Hey everyone, I’m new here and just testing the waters. I’ve been on Reddit for years, but lately it feels like a mix of heavy-handed moderation and echo chambers where any dissenting opinion gets buried.
For those of you who’ve spent real time on Lemmy: • What do you like better here than on Reddit? • What do you miss from Reddit? • Do you feel the culture here is genuinely different, or does it eventually drift the same way?
I’m curious how people see it — especially those who made the switch after the API drama.
Something that’s a little different compared to other social media platforms (and isn’t on your list of thought/questions) is being able to judge books by their covers.
Since you can choose which is your home instance is based on the rules, moderation, and general vibe, the instance someone is from can tell you A LOT about them. There are some users who just mute all users from certain instances, because of this.
If you’re on Lemmy.world (which is based on the Netherlands, but everyone just assumes is from the USA), you likely won’t be muted because of your home instance since it’s basically the default.
Ok wow, I’ve got a lot to learn about Lemmy. Gotta learn what these instances are. haha, Thanks for your thoughts.
Some instances are kinda obvious to figure out what they have in common, like the now-extinct VeganTheoryClub, but some are a little harder to figure out, like the ml in Lemmy.ml is for Marxist-Leninists.
Ah legit. I get what you mean.
If you wouldn’t mind helping me out here, am I getting this right? I signed up on Lemmy.world, so while I can still access other instances, people can see that I’m from Lemmy.world and kind of make assumptions about me based on that?
Yes. Although lemmy.world is broadly the “normie” instance, so they won’t make many assumptions.
Ok sweet. Are there any instances you’d recommend to a newbie? Totally open to see whats around. Also, are there any perks to being signed up to one instance versus another?
Yes. Some instances will block (known as defederate) other instances, so you won’t see any users or posts from those instances. Some instances disable downvoting. Many are similar to each other.
Lemmy.world is the everyman instance though, so you will get the broadest look at the fediverse.
Some instances will be topical themed, such as mander.xyz (science), or programming.dev. others have political and aesthetic leanings: lemmy.dbzer0.com (Anarchism, AI and cyberpunk aesthetics).
Oh whoa sick. Reckon I’m about to nerd out on this for a bit. Thanks for the starter points.
Something to be aware of is that lemmy.world defederates the two major communist Lemmy instances (hexbear and lemmygrad) - preemptively, by the way - so if you have any interest in seeing that, you will need to look for another instance. Lemmy.world is generally considered the main liberal/neoliberal instance. Now that Lemmy allows each user to block entire instances, I feel that the idea of some instances deciding for their users what they should or should not be allowed to read is ridiculous.
I picked my instance, lemmy.zip, because it’s one of the few major one that only rarely defederates other instances, usually only for illegal content or spam reasons. They took a more reasonable approach to the communist instances I mentioned, by blocking them by default since some people consider them controversial, but using a user-switchable block, meaning that you can very easily unblock and see content from those instances.
There are also regional and national communities too like lemmy.ca, feddit.uk, quokk.au, feddit.org