Hello everyone,

Based on the recent instability of Lemmy.world, a lot of people have been wondering whether they should move to another instance.

I used to look at https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list and recommend people to pick a generalist instance with as much users as possible (using the 1m column), usually

Of course, there are also the regional options

And of course, the thematic instances

I used to recommend the most populated instances, as we know that All depends on users subscribed from the instance.

However, now with the introduction of the Lemmy Community Seeder (https://github.com/Fmstrat/lcs), which

tells your instance to pull the top communities and the communities with the top posts from your favorite instances

do you think this should still apply? I have seen promising instances (high uptime, already on 18.4 that was released today)

Would you recommend users to join those as well, assuming that the admins use the LCS to populate the All feed? Most of us remember the Vlemmy.net disappearance, and it’s difficult to tell users to join small instances based on good faith, but at the same time, every instance needs to start somewhere, and they should be given a chance.

What do you think?

  • primetime00@lemmy.world
    3·
    2 years ago

    I’m new to it all so I registered on lemmy.world and subscribed to several communities. I also registered and subscribed to the same communities on lemmy.ee. When lemmy.world is down, I use lemmy.ee, but those subscribed communities that are local on lemmy.world are no longer accessible. I thought communities synced over instances so if an instance goes down, communities are still accessable. Is this not true?

    • PorkrollPosadist@lemmy.mlEnglish
      4·
      2 years ago

      I thought communities synced over instances so if an instance goes down, communities are still accessible. Is this not true?

      This is not true. ActivityPub (the protocol Lemmy instances use to speak with one-another) does not intend to be a redundant, distributed datastore. There are a few reasons for this. One is practical. It needs to be affordable to start a new instance. If the requirements for starting a new instance entail mirroring significant parts of the fediverse (a network of over 2 million users and 22,000 instances) it would be impossible for anybody to do it unless they were Google/Facebook.

      Another has to do with trust. A community has a home. That home is chosen (ideally) because the admins can be trusted. That instance is the universal source of truth for that community. If communities didn’t live on a specific instance, they would be vulnerable to various forms of hijacking. The home instance has the final say on who has permission to comment, and who has permission to perform moderator actions. None of these actions could be trusted if they weren’t cleared by the home instance first. Third party servers perform basic validataion against the currently known ban list / mod list / etc, but this could easily be spoofed by malicious instances.

      When an instance goes down, it is kind of similar to a netsplit on IRC. A queue of outgoing messages build up on your instance, which can be seen on your instance. Queues of messages queue up on other instances, which can be seen on other instances, but they won’t be synchronized until the destination instance returns (this depends specifically on which inbox the messages are directed towards - I’m not particularly familliar with the specific implementation in Lemmy).

      Finally (though not really), ActivityPub isn’t designed to be a broadcasting protocol. In the case of Lemmy, and other Reddit-like clones, it effectively acts as such, but it is intended only to send messages to the places they belong. If you post a message and the subscribers to that message only exist on 3 servers, that message ONLY gets sent to those three servers, even though there are thousands of servers in the network (at least, this is how it is supposed to work in theory).

      I might have some details wrong here. I’m more familiar with how Mastodon works (and how it fails) at this point after troubleshooting various problems on my instance.

    • Blaze (he/him)@sopuli.xyzOP
      2·
      2 years ago

      Hello,

      Thank you for your message. You might want to have a look at https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim to sync subs between accounts.

      I thought communities synced over instances so if an instance goes down, communities are still accessable.

      They are, but not in the way you think: if you follow community@lemmy.world from lemm.ee, and then lemmy.world goes down, you can still see the content of that community on lemm.ee, it does not become unavailable to you.

      I hope this answers your question

  • Gushys@programming.dev
    2·
    2 years ago

    As a new lemmy user, I made an account on lemmy.world and programming.dev as I am a developer. Still trying to figure it all out but I think making my home base programming.dev since it’s I think it’s federated with most other instances and my all feeds remains about the same. I mostly joined for the dev communities but also want to mix in some memes and general news so I can follow the goings on of the world

  • NightOwl@lemmy.oneEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    I went with lemmy.one because of privacyguides from reddit, and I liked that the move of actually being serious about the protest by making an alternative to move away from. Very few of the subreddits I subscribed to ever decided to make an instance or a fediverse community, so lemmy.one was what I defaulted to in the beginning. Since then Android has made an instance too, so that’d be my second choice. Anyways, that’s how I decided by going with what I was familiar with.

  • skookumasfrig@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    I went to sign up. There was a notification that advised me to not use the main servers and listed others. I picked one randomly and I’ve been happy since. I pay them through Patreon voluntarily because they deserve support but they don’t solicit. You have to dig a little to find it.

  • chrisbit@leminal.spaceEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    I’m the admin of mine. Why? Because I enjoy doing, it’s in the spirit of decentralisation, and I didn’t want to risk being part of an instance that defederates from leftist instances like Lemmygrad or Hexbear. I only intend to proactively defederate from fascist and troll instances, and NSFW to reduce legal drama.

        • kd637_mi@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          01·
          1 year ago

          Hell yeah, I’m concerned that if SDF decides to block instance they will include Lemmygrad and Hexbear so I might make an account on yours. I assume you’re defederated from stuff like exploding heads, rammy, and burggitt?

          Actually just checked your list, perfect blocked instances list and absolutely sick instance theme. Love it. I’m in 😎

    • kd637_mi@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      01·
      1 year ago

      I made my first account on aussie.zone since I’m Australian but wanted access to Lemmygrad, and now Hexbear. Aussie.zone is great apart from that, I’d love a local feed full of Australian stuff.

  • kd637_mi@lemmy.sdf.org
    01·
    2 years ago

    For me, I would want to to federate and not be defederated by with Lemmygrad and Hexbear, while also having the same for things like aussie.zone, pathfinder.social, slrpnk.net, and the larger instances so I can pick out good communities from them. Stability matters more than size for me, I have no issues with the all feed and actually have had to block some communities due to spam or lack of interest as it is.

    Also, is it the case that it only shows communities someone is subscribed to in all, or is it discovered communities?