The Fediverse is huge and overwhelming to a newcomer, with many different types and each with servers to pick from. Which ones would you suggest checking out or avoiding?

  • nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    15·
    6 days ago

    I joined this one because the main one was defederating a whole bunch of pirate ones and that makes no goddamn sense. thanks 👍

    mods will be like hey let’s make it so our users can’t access stuff. that makes sense. I bet that’s what they want. they want to not have access to things. they think it’s good

    smart and federal

  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
    143·
    6 days ago

    Just browse Join-Lemmy and pick an instance that sticks out and you like the vibe of, with good local communities and decent federation. The only one I truly recommend avoiding is Lemmy.world, due to its size and moderation on some larger communities.

  • Corporal_Punishment@feddit.ukEnglish
    112·
    6 days ago

    For someone entirely new to this, please ELI5 why it matters?

    Entirely at random I signed up at feddit.uk

    Does it mean I’m walled off from specific content? Am I in a dead part of the fediverse? And how do I change if I am.

    • Skavau@piefed.socialEnglish
      13·
      6 days ago

      Okay, so it matters for a few reasons.

      1. Instances have different rules. So you can banned by your own instances local admins for things you might not get banned for on other instances.

      2. If you wanted to make your own community, you’d automatically be hosting it on feddit.uk, so that matters to a degree when it comes to the local culture there.

      3. Instances have their own blocklists. So your instance might be blocking (defederating) another instance that has a lot of users. Or it might just as likely be blocked by another instance. This isn’t the case for feddit.uk, which maintains wide federation.

      Feddit.uk specifically is a UK based lemmy. If you look up the local communities, you can see that is the geographical/cultural focus.

    • mathemachristian [he/him]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      7·
      6 days ago

      It doesn’t. Pick whatever instance and if another catches your eye make an account there as well. You don’t have to limit yourself to one account on one instance. I started on feddit.de, then lemm.ee now hexbear and use this account to see some posts I wouldn’t from hexbear since they have more of a safe space mentality than this instance

    • how_we_burned@lemmy.zip
      1·
      5 days ago

      Because reddit moderation has become utterly unbearable, insufferable.

      I’ve been using BBSs, newsgroups, MIRC, ICQ, a million ass forums and social media for almost 40 years now.

      I’ve never been banned from anywhere on the net (and before).

      And yet in the last three months I’ve been temp banned 3 times on reddit. All for their AI moderation systems misunderstanding Australian colloquialisms as threatening violence.

      It’s utter bullshit.

      People are leaving reddit as a result.

  • goat@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    4 days ago

    Whatever ones you like. Newcomers don’t know how each instance behaves until they’ve experienced it.

      • FunkyStuff@lemmy.ml
        7·
        6 days ago

        I’ve only been outside of Hexbear (where there also are no downvotes) for a week and I hate having downvotes. Instead of people replying to something they disagree with with evidence and counterarguments, people just downvote and move on. They really shouldn’t be used to downvote comments people disagree with (because that just promotes groupthink), ideally they’d just be used to downvote spam and low effort stuff; but moderators can take care of that, so what’s the point?

        • samus12345@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          31·
          6 days ago

          I prefer that the community have some say in deciding what comments are objectionable rather than relying on mods for every little thing.

          • manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml
            5·
            6 days ago

            If something is objectional you should say something about it, it’s one thing for bots and spam, but if you see someone posting an unforced error, you should tell them they’re wrong

            not to invoke leddit, but you should be able to communicate with other human beings

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
            31·
            5 days ago

            To be clear, one comment having 1-2 upvotes and a reply to it having a dozen or more upvotes gets that across just fine, it just requires the reply in the first place.

          • FunkyStuff@lemmy.ml
            3·
            6 days ago

            Okay, so the community should be able to reply to the objectionable comments with the reasons why they think they’re objectionable. All downvotes do is let people shut down the conversation without even thinking.

            • samus12345@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              11·
              6 days ago

              Sometimes comments are poor without being worthy of a conversation about it. The commenter can always ask if they see downvotes and are confused as to why.

              • FunkyStuff@lemmy.ml
                2·
                6 days ago

                In that situation those low value comments that aren’t explicitly rulebreaking just proceed to get no upvotes and are functionally the same as a comment that got downvoted. So there isn’t really any value gained from having downvotes in this scenario, while they provide negative value in other scenarios.

      • Flames5123@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        8·
        6 days ago

        Exactly. I look at downvotes on articles as a kind of fact curator. If an article has 50/50, you know it’s gotta be wrong.

        • TwigletSparkle@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          31·
          6 days ago

          Discussion of an article’s accuracy is what the comments are for; downvotes are a pretty bad indicator of this as they’re largely used to indicate agreement with the post’s title (which may include disagreeing with it’s accuracy, message, vibe, spelling, etc.)

        • FunkyStuff@lemmy.ml
          22·
          6 days ago

          People also just downvote stuff they disagree with. If you use the downvotes on a post or comment as the indicator of whether it’s correct or not you’ll just end up believing only the things the majority of the users believe are true, instead of using evidence or any kind of facts.

            • FunkyStuff@lemmy.ml
              2·
              5 days ago

              One day this account will be 2 years old and its posts will be recognized for their greatness. But until then, it’ll just be a sockpuppet troll account. Very sad.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
          8·
          6 days ago

          Nor on Hexbear, or a few other large instances. In the case of Hexbear and Blahaj, it’s to protect queer users from being unfairly downvoted, as well as to encourage discussion over silent downvoting.

      • Imaginary_Stand4909@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        53·
        4 days ago

        OHHH THAT’S why Voyager gives me an error.

        Sigh, these are the things that might drive people away from Lemmy and Piefed. Lemmy devs are tankies, Piefed devs are weirdly puritanical, and instances won’t tell you they don’t allow downvotes.

  • goldenlocks@lemmy.world
    2318·
    6 days ago

    +1 for Hexbear, check it out if .world is too liberal for you. This place really feels like reddit, but somehow even more Dem apologist

  • Carrot@lemmy.today
    9·
    7 days ago

    I live in the PNW. I picked an instance in the PNW. Sometimes I see local news, and often I read comments from people within a few hour drive. It’s nice to have a small, local community here, while still having access to the rest of the world together. So I guess recommend picking the largest instance in your region if you don’t have any other preferences.

    • hector@lemmy.today
      2·
      6 days ago

      The one I am on is from that area, even though I’m in the upper midwest. I just picked it because they don’t block anything, didn’t defederate any communities or anything. Hands off, fast enough, here to stay they say.

    • The_Almighty_Walrus@lemmy.world
      6·
      6 days ago

      For me at least, reddits ban bot has gotten way too sensitive and the reviewers don’t actually read the appeal. I got a permaban for “threatening violence” just saying the word “kill” in context of a cat hunting birds, tried to appeal and immediately got a notification that the ban won’t be reversed, because they obviously didn’t read the comment that triggered the ban.

      So now I’m here

  • zaphod@sopuli.xyz
    3·
    6 days ago

    Well, it depends on what they want. There are different platforms in the fediverse that work very differently. Mastodon and Lemmy/PieFed can interact with each other, but it’s always painful. For Lemmy/PieFed I’d recommend they look for an instance that has a local feed that fits their interests. Ideally an instance that is federated with most large instances, otherwise it gets a little too boring.

    • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
      2·
      6 days ago

      Why did you block . world if they’ve been treating you all right?

      I’m sincerely curious for a few reasons

      first of all .world is the only instance that would let me in after I tried multiple times joining numerous other instances that would just buffer forever when I was trying to register and they never sent me confirmation emails, .world was the only one that would let me in.

      But now when I make posts and comments in .world communities, moderators have been removing my posts & comments, they say because I belong to.world 🤯

      Please make this make sense.

      And look, here we are in a .world community. Let’s see how long the moderators let this comment of mine remain 🙄