Fair points. I just think some people won’t want the hassle of weighing up different instances, they might just want the instance with the most content and people, because I guess the most people implies reliability.
As for reasons for picking an instance, yes those are valid reasons. I picked this British instance so I can see all the British stuff when I view local posts, and other stuff when I view all posts. From another instance I guess I’d have to check every British community on feddit.uk manually.
You also make some fair points but I would change the wording a bit. Instead of “THE” most active instance, pick ones that are AMONG the list of the most active. These two that Blaze mentioned were chosen with exactly that in mind by starting from the top 20 and eliminating those run only by a single admin, or have database corruption issues, or have names that could be off-putting to some (shit works yo dawg), or other themes (ranging from tankies to LGBTQIA+ to Star Trek, or region specificity like feddit.uk is a great instance but most people from e.g. the USA, or Australia or such may not feel fully at home there, unlike Discuss.Online that while it is based in the USA does not really have that anywhere as its “theme”).
And having the “most” content is a VERY loaded concept. Lemmy.ml for instance is defederated from no major large instances (it is how instances retrieve the list of all communities across the Fediverse), and yet those admins are notorious for banning people from communities that they have never even heard of, much less visited or commented in. (Edit: also several other reasons too, another big one is how its default sort method is Local rather than All, thus a visitor without an Account or knowledge of how to switch that yet will see primarily the most highly charged tankie shit, and none of the wonderful content from elsewhere across the Fediverse like the memes from !tenforward@lemmy.world.) So I don’t think directing people to it is the right way to go. And now similarly to Lemmy.World for its own controversial stance, as per their announcement that was so poorly received, possibly merely bc of being poorly explained, that every word is struck through.
And I cannot in good conscience recommend hexbear.net either. Neither can many hexbears themselves btw - you can read more here. Therefore by extension I personally refuse to recommend instances that even federate with hexbear, bc their trolling is THAT onerous to an uninitiated newbie who is not aware of such. Which is why I petitioned Discuss.Online to block it first. TLDR: yes I want ALL of the content across the Fediverse, subject to the constraint that it is offered in good faith. But I don’t want to be constantly trolled, nor will I recommend that experience to others either. The can choose it for themselves if they wish, I’m just talking about my own response here.
Also, Beehaw has cut itself off from the largest instances including Lemmy.World. So that’s another reason why it does not follow from “largest instance” (i.e. the one with the largest number of user accounts) that it will have the most content, or be the most reliable one. The one with the most content and highest reliability mixture is surely lemm.ee, though with so very many honorable mentions there that could easily rise to the top given the slightest of tie-breakers, like lemmy.dbzer0.com is damn impressive as well. But the one that seems most geared towards (I mean best matchup to, as in not speaking to intentionality but it certainly does work) “mainstream normies”, particularly centrists coming from Reddit i.e. quite a bit more right-leaning compared to the rest of the world and so would be highly turned off by all the “kill all landlords” content here (and yet we still want to help these people get away from Huffman and Musk… don’t we? To clarify I do NOT mean Alt-Right MAGAT extremists, as the opposite of our own Alt-Left tankie extremists here, just centrists is all, which is like 90-99% of all human beings on the planet) seems like Discuss.Online. And then also sopuli.xyz for generic, possibly also former Redditors, but based in Europe and therefore wanting ever so slightly a different experience including network latency and governmental rules where the server is based.
Good points. Maybe if I’m trying to explain Lemmy to someone I should just link them to a list of servers, like the one here, so they can pick a server for themselves.
The top 4 among the Top 10 Most Active Servers (by total posts) are: Lemmy.World, Hexbear.net (twice for some reason) and Lemmygrad.ml, but I would not recommend any of these.
Beehaw also features prominently but if we are talking about wanting the most content across the entire Fediverse, then its having defederated from Lemmy.World and sh.itjust.works discounts it as well.
I would also argue that there’s a huge difference between an instance that encourages trolling behaviors, one that allows that, and one that does not. So people’s experiences of “Lemmy” on the likes of hexbear.net or lemmygrad.ml vs. “Lemmy” on the likes of Lemmy.World or Lemmy.ca that defederate from the former pair are extremely divergent, and then the likes of lemm.ee or sh.itjust.works are somewhere in-between.
None of this is visible from that webpage, and so I think that Blaze’s analyses and interpretation of the situation is more helpful to describe the major factors that people, especially those on Reddit, are going to most care about. i.e., “most content” isn’t the only or even one of the primary factors, especially for a federated platform where the vast majority of instances will allow access to the vast majority of content regardless (except Beehaw).
True. I don’t think I would recommend someone to look at Hexbear or Lemmygrad. Maybe I would mention Lemmy.world as the easiest entry point to Lemmy, and the existence of other servers like Feddit.org, Lemm.ee, etc.
Lemmy.World, aside from its very controversial (and now seemingly retracted) announcement a few days ago, has a problem contributing to the over-centralization of the Fediverse. As in, regardless of whether its good or bad to be on any particular instance based on its own merits, it is not good for everyone to be on the same instance. Which is what was happening, where ~80% of all user accounts across Lemmy were on Lemmy.World (in the last few months the proportion of active accounts there has fallen by more than half, but this at least was true several months ago). It also is still running 0.19.3 like a year after it came out, while other instances are running 0.19.8.
So for those reasons people have been recommending that new users should join some other instance than Lemmy.World. And yet we can still see all the awesome content there, like at !tenforward@lemmy.world, without needing to have an account on that instance directly.
Discuss.Online for instance is one of the most active instances, thus has high likelihood that a more technical person has subscribed to communities on other instances already (plus there’s another, automated solution to that particular problem anyway), is well managed, has defederated from Lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net, and is for general discussions rather than themed.
There is nothing else in the USA (where most Redditors are located) that even comes close - e.g. Midwest.social has an admin that reportedly bans people just for downvoting their own posts, which is the type of thing that people don’t want to recommend that new users join such a server and then become frustrated and end up leaving the entire Threadiverse or at least have to endure the hassle of picking another instance. Discuss.online is quite a solid recommendation.
Blaze also has also shared longer listings elsewhere, but it gets super complicated to describe all of this stuff - tankie and admin drama, defederations, networking and related issues causing delays in posts and comments appearing for people across the Threadiverse, the database corruption issue of programming.dev that was probably fixed here in the last couple of days, it’s a LOT for people to try to absorb!!! And the effects that any ONE of those issues will have upon the frustration of a new user to the Threadiverse could be enough to send them back to centralized Reddit whenever it begins to go wrong. Especially imagine a content creator who doesn’t use Arch btw and just wants to share their comics with us, but it gets too difficult to navigate all of that, especially compared to the much smaller audience than Reddit or X or Facebook offers.
Hence why he has made the list so very simple, to make it easier for new people to ignore all of that and just join an instance to jump onto the Threadiverse immediately.
Fair points. I guess I don’t mention Lemmy much online anymore anyway. If I mention it to somebody in real life I guess I’ll tell them there are multiple servers to choose from.
Fair points. I just think some people won’t want the hassle of weighing up different instances, they might just want the instance with the most content and people, because I guess the most people implies reliability.
As for reasons for picking an instance, yes those are valid reasons. I picked this British instance so I can see all the British stuff when I view local posts, and other stuff when I view all posts. From another instance I guess I’d have to check every British community on feddit.uk manually.
You also make some fair points but I would change the wording a bit. Instead of “THE” most active instance, pick ones that are AMONG the list of the most active. These two that Blaze mentioned were chosen with exactly that in mind by starting from the top 20 and eliminating those run only by a single admin, or have database corruption issues, or have names that could be off-putting to some (shit works yo dawg), or other themes (ranging from tankies to LGBTQIA+ to Star Trek, or region specificity like feddit.uk is a great instance but most people from e.g. the USA, or Australia or such may not feel fully at home there, unlike Discuss.Online that while it is based in the USA does not really have that anywhere as its “theme”).
And having the “most” content is a VERY loaded concept. Lemmy.ml for instance is defederated from no major large instances (it is how instances retrieve the list of all communities across the Fediverse), and yet those admins are notorious for banning people from communities that they have never even heard of, much less visited or commented in. (Edit: also several other reasons too, another big one is how its default sort method is Local rather than All, thus a visitor without an Account or knowledge of how to switch that yet will see primarily the most highly charged tankie shit, and none of the wonderful content from elsewhere across the Fediverse like the memes from !tenforward@lemmy.world.) So I don’t think directing people to it is the right way to go. And now similarly to Lemmy.World for its own controversial stance, as per their announcement that was so poorly received, possibly merely bc of being poorly explained, that every word is struck through.
And I cannot in good conscience recommend hexbear.net either. Neither can many hexbears themselves btw - you can read more here. Therefore by extension I personally refuse to recommend instances that even federate with hexbear, bc their trolling is THAT onerous to an uninitiated newbie who is not aware of such. Which is why I petitioned Discuss.Online to block it first. TLDR: yes I want ALL of the content across the Fediverse, subject to the constraint that it is offered in good faith. But I don’t want to be constantly trolled, nor will I recommend that experience to others either. The can choose it for themselves if they wish, I’m just talking about my own response here.
Also, Beehaw has cut itself off from the largest instances including Lemmy.World. So that’s another reason why it does not follow from “largest instance” (i.e. the one with the largest number of user accounts) that it will have the most content, or be the most reliable one. The one with the most content and highest reliability mixture is surely lemm.ee, though with so very many honorable mentions there that could easily rise to the top given the slightest of tie-breakers, like lemmy.dbzer0.com is damn impressive as well. But the one that seems most geared towards (I mean best matchup to, as in not speaking to intentionality but it certainly does work) “mainstream normies”, particularly centrists coming from Reddit i.e. quite a bit more right-leaning compared to the rest of the world and so would be highly turned off by all the “kill all landlords” content here (and yet we still want to help these people get away from Huffman and Musk… don’t we? To clarify I do NOT mean Alt-Right MAGAT extremists, as the opposite of our own Alt-Left tankie extremists here, just centrists is all, which is like 90-99% of all human beings on the planet) seems like Discuss.Online. And then also sopuli.xyz for generic, possibly also former Redditors, but based in Europe and therefore wanting ever so slightly a different experience including network latency and governmental rules where the server is based.
Good points. Maybe if I’m trying to explain Lemmy to someone I should just link them to a list of servers, like the one here, so they can pick a server for themselves.
The top 4 among the Top 10 Most Active Servers (by total posts) are: Lemmy.World, Hexbear.net (twice for some reason) and Lemmygrad.ml, but I would not recommend any of these.
Beehaw also features prominently but if we are talking about wanting the most content across the entire Fediverse, then its having defederated from Lemmy.World and sh.itjust.works discounts it as well.
I would also argue that there’s a huge difference between an instance that encourages trolling behaviors, one that allows that, and one that does not. So people’s experiences of “Lemmy” on the likes of hexbear.net or lemmygrad.ml vs. “Lemmy” on the likes of Lemmy.World or Lemmy.ca that defederate from the former pair are extremely divergent, and then the likes of lemm.ee or sh.itjust.works are somewhere in-between.
None of this is visible from that webpage, and so I think that Blaze’s analyses and interpretation of the situation is more helpful to describe the major factors that people, especially those on Reddit, are going to most care about. i.e., “most content” isn’t the only or even one of the primary factors, especially for a federated platform where the vast majority of instances will allow access to the vast majority of content regardless (except Beehaw).
True. I don’t think I would recommend someone to look at Hexbear or Lemmygrad. Maybe I would mention Lemmy.world as the easiest entry point to Lemmy, and the existence of other servers like Feddit.org, Lemm.ee, etc.
Lemmy.World, aside from its very controversial (and now seemingly retracted) announcement a few days ago, has a problem contributing to the over-centralization of the Fediverse. As in, regardless of whether its good or bad to be on any particular instance based on its own merits, it is not good for everyone to be on the same instance. Which is what was happening, where ~80% of all user accounts across Lemmy were on Lemmy.World (in the last few months the proportion of active accounts there has fallen by more than half, but this at least was true several months ago). It also is still running 0.19.3 like a year after it came out, while other instances are running 0.19.8.
So for those reasons people have been recommending that new users should join some other instance than Lemmy.World. And yet we can still see all the awesome content there, like at !tenforward@lemmy.world, without needing to have an account on that instance directly.
Discuss.Online for instance is one of the most active instances, thus has high likelihood that a more technical person has subscribed to communities on other instances already (plus there’s another, automated solution to that particular problem anyway), is well managed, has defederated from Lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net, and is for general discussions rather than themed.
There is nothing else in the USA (where most Redditors are located) that even comes close - e.g. Midwest.social has an admin that reportedly bans people just for downvoting their own posts, which is the type of thing that people don’t want to recommend that new users join such a server and then become frustrated and end up leaving the entire Threadiverse or at least have to endure the hassle of picking another instance. Discuss.online is quite a solid recommendation.
Blaze also has also shared longer listings elsewhere, but it gets super complicated to describe all of this stuff - tankie and admin drama, defederations, networking and related issues causing delays in posts and comments appearing for people across the Threadiverse, the database corruption issue of programming.dev that was probably fixed here in the last couple of days, it’s a LOT for people to try to absorb!!! And the effects that any ONE of those issues will have upon the frustration of a new user to the Threadiverse could be enough to send them back to centralized Reddit whenever it begins to go wrong. Especially imagine a content creator who doesn’t use Arch btw and just wants to share their comics with us, but it gets too difficult to navigate all of that, especially compared to the much smaller audience than Reddit or X or Facebook offers.
Hence why he has made the list so very simple, to make it easier for new people to ignore all of that and just join an instance to jump onto the Threadiverse immediately.
Fair points. I guess I don’t mention Lemmy much online anymore anyway. If I mention it to somebody in real life I guess I’ll tell them there are multiple servers to choose from.
Usually what I send is:
"Lemmy has 42k monthly active users
Feel free if you have any questions"