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?
We’re all figuring this out as we go! Since the great Reddit migration, we’ve already seen our first big drama with the Beehaw defederation. Some Beehaw users disagreed and left for other instances while users of other instances liked the move and joined Beehaw. The Lemmy fediverse is what WE make it for better or for worse.
i don't blame them for not welcoming redditors. they weren't on reddit for a reason, and now there's an influx of redditors making a lot of changes.
Sure, but I don't think beehaw's philosophy suits the fediverse very well. They want to create a safer space where discussion and disagreement is encouraged, but more closely policed. Which makes sense for a closed system - not one where "unpoliced" users can interact with your community. Otherwise you end up playing server whack-a-mole... exactly like beehaw has done.
That's always been a thing in the fediverse. Most instances have a rather large blacklist to block out stuff such as nazi subs and racist subs and worse.