Change post type to All and sort by Active. Start blocking communities that you don’t want to see and subscribing to communities that interest you.

If you are like me and you want to see where everyone is talking, change your sort to New Comments instead of Active.

If you aren’t a bot change your tag or people are going to block you

Welcome. You are now a Lemming.

Don’t worry to much about people telling you to hate this instance or this other, you’ll find out on your own. Use heavily the blocking fonction and everything will be fine.

You don’t find a niche community to post or comment in? Do the same on the less niche but related community.
Around here people hate AI, love beans, Start Trek and Linux. You can disagree and still enjoy the memes.

Lemmy is like many tiny Reddits called instances. You barely realise you switch from one to another while browsing happily expect for “instance nationalism”. It is smaller but more humane. That’s about all you need to start.

Don’t hesitate to share you hobbies to get recommandation. Here is mine anyway : !superbowl@lemmy.world

Enjoy.

Honestly, it’s pretty left wing and there can be duplicates of communities. There’s far less content than on Reddit but I find that better because I lost weeks of my life doom scrolling on Reddit. I hit a point on here where I just have to wait for more stuff to appear. One good thing about that is you can comment on something and actually be heard. Not like on Reddit where all but the most niche communities have 200+ comments on each post.

Also, and this is a big one, you have to be running Linux.

Ignore karma and just have fun.

It’s just like Reddit. Except non-fascist. And karma doesn’t mean anything. In other words, it’s much better!

There’s a butt load of tankies here. They are incredibly hostile to anyone who doesn’t agree with them. You’ll just have to block them one by one.

There is no karma here. Don’t worry too much about being downvoted every now and then.

Also, I like sorting by scaled. It’s like sorting by hot, except it pushes smaller, niche communities up. Which is great if you don’t want your feed to just be news articles.

Landlords, billionaires, AI, Reddit = Bad

Beans, Linux = good

Marxist-Leninists = it’s complicated

Upvotes don’t mean anything here

1. Think about things you like.
2. Look for community about said thing
3. If it exists, GREAT! contribute content And have fun!

3-A. If it DOESN’T exist, make it. THEN contribute & have fun!

4. Become a linux user.

Here you need to complain about AI and promote Linux. That’s a good start I guess?

There’s about 20 monumental assholes here that are responsible for almost all of the squabbling and drama.

Use the BLOCK function liberally, every time you find someone who’s just a complete asshat, block them.

Eventually you’ll catch the big fish and life will get easier around here and you won’t have these morons to deal with.

R0. Don’t be a fucking nazi. R1. Have fun!

Comrade, remember that when arguing with strangers on here, you may have non black and white views. For example, many of us notice undesirable things about Lemmy the software itself, we just acknowledge it and continue using it with the understanding that it’s the best we have. BUT it’s best to state it explicitly (“I like/use/am X but Y”), because most readers will assume skepticism of something as an argument against it.

It’s, however, fine to be downvoted, since there’s no score and old comments will essentially drown away behind pages on your account page as you talk more.

Also, oh no, it’s time to talk about politics! Be aware of political leanings. Unlike some other platforms, there’s no algorithm only showing you what you like, it shows what the majority likes bound by instance rules and norms. Some groups of communities may have slightly different views on average, although in some really rare cases someone on an instance may have a different view. See:

• hexbear net, lemmy ml, lemmygrad ml and subdomains - someone already explained, pro-Russia and pro-China viewpoints
• maga place, kiwifarms cc - as it sounds, usually defederated
• blahaj zone and big “general” instances with majority ex reddit people (including your instance, lemmy world) - “centre-left” in the common sense of the phrase
• anything with the ideology in the name of the instance, like anarchist dot nexus, is likely to be leaning towards it

Everything not mentioned is generally lib left leaning, like democratic socialists. Remember to use “All” and not “Local” to see everyone!

Also, people usually like text walls, sometimes with links to stuff, breaking out of the 4-th wall of just Lemmy. But there are a few people who don’t like visiting links, so you usually state the main point you are trying to derive from what’s linked or referenced. Here’s one thread I’ve been to. (Unfortunately Lemmy doesn’t really provide a way to properly link across instances, but you can just copy the link, then paste it into the search bar and wait around a bit. When providing links to other posts, you copy the link from the colorful “fediverse” button. Anyways, back to the point.) It wasn’t too productive and I’ve got downvoted a lot in my thread, partly because I forgot to elaborate too much initially, and because I was talking to .world people in anarchist language. That’s fine, nothing to be ashamed of. Note the blahaj zone user seemingly jumping in (from search) after a period of inactivity to argue in bad faith. I’ve managed to stall the conversation by providing counter arguments to basically everything stated with long explanations, citing wikis. This may not have convinced anyone to change their thoughts, but now anyone else attempting to jump in from search will see everything I’ve stated. I also used some “charged” language, which is fine around here and I never escalated it further. Not the best example of an argument back-and-forth, but close enough for my points.

Also also, pro tip, to mention a community type ! then the name, and to mention a user type @ and then the name. Do NOT use the autocomplete by pressing tab, because it’s going to create a link that will lead people to your instance, which people may not like. Just leave it as text and it will self convert for everyone to their own instance.

For example of mentioning users, I’m going to mention @pmjv@lemmy.sdf.org , who often posts newspapers of sorts for tech topics. Check it out sometime, when their instance is up (it’s very often down). The newspapers have coupons, you could paste the image into your favorite image editor (like GIMP) then select and copy the coupon to paste it into an argument.

Oh, what’s that - a spoiler tag, it’s called. It’s different from Reddit, you type ::: spoiler {name} and end it with :::. You can press the “view source” button on this post to see how that looks like. Yes, you have to use the word “spoiler” AND a name, so to make a spoiler called “spoiler”, you use ::: spoiler spoiler. The default web UI lets you stack them. Most mobile apps don’t, however, and make the text overflow out of both layers, so I don’t recommend relying on that.

I guess that’s all I have to add.