Hello everyone,

Based on the recent instability of Lemmy.world, a lot of people have been wondering whether they should move to another instance.

I used to look at https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list and recommend people to pick a generalist instance with as much users as possible (using the 1m column), usually

Of course, there are also the regional options

And of course, the thematic instances

I used to recommend the most populated instances, as we know that All depends on users subscribed from the instance.

However, now with the introduction of the Lemmy Community Seeder (https://github.com/Fmstrat/lcs), which

tells your instance to pull the top communities and the communities with the top posts from your favorite instances

do you think this should still apply? I have seen promising instances (high uptime, already on 18.4 that was released today)

Would you recommend users to join those as well, assuming that the admins use the LCS to populate the All feed? Most of us remember the Vlemmy.net disappearance, and it’s difficult to tell users to join small instances based on good faith, but at the same time, every instance needs to start somewhere, and they should be given a chance.

What do you think?

  • High on my list of important attributes is an instance that specifically does not defederate from others. If I see something I don’t want to see anymore I just block it myself. But I’d rather be treated like an adult capable of making my own decisions about what to see and read. If you’re also looking for this I suggest unilem.

  •  Ada   ( @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 
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    191 year ago

    If I were to move instance for some reason, my primary concern would be that they aggressively and pro-actively moderate bigotry of all sorts, rather than "both sides"ing it

  • I advertised my instance in a different thread. It’s been almost exclusively a single-user instance, and I use both LCS and Lemmony to federate popular content. I’ve been exceedingly happy with it and don’t plan on going anywhere, so I figured I could handle a few extra users.

    So if your criteria include:

    • High uptime
    • Federation with popular content
    • Sensible rules

    … feel free to check my instance out. Do note that so far, I’ve only defederated from exploding-heads (right-wing trolls) and threads (preemptively, of course).

    I’ll probably cap registrations at 100 users or so, just to make sure my systems can handle the load, then see where things stand.

  • with as much users as possible

    Wouldn’t this lead to the same problems lemmy.world is having?

    I would recommend choosing based on interests, rules that align with you, proximity to where you live, stuff like that. Population is not a problem, you can still participate everywhere because of federation.

    • The issues with choosing a small instance (let’s say less than 500 users) is that your All feed would be quite empty, as only communities that people on your instances subscribed to would show up, which is an issues with discoverability of new content.

      As I said in the post, the LCS tool can be a mitigation against that.

      Otherwise, I generally agree with you

      • I joined the fediverse a couple months ago, before the reddit protest started, admins of lemmy.ml were asking people to join smaller instances because they were being overloaded.

        So an instance with less than 500 users was the parameter I used to choose, that instance was lemmy.world lol, look at where they are now.

        I created a second account on lemm.ee only a few days ago for various reason, being populated wasn’t one of them :)

  • I went with Feddit.uk as I am in the UK and it also helps give a more local spin to things because, increasingly, the English-language web seems to default to an American take on things and so going local helps counter that.

    Plus uptime is good and the admin has said they will wield the defederation hammer sparingly.

  • I’m the admin of mine. Why? Because I enjoy doing, it’s in the spirit of decentralisation, and I didn’t want to risk being part of an instance that defederates from leftist instances like Lemmygrad or Hexbear. I only intend to proactively defederate from fascist and troll instances, and NSFW to reduce legal drama.

  •  xapr   ( @xapr@lemmy.sdf.org ) 
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    111 year ago

    My three top criteria for picking an instance were:

    1. Little to no defederation issues, in either direction.
    2. Likely to stick around for the long term.
    3. Relatively small.
  • I started on lemmy.world, right up until their “wait and see” approach to Meta/Threads, which is when I moved to lemmy.ml.

    Not going to lie though, it also seems like most of the low-quality memes/shit posts come from lemmy.world, so I don’t feel like I’m missing out on much.

  • I went with lemmy.one because of privacyguides from reddit, and I liked that the move of actually being serious about the protest by making an alternative to move away from. Very few of the subreddits I subscribed to ever decided to make an instance or a fediverse community, so lemmy.one was what I defaulted to in the beginning. Since then Android has made an instance too, so that’d be my second choice. Anyways, that’s how I decided by going with what I was familiar with.

  • I have an account on Beehaw.org because I like their vibe and moderation policy, an account on sh.itjust.works for the occasional community creation (!olympics@sh.itjust.works promo time) and my main account on jlai.lu which is in my country and language.

    So my main choice is regional, and then it’s based on moderation policies & community creation permissions, etc., while on generalist instances. I’m thinking of swapping sh.itjust.works for a smaller, better moderated generalist instance that still allows community creation.

  • I like having an instance with local communities that match some of my interests. I also tried to find one a little more niche, but not so small as to be run out of someone’s closet. And of course, always donate to your home instance. Bandwidth doesn’t grow on trees!

    On the privacy side, it was also important to me to have an instance that didn’t want my email address.

  • I initially went with Kbin and Beehaw since it was clear that kbin and lemmy were going to mostly diverge on key features from the start. At the time, Beehaw was getting a ton of traffic thanks to the join-lemmy homepage placing them at the top of the suggested instances list, so there was no real criteria that went into my choice other than that.

    Eventually deleted my Beehaw account though, after the admins made it clear they were not prepared for the influx and were being rather dramatic about their defederation choices as a result. It left a bad taste in my mouth, and while I understand their stance was “safe place first, popular site second” it just didn’t vibe with what I expected from an open reddit alternative.

    Moved to VLemmy after that, and we all know how that went, but my rationale was that it was a growing but moderately small instance.

    Afterwards I made 2 new accounts: one on infosec.pub and the other on lemdro.id.

    At this point I’m mostly sticking with the Lemdro.id account, since they seem to be offering some very friendly support via their matrix space, and they have some apparently unique changes to backend to make it a very fast and easy to scale instance.

    My kbin.social and infosec.pub accounts are mostly just alts gathering dust as a result.

    • Interesting, thanks for your feedback.

      they have some apparently unique changes to backend to make it a very fast and easy to scale instance.

      Shouldn’t that be merged into the Lemmy platform at some? It would probably benefit everyone

      • I don’t know enough about the specifics to say whether or not it’s something that would be useful upstream. It’s possible that it’s just their unique combination of software & hardware that makes it work the way it does.

        I’m sure someone in their Matrix server could offer more insight.