that :)
lemmy.ml is actually pretty widely federated, but defederates most/all nsfw. hexbear is marxist/anarchist, not right wing lmao
ah got it, kind of never really dug that much in, just see it mentioned as extremist, so admitted getting some flipped going off of vague info
just see it mentioned as extremist
from my understanding the community formed after /r/chapotraphouse was banned for people john brown posting a little too hard.
I’m sorry, but I don’t understand most of what you said.
The super simplified version of it is.
some instances block other instances. Either due to political differences or because too many spammers are in one etc… Bottom line, if it’s not linked or blocked, you won’t be able to see posts to them, and people on those instances won’t see posts you make from your own, (creates kind of a shadow ban, where you think you are posting, but no one over there can see it).
you can see if you go to
https://thelemmy.club/instances
you can see a list of instances they’ve linked with, and blocked.
compare that to say beehaw
You’ll see there’s a big difference in what they do and don’t federate with. Which could be good or bad depending on how you look at it.
If you have a community or 2 that you really care about, it’s worth checking to make sure their instance you want to post to and read the posts of, is friendly with the one you don’t
I want to make an alt for music, video games, general television, and anime. Do I just search those terms and check their sidebars?
90% of instances should be fine, but, if in doubt while you are using this one, do a search for communities for the topics you care about, and either join the community that has the most of what you want, or check their linked/banned list to know which ones not to join.
Come on over to sh.itjust.works; we have a funny URL.
It seems a bit heavy for what I’m looking for. Politics in my time outside of the Internet already gives me a pounding headache.
I’m going to second the sh.itjust.works recommendation nevertheless. Most of the large instances on Lemmy have substantial political talk, but if you just join the communities you’re interested in then and stick to your feed, you’ll stay pretty much just looped into stuff you’re interested in. Meanwhile, browsing either your instance or all is going to turn up a lot of political stuff no matter what instance you choose, because there’s just a lot of active political communities on pretty much all instances. So to a large extent instance doesn’t super matter, which is why I just use sh.itjust.works because it’s pretty chill.
If you do want some alternative instances where I believe most of the hosted communities are more to your interests, though:
- mander.xyz is a chill science instance but is currently down because of an issue with the hosting service they were renting space from.
- ani.social is specifically for anime fans. I’m pretty sure there’s also a lot of porn on here LOL, but that’s just kind of the tradeoff.
- lemmy.zip is more about gaming, especially PC gaming
Disclaimer that I’m not as familiar with these three, though, and mostly just have some vague impressions of them as chill when browsing all.
Again, the instance you choose doesn’t super matter, though. It can be confusing and lead to choice paralysis, so I suggest just going with one of the ones I recommended here and not overthinking it, not because there aren’t other good instances, but because I don’t wanna overwhelm you.
You could always just block a bunch of communities/users since you’ll probably have to anyway.
Id say what are your preferences… If you want mainstream for main stuff, Lemmy.world. if you want piracy or anarchy, lemmy.dbzer0.com is great. If you are from Canada Lemmy.ca is good. What’s bad? Opinionated. .ml is large but has backlash, .hexbear sees a lot of backlash, but not knowing you… It’s open game
Yeah, I guess that would be it. Music, anime, television. Maybe some random hobby stuff.
Just join any instance and then subscribe to communities that relate to those interests. You don’t have to browse All or even Local.
You can do this with the account you’re posting with right now it you want.
the tankies, like another user mentioned, are very hyper-political authotarian with a “left wing narrative”, if you imagine conservatives, this would be the exact opposite(with the exact same authotarian nature).
If authoritarianism is a metric, liberals are topping the leaderboard next to conservatives. they will literally defend a system that unpersons you if you can’t pay rent
Just keep away from the tankie quadriga: lemmygrad, lemmy.ml, hexbear.net, dbz0
dbzo seems like the newest one, and also that startrek website person, he was wierdly crossbanning people.
