What exactly are instances? I picked one at random that claimed to be “general purpose” because I didn’t know what I was doing (I migrated very recently)
Instances are like islands, with their own cultures and rules. Hexbear.net, for example, is for Communists and Anarchists to hang out and talk about news, gaming, art, etc, while dbzer0 is an instance focused on piracy, AI, and has a techie anarchist slant, Lemmy.world is very much Reddit 2, etc.
Each of these islands has their own communities, but other islands that are federated can visit these communities. Some instances have strict federation policies like Hexbear.net, which it uses to protect its large trans userbase, while others take the opposite approach like lemm.ee, allowing users to subscribe to any comms across the fediverse they like (that aren’t defederated from lemm.ee, which is generally few).
I recommend finding some instances you are interested in, and browsing locally to see if it would be a good fit for you. Then, check if other instances you are interested in are federated with it, so you can see what you want when sorting by all. In my opinion, the biggest strength of Lemmy is in having niche userbases on the same general page, that can then interact with other instances.
Wait…you can browse instances without making an account??? Whoops, lol, I guess I was a little too eager to get Boost for Lemmy working with an account of my own immediately following Boost for Reddit getting nuked.
Is there a good way to browse instances? (Particularly through Boost?)
Also, what are the instances… literally? Like, I’ve never seen social media have groups like this (tied to the account, and separate from the communities, that is)
Yep, you can browse instances just by visiting their sites! It’s how I signed up to the couple I use, not sure how Boost handles it, I just use my mobile web browser (Hexbear has emojis you can use if you use the web version, so I just use that). I am sorry about not knowing Boost specifically, my fiancé uses Voyager.
As for what instances literally are, they are their own websites and servers, but they can talk to each other, think email. Gmail can talk to protonmail, etc
Yep! There’s also a bunch of inter-instance drama too, but by and large it’s a much better experience than Reddit, and if all else fails you can find an instance you really like and just browse locally, avoiding most of that drama. A big source of that drama is generally along political lines, Lemmy generally has 3 camps: Marxists, Anarchists, and Liberals, and each instance is more or less friendly with each of those, or hostile to them, so picking an instance that generally aligns with your views will dramatically smooth out your experience.
What exactly are instances? I picked one at random that claimed to be “general purpose” because I didn’t know what I was doing (I migrated very recently)
Instances are like islands, with their own cultures and rules. Hexbear.net, for example, is for Communists and Anarchists to hang out and talk about news, gaming, art, etc, while dbzer0 is an instance focused on piracy, AI, and has a techie anarchist slant, Lemmy.world is very much Reddit 2, etc.
Each of these islands has their own communities, but other islands that are federated can visit these communities. Some instances have strict federation policies like Hexbear.net, which it uses to protect its large trans userbase, while others take the opposite approach like lemm.ee, allowing users to subscribe to any comms across the fediverse they like (that aren’t defederated from lemm.ee, which is generally few).
I recommend finding some instances you are interested in, and browsing locally to see if it would be a good fit for you. Then, check if other instances you are interested in are federated with it, so you can see what you want when sorting by all. In my opinion, the biggest strength of Lemmy is in having niche userbases on the same general page, that can then interact with other instances.
Wait…you can browse instances without making an account??? Whoops, lol, I guess I was a little too eager to get Boost for Lemmy working with an account of my own immediately following Boost for Reddit getting nuked.
Is there a good way to browse instances? (Particularly through Boost?)
Also, what are the instances… literally? Like, I’ve never seen social media have groups like this (tied to the account, and separate from the communities, that is)
Yep, you can browse instances just by visiting their sites! It’s how I signed up to the couple I use, not sure how Boost handles it, I just use my mobile web browser (Hexbear has emojis you can use if you use the web version, so I just use that). I am sorry about not knowing Boost specifically, my fiancé uses Voyager.
As for what instances literally are, they are their own websites and servers, but they can talk to each other, think email. Gmail can talk to protonmail, etc
So, Lemmy is a bunch of separate social media networks that seamlessly* connect to each other? That’s… really cool
Yep! There’s also a bunch of inter-instance drama too, but by and large it’s a much better experience than Reddit, and if all else fails you can find an instance you really like and just browse locally, avoiding most of that drama. A big source of that drama is generally along political lines, Lemmy generally has 3 camps: Marxists, Anarchists, and Liberals, and each instance is more or less friendly with each of those, or hostile to them, so picking an instance that generally aligns with your views will dramatically smooth out your experience.
I recommend sorting this server browser by “most active” and checking each out locally.
Thank you for the info!
No worries!