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?
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.
!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.
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 is also pro-GenAI, which seems unfortunate to me.
db0 and sh. are my viiiibbbbbee
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
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.
Assuming we’re talking about servers we’d recommend to new Fediverse users, I’d recommend against lemmy.world. Not because there’s anything wrong with the server, 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.
There are tools nowadays that share communities around to smaller instances.
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.
That’s good to know!
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.
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
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I’m on Lemmy.zip and someone said that I would fit into that community.
I also recommend lemmy.zip or piefed.zip
Recommend:
Avoid:
- Lemmy.ml (tankie nonsense, unless you enjoy being gaslit and manipulated similar to Trump and his fascist thugs)
- 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)
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.
I would recommend use https://join-lemmy.org/ it suggest a generic instance and also lets search specific instances.
Personally I’d really like to see more servers physically located in privacy and free-speech friendly places like Switzerland and Iceland (for example). I’m not sure why you’d want to have your social media hosted anywhere else.
I’d like to plug the fediverse servers that I’m hosting for the traveller / digital nomad niche over at keyboard vagabond
https://piefed.keyboardvagabond.com
https://mastodon.keyboardvagabond.com
it seems like lemmy.today is decent, especially since there are no blocked instances. i moved from lemmy.sdf.org recently since their servers were down too often.
especially since there are no blocked instances
That’s not a good sign tbh…
well i could block people/insance if i want, on my account level. unless it’s a moderation problem i prefer having the server not blacklisting certain accounts/instances based on their view.
It kind of is when you are a person that values their own agency and don’t want your content to be curated by someone else.
As someone who signed up to sh.just.works because they didn’t defederate a lot: the defederation can be worth it.
When we federated with hexbear, they came in like a plague of locusts. They were constantly trolling, making our local comms unusable, and generally being dicks. This went on for 4 days before the hexbear admins defederated from us to avoid the embarassment of us defederating from them.
I’d rather deal with that my self and block instances and users at my own discretion.
I can understand defederation from threads and like CSAM adjacent stuff, but that really should be it. Everything more feel patronising. Of course I understand that some communities are “safe spaces” or what ever, so for them it makes sense. But I’d never recommend those simply because I wouldn’t recommend lemmy to anyone that isn’t able to make their own decisions regarding the content they want to see.
The thing you need to realise is that when someone signs up for a safe space instance, they are making their own decision about the content they wish to see.
It’s not about you. It’s about the type of content that will appear on the server, even if you personally block it.
Yeah, I didn’t expect the admin of a filter-bubble to understand.
Look, I absolutely understand that some people want to make their own choices about moderation. I was the same, until I existed as trans on Twitter for too long.
My point isn’t about blocking right wing transphobia stans.
My point is that if they don’t block anyone, you get CSAM, you get Nazi’s, you get ethnic cleansing advocates etc.
There was a server hiccup for about a day or so once in the last 2 years, but I’ve had no other issues.
I’m torn between wanting to tell people, and trying to keep it to myself to hold off the enshitification for as long as possible.
I recommend MULTIVERSE to any new otherkin/xenogender/plural fediverse users, or anyone who has antirealist sympathies.
Oh yeah, this is perfect for me!
