You may intuitively believe that large instances are the best place to start a new community, since that's where most people are.
The good news is it's viable to start a community on any instance, provided you take some steps to ensure that content propagates to the large ones too.
How Lemmy content federation works
A Lemmy instance will automatically receive federated content from any community on the Fediverse, as long as at least one its users has subscribed to that community. This content is visible when you click on "All" on the main menu:
For example, the content I post to !help@lemdit.com automatically propagates to the likes of lemmy.world and lemm.ee since both of those instances have at least one user that has subscribed to it.
Making your community visible
To ensure that your content propagates to the large instances, you need to have at least one subscriber from those instances. There are several ways you can go about this.
The quickest is to create a user on each instance you want to reach and subscribe to your community from there. This is easier than it sounds and gives you the added benefit of having your identity preserved there too.
If that feels like too much hassle, I am happy to help you out by subscribing to your community from a few of the largest instances. Send me a message with the details.
Another option is to try posting in communities that are dedicated to discovering new communities:
Choosing the right instance to host your community
What's most important is choosing a reliable instance that you resonate with. How many users the instance already has is not that relevant and can be a poor indicator of reliability (see the disappearance of vlemmy.net).
Pick an instance that is open about how it operates and what its principles are. The more you know, the better informed your decision.
Why bother with all this when I can just create my community on lemmy.world?
There are many benefits to venturing out into the Fediverse:
- You can pick an instance that more closely matches your style and beliefs.
- A community with 100 members is a drop in the ocean on a large instance, but will likely be an important pillar for a small one.
- The admins of a smaller instance are usually more accessible and care a bit more about what happens to your community.
- Well run smaller instances are usually more reliable and perform better than large ones.
- The name you want for your community is likely to be available on a smaller instance.
- Smaller instances are not usually interesting targets for attacks or trolls.
- Your content will get similar exposure thanks to federation.
I hope you found this post helpful, feel free to ask any questions you may still have.
Lemmy Help
