I suppose this may make sense in the case of something like Mastodon. But something as versatile and customizable as lemmy, which allows for the existence of separate topic-based communities, makes topic-based instances of lemmy not necessary.

Instead of making a new instance for a certain topic, it is usually a much better approach to just create a new community on my current lemmy instance. At least from my perspective as a user.

I find the only exception to this is censorship and moderation. If I, for any reason am unhappy with an instance’s moderation and censorship, then that is the only potential reason I can see to change and make my own.

What does everyone else think of this?

  • The thing I’m struggling the most with getting into Fediverse is that I have to create an account on a specific instance. I don’t identify myself as part of a single community. I’m interested in several different topics and active in different communities. I guess it doesn’t matter that much which instance I select, but somehow I have to select one instance.

    • On lemmy it generally doesn’t matter as much, given the ALL tab. But you have to still consider which instances your local might be blocking…

      •  comfy   ( @comfy@lemmy.ml ) 
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        1 year ago

        Yep, one example was gtio.io, which occasionally had a decent topic or two, but about a third of the userbase was from lemmy.ml and another third from wolfballs.com (the former instance which attracted a political ‘right-wing’ userbase). Since lemmy.ml defederated from wolfballs.com, you wouldn’t even see most of the replies from a lemmy.ml account and have to get an extra account somewhere to reply.

        Of course, those replies were almost always low-quality garbage, but I did want to see and reply to them!

    • haha, the paradoxical answer is to make your own personal instance for you to federate and post on all the other communities freely.

      (yes, I know ‘just make ur own instance’ isn’t helpful advice because not everyone has the time/money/tech-familiarity to do so, I’m more just pointing out that’s how some people approach the issue of having to pick a community)

    • It’s not too difficult to be active on other instances. For example, I am very active on mander.xyz, despite my instance being lemmy.ml. It’s even easier on Mastodon. Peertube can be a bit of a struggle with subscriptions or notifications not always updating properly though.