I'm one of the people who has very recently tried Lemmy and decided to drop Reddit. Initially because I will no longer be able to use SyncForReddit, but now also because I just like the vibe a lot more here than Reddit.
I'm not a massively technical person, but I understood the broad concept of federation - different instances/servers that sync to form a big conversation/forum of sorts.
I heard a lot of people joining and saying positive things about lemmy.world, so I signed up there.....and that's it.
But, am I using it right? Is the idea to sign up in one place and use it to participate across the LemmyVerse/FediVerse? Or should I be seeking out lots of niche instances of interest?
I hear lemmy.world is the biggest instance. What if most people end up here, does that defeat the purpose? Is this inevitable?
You need a critical mass of users, so a quiet instance with few posts is not attractive. If I search for Xbox, there are lots of empty places or places with 3 posts. If there's one big one (often ends up being in lemmy.world) that's where I'm subscribing.
How are you using Lemmy, are you participating in a bunch of instances or just one?
When I first started looking around here, I had no particular reason to pick one instance, so I didn't. I initially registered with three (kbin.social, lemmy.world and lemmy.one). I was sort of planning to try them out and compare them before settling on one, but I ended up just rotating through them as the mood hit me, and I still use all three. And in fact, I'm planning on adding a couple more.
The thing I like about using multiple instances is that I can change my experience quickly and easily.
Mostly I go back and forth between kbin.social and lemmy.world, and they're notably different. In the first place, they use different software, so the interfaces are quite different. The kbin software is a bit more feature rich but also a bit harder to get around in while the lemmy software is a bit simpler in both respects. And the instances are notably different, since .world is federated with virtually everyone while kbin.social has defederated from a number of instances, and most notably all of the botfarms.
So kbin.social has less content of generally higher quality, so it feels more serious and sedate, while lemmy.world has more content but a lot of it is botspam, so it feels more hectic and noisy. And I just go to whichever one appeals to me more at the moment.
And I'm actually looking for a couple more. I'd like to find one that's deliberately reserved and sort of scholarly - high standards and serious discussion - and one that's overtly goofy snd lighthearted.
And I have no doubt that if they don't exist, they will.
People keep mentioning the botspam, but I haven't seen it.
Is it because I stick to my subscribed channels and don't just haphazardly browse the full-fat Everything feed?
Its account creation spam. As far as I am aware there hasnt been much if any bots commenting.
Right now it just bogs down instances from the spam and inflates overal user numbers.
Idk how to switch between them. I tried signing into kbin with my Lemmy stuff and it just went nope. Maybe I messed up the password lol but I don't think so
you can't do that
(for real)
That. Really sucks. Idk it's all so fragmented, how do you know what is where and why?
It is very confusing. But if I reach back into my mind, I found reddit very confusing at first also.
What is where:
I found these useful to understand:
But the reason you can't log in on another server is just like you can't login to your hotmail address at gmail.com.
You can't login to other instances because you don't need to. And also they don't have your login credentials (what a mess that would be). But all the content from that instance is already available to you on your homepage and you can comment on it, up vote it... Why would you want to?
I would like to provide some crucial context that I just opened Lemmy like two hours ago (made an account a week back but never actually tried to operate the site) and I am a reddifugee. I am fediverse stupid rn lol. I'm trying to learn but idk how this works and all of the examples I've seen given are other tech-based things that I don't understand either haha
So you have an account at Lemmy.world. From Lemmy.world you can subscribe, post and comment in communities on ANY Lemmy or Kbin instance (except Beehaw, for reasons).
So suppose you want to subscribe to a magazine* over at Kbin.social. You can just go ahead and subscribe to it from your Lemmy.world account and it will just work and show up in your 'subscribed' feed (and you'll be able to make posts and comments there). That's what this 'federation' thing means.
In other words, since all the instances are federated, you can see and interact with content from across the federation right on your 'home' instance.
* 'magazine' is the Kbin term for 'community', which is equivalent to a 'subreddit'