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?
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.
Liked the name.
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
Blahaj.zone we’re chill AF here
Are you though? Not as enlightened as you may think.
I don’t like that you can’t downvote, though.
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.
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.
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.
I had no idea this was a local instance. Neat!
!main@sh.itjust.works they are very new-user friendly, diaspora: idfk its dead, mastodon: official instance, peertube: peertube.wtf with official app to do federation stuff
peertube: peertube.wtf with official app to do federation stuff
I assume you can login into it via GrayJay as well
never used grayjay to begin with, used different apps for different fediverse stuff
I think the best thing is to choose one and hang around and if you like where you land then go forward but once you learn how to look them over and what makes them different then evaluate and decide on one and make a new account that becomes your main.
Just FYI everyone, this spike is sort of a glitch and its quite obvious just from looking at how steep the curve is. It all comes from nodebb which is a forum software and i guess they switched on federation on 11.01.2026 which gave us this magical bump.
They are real users probably, but what i mean is that this wasnt a rush of new users, but just old (mostly inactive) users that were never considered part of the fediverse until now.
Still increases footprint/grants more credibility to the Fediverse, which I think is a good thing. It just won’t really impact the daily experience here
https://lemmy.sdf.org/ has some pretty unique content, even from the normal fediverse. I like the users there. See !funhole@lemmy.sdf.org and !unix_surrealism@lemmy.sdf.org
When its up peertube.wtf is great for discovering peertube videos. I use it to find things to post on !peertube@lemmy.world
I like to spend my time on piefed. Its my favorite “threadiverse” software atm. I spent snd contributed code to lemmy for about a year but jumped over to piefed. Its fun and fedi interop was better at the time.
For everything else fediverse.party for fun software and instances!
As far as I understand, lemmy instances are sort of a community with communities inside. It seems that each isntance has their own like minded userbase. .world has basich mix of everyone due to popularity, .ml holds strong beliefs politically, blahaj.zone is more progressive in gender identity, piefed.social is more mainstream decentralized instance. And of course there are more I didn’t mention.
I am on dbzer0 because I am into selfhosting and sailing the seas. It fits me well. Tied to one instance doesn’t stop me from engaging on other instances except the ones I blacklisted.
Check the instances and their descriptions and find something that fits you.
db0 and sh. are my viiiibbbbbee
db0 is also pro-GenAI, which seems unfortunate to me.
You can do what I do and just block the genAI art comms.
No harm, no foul, I just am not interested in the content.
While I can’t say for certain, I would strongly suspect that a lot of the people in those comms are self hosting their LLMs/Image generators, if that makes you feel any better.
But uh, there are a variety of nuanced stances on LLMs and such, amongst the other m@teys I’ve talked with.
Its… not like we’re all super duper no holds barred put AI in everything advocates.
A lot of us are… quite a lot closer to ‘Butlerian Jihad NOW’, lol.
At the risk of starting an argument (sorry)… I see any use of GenAI as support and endorsement of the technology, and I see the technology as a systemic attack on creative work by real people. It’s stealing the results of hard work of people to produce derivative work with the intent of replacing those same people. Thus, while self-hosting does remove some concerns related to big corporations, I think it still empowers them by supporting the tech they deal in.
I do block dedicated GenAI communities, but it’s more widespread than that, showing up in unrelated comms, being used to generate community icons and banners.
And of course an instance isn’t homogenous with regard to its users, and I don’t condemn people for using db0, but IIRC the host of db0 is supportive of GenAI, which is what I primarily referred to, and what steers the direction the instance is taking.
Assuming we’re talking about instances we’d recommend to new Fediverse users, I’d recommend against lemmy.world. Not because there’s anything wrong with the instance, but simply because it’s the largest, by a fairly large margin. A central principal of the fediverse is decentralization, and to that end, it’s healthier to spread the users across many instances than to have folks concentrated too heavily on any one.
A central principal of the fediverse is decentralization, and to that end, it’s healthier to spread the users across many instances than to have folks concentrated too heavily on any one.
It’s certainly healthier for the whole to have users spread across instances, but that’s a matter of emergence. What’s your pitch to convince an individual to choose a smaller instance, when it’s far more likely that their instance will cease to exist, taking their identity, history and hosted communities with it?
It’s trust and uptime data so it seems. Pick the server you think is most trustworthy and will stand the longest.
I figured joining the biggest one would be the most exciting and active. I believe federation happens when a user on one instance follows another, so joining a smaller one might mean you miss some content. I could be wrong though.
Problem with lemmy.world is that because it’s got so open registration, some instances block it entirely. Though it’s a good place to start and know what to expect. Because Lemmy is pretty slow, I personally prefer to browse All - New and just block all Communities (and instances) that I don’t want to see. I subscribe too of course for those times I just want to see the content I’m actually interested in but for casual browsing, browse by all.
It basically works like that on Mastodon, but on Lemmy, etc. you will see most of the content of all federated instances.
It’s common for new users to overthink the choice of instance - it doesn’t make a huge difference for most users and you can always switch if you find a better fit in the future.
You can pick one that is local to your country/region, or if you have a special interest like art or environmental activism, you may be able to find one that specializes in that. Otherwise choose any instance that is stable.
You’re only missing content if your instance defederates from another and vice versa or if you block instances yourself.
It might be a bit easier to find new communities at first by scrolling through the local feed on a bigger community, but you can also do this without making an account there.
I think stability and speed of an instance are better selection criteria since they effect your experience much more. Piefed instances tend to offer a smooth and fast experience. E.g. piefed.social, piefed.zip, and the others mentioned in one of the other comments.
You’re only missing content if your instance defederates from another and vice versa or if you block instances yourself.
You’re missing content from communities that no one on your instance follows yet.
Yep, but piefed and lemmy both have tools to propogate communities to small instances so that they can be discovered and followed. So you won’t see content that no one on the instance is interested in, but if someone is, they’ll be able to find the community for it, even if they’re on a small instance.
That’s good to know!
tankies need to be on thier own instances so they can circlejerk each other. politics is problematic in .world, they try to hid subtley calling people antisemtitic
deleted by creator
There are tools nowadays that share communities around to smaller instances through bot accounts that auto subscribe.
It also makes it easier when you create a community, now it will automatically show up on most instances.
I was wondering why we suddenly had so many astroturfers, shills and bots creeping in and fucking up all the conversations. It used to just be dumb but earnest tankies, now we got all kinds up in this bitch.
I don’t know which ones are bots. I assume nothing is a bot. I don’t know about any bots. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen one. Are you a bot? How do I know?
Huh well I wonder why making your space inhospitable for leftists would attract astroturfers and shills?
Thank you, I wish to be further educated by .ml users on lefty takes such as how Iran mass shooting their citizens protesting in the face is actually good, or how Russia has a god-given right to invade their neighbors, I’ve not heard that enough!
Where should I subscribe to the “anyone anti-West is ontologically GOOD” newsletter?
Corpo trash can’t stand wrongthink
I’m on Lemmy.zip and someone said that I would fit into that community. Would I recommend it? Yes.
Zip is awesome! I switched over to db0, but simply because of a technical glitch on .zip like a year ago now, which was rapidly fixed by the admin… and I was too impatient to withstand not being able to post, lol.
A+ instance imo.
What’s awesome about it?
Great head admin, good variety of local communities, great users?
I also recommend lemmy.zip or piefed.zip
Recommend:
Avoid:
- Lemmy.ml (Tankie fascist koolaid. Unless you enjoy being gaslit and manipulated similar to Trump and his fascist thugs, this should be avoided like the bubonic plague)
- Lemmy.world (sorry guys but seriously please reconsider accepting literally everyone for users; it’s crazy how much spam and nonsense is coming from your instance)
Just a warning: Piefed has a lot of shady built in hidden karma. Like you posting “this” or a gif only detracts from your karma. They also block you from downvoting if you downvote more than you upvote. It’s not really free speech at all.
hexbear, lemmygrad as well. hexbear make themselves sound"cute" to hopefully trick people into engaging in thier instance, when in fact they are tankies.
Fyi, you might to clarify that new users should avoid hexbear and lemmygrad.
If someone only skims through the comments, yours can read as an endorsement, especially since the user you replied to had endorsements at the top of their comment
Joining a default instance is fine for beginners, but you can’t stay for long. Do a quick peek around, find an instance that looks cool, and head out.
My own! I feel like I run it pretty well, I certainly trust myself with my data than others. But otherwise, id probably recommend lemmy.zip or piefed.social
I’m leaning towards running my own too.
