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.

  • TheFogan@programming.devEnglish
    7·
    6 days ago

    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,

      • TheFogan@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        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

        • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
          4·
          6 days ago

          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.

      • TheFogan@programming.devEnglish
        5·
        6 days ago

        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

        https://beehaw.org/instances

        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

              • pomegranatefern@sh.itjust.works
                1·
                6 days ago

                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.

          • TheFogan@programming.devEnglish
            3·
            6 days ago

            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.

  • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
    31·
    6 days ago

    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

  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
    32·
    6 days ago

    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).

    • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
      1·
      6 days ago

      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