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You can also just have multiple accounts. I have one on lemm.ee just for this reason.
Definitely!
Yeah, I have .world where I first signed up. It occasionally had some issues so I added another that I just mostly read on if the other isn't working
It'd be nice to export/import subscriptions but I'm sure eventually the servers will get past it
I learnt my lesson to have multiple accounts after vlemmy
That was my main. The instance vanished faster than cotton candy being held by a raccoon standing in a pond.
It's funny, at this point I don't feel like I even have a main account. I just randomly pick an instance every time I go Lemmying
Quoting myself from a previous post:
First of all, it's really fine to stay on LW for now, no need to rush anything. But if at some point you have some time for this, then read the following.
So, to pick your instance, you can have a look at https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list, filter by "1m" to see what are the most popular ones. As you can see, with a 27433 monthly users, Lemmy.world is by far the most popular, which is why you might experience some issues from time to time.
You should have a look at the next instances on the list. Short story: lemm.ee, sh.itjust.works, lemmy.one, sopuli.xyz and reddthat.com are solid choices.
You are looking at instances with quite a lot of people (the more people help with filling your "All" feed), just not the most populous one (lemmy.world), the original one (lemmy.ml), and instances that are too specific, either due to country or specific focus.
Long story:
spoiler
.
To migrate your settings (including subscriptions and blocked instances), you can use that script: https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim
I think there is a huge misconception many people have that a larger instance is more likely to stay around, but due to the nonlinear costs involved in hosting fediverse instances this is not true.
Basically there is a sweet-spot around a few thousand (~2500) members where costs are low enough for a single admin paying things out of their own pocket long term is possible, but also enough members willing to occasionally donate or contribute otherwise to cover costs.
To be honest, I know it's a controversial view, but I would almost like to see Ruud and the LW admins block registrations for a while, along with a communication "Have a look at those other instances, they are well managed, you can access all of Lemmy just as well from there"
I'm not looking forward to 5 years from now, where instances like this are the mastodon.social of federated reddit-likes. As much as they should block registrations, I don't think they will. ...but I have a hat on stand by, just in case I need to eat it.
LASIM author here, ironically on my own alt: Just an FYI that support for Lemmy 0.18.3 is not yet out, but keep an eye out for it soon (I have it working on a branch but I need to test it more before release).
This is the first breaking API change since it's creation, so here are the limitations:
So that all means:
This will be true of every release with breaking API changes.
EDIT: PR is out. Once it builds, I'll publish a new release! https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim/pull/21
EDIT 2: Release is published! https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim/releases/tag/v0.2.0
Thank you for the heads up! You might want to add that to the ReadMe on your Github
Removed "and above" from page and instead added a note to always get the latest version if your version isn't listed as supported explicitly.
Just make a second account, the one I run, lemmy.myserv.one is so underutilized its a joke. Smaller instances like mine basically have to beg for users and the server goes unused while bigger instances struggle under the constant traffic.
Because using random tiny servers is worse in other ways. With all due respect, nobody knows you and they don't know how committed you are or how much time you have. When your server gets DDoSed or hits a bug causing data loss, what will you do? Do you have the technological know-how to recover and quickly? If your server suddenly grew and it became more expensive to run, how does anyone know if you will keep paying the bills? If Lemmy has a bad zero day, will you upgrade quickly?
There's no need to answer these questions. I'm not actually asking you personally. But these are the kinds of questions that users have to worry about from random, small, unproven instances.
(Also, Lemmy does not favour small instances because the "all" feed, searching, and going to new communities are all better the more diverse users you have.)
Yes obviously the barrier to entry is high. But nobody knows for the big servers either since they are basically just small instances that happened to get big. Thats why lemmy.fmhy.ml just died one day due to domain seizure. End of the day all you can do is look at how long a server has been around and if it has be online a reasonable amount of time. That kind of reputation just increases slowly and nobody can make it happen faster.
As always, I have to ask: is there a second admin, what would happen to the instance if something happened to you tomorrow (which I really wish will not!)
The Vlemmy.net disaster is still fresh in people's mind
Ultimately I am the one paying the bill currently so if I die nobody elses credit card is being charged.
In terms of other admins, this is actually happening. Some smaller instances like mine are in the process of setting up a sharing admin work between instances so that if someone is on holiday, the instance still has an admin who can login. This was only just started and is in the process. We have to create a lot of documentation and basic stuff to get it fully functional where another admin can login and fix something. Its not at that stage yet and will be a couple more weeks before it is. We did a test last night where another instance admin (boulder.ly) could connect to my instance via ssh but without documentation on what to do and check anything more than the basics of rebooting or restarting something isnt going to happen. Eventually we will get it to what to do if site has a critical vulnerability or is being attacked but not ready yet. Its a work in progress unfortunately.
P
In terms of other admins, this is actually happening. S
That's still very good news! Hopefully this can take away some of the worry users might have
I think without some kind of "incorporation" (or whatever the tech/FOSS equivalent of that is), most of these kinds of thing will be vulnerable to issues with the owner's payment methods failing. Even with donation options available it's almost always still being used to pay to the server owner in parallel to them paying server / domain costs out of pocket (and then reimbursing themselves with the donations)
That said, I have to assume there's some way to set up some kind of automated payment option where community donations actually fill a fund that is used to pay costs directly in case the maintainer drops off the face of the earth.
It mostly depends on the legal framework of each countries. I know in Europe a lot of FOSS non-profits are registered as such, with legal status, even sometimes tax deduction for donations.
I guess that will come in the coming months for some.
Of course I have one or two other accounts, but I personally like Lemmy.world. They serve as a necessary stress test that shows the devs and admins how to optimize further, and I just like learning admin practices at this scale of a userbase from a work perspective. Plus I don't want to be on an instance so small they can't or don't know how to handle compliance stuff and evaporate if something like that comes up. Not saying I know how to handle all of those situations, that's the job of someone else at work.
I think that's one of the issues that the rest of the instances are facing to appear as trustful as LW. LW admins have a long established reputation and experience managing Fediverse services, and provide very good transparency and a large team.
Other instances are usually nowhere close to that (some will be in the future I hope). The question I usually raise when someone start promoting their instance is "how many admins do you have?´What happens if you run under a bus tomorrow (hopefully you'll stay safe of course)? Is there a back up plan in place?"
Yeah, longevity and name recognition are why I went with sdf.org. They've been running many-user services for decades, even if the Lemmy service is pretty new.
ETA: they've been around since BBSes. I'm on a wicked nerdy old-school geek instance, and I love my local communities.
As I said elsewhere
There are certain things that are memory intensive and CPU intensive. If you have 10k on one server doing that it really adds up. However having them across a wide range of smaller servers, its not such a big deal.
As a user, you literally lose out on nothing not being on lemmy.world. You can partake in all the same conversations, communities and everything. In fact when lemmy.world is down, you can still see everything and when it comes back up, your posts will synchronize. There's genuinely no upside to being on lemmy.world. That's the way the system was designed.
Not sure people will listen though. I will always talk up the amazing admin I have on lemmy.tf, but it's also worth mentioning that I have a bunch of communities hosted on other instances and each and every one of them is amazing.
Lemm.ee is amazing with a top admin
💯 checking out the admin of a Fediverse instance you want to join is a good idea. Do they communicate with their users? Do they seem responsible ? Do they have any previous experience as a network admin? Lemm.ee was an obvious yes on all counts.
The admin for vlemmy.net was the complete opposite and look how that turned out.
Or just have 10 accounts so you only have downtime when your own internet is down.
And run 2 or 3 uplinks to different ISPs so that you're never offline.
And setup your own transmission dish so you can instantaneously switch to satellite if all ISPs go dark
There are 63 instances according to Jerboa.
Do note that this doesn't actually account for an accurate total of Lemmy instances across the Fediverse. It is a hardcoded list of instances.
Edit: Correction, its a generated list of instances (that gets copied into Jerboa) that have a MAU amount of more than 50 as pointed out below.
That list gets generated based on the lemmy instances tracked by fediverse.observer site that have a monthly active user amount greater than 50.
The instance lemmy.kya.moe that I created my alt on performs well too if anyone else is looking for an alternative :D
working fine for me , actually I have to say lemmy.world has been very stable
Perhaps I open Jerboa too often but in the last week lemmy.world has been down around 4 times for me, sometimes for a short time sometimes for much longer. When I was on lemmy.fmhy.ml it was only down once for me until their domain was seized and that was for the server upgrade.
I was on lemmy.world and had a really bad experience. The I moved to aussie.zone and its better than reddit. Never down, commenting, posts everything feels so fast and snappy.