Asklemmy

Lemmy.world, by political ideology, is most similar to old Reddit. Namely, you're most likely going to find generally-left-of-center people. Several other instances (namely lemmy.ml) are known for being significantly more left-leaning, basically hard communist.

As is tradition for left-leaning people, there's a lot of infighting. .world people think that .ml people are tankies. .ml people think that .world people are corporate bootlickers. Both sides accuse the other of heavy-handed censorship.

Basically, I wouldn't worry about it. It's just your standard leftism infighting.

Lemmy.world is not frowned upon. There are some people who are very vocal about not liking it but if you don't have any problems you don't need to change. There is also nothing stopping you from having accounts on diferent instances so try some of them out and stay where you like it.

Lemm.ee: It's the Switzerland of the fediverse. ;)

The Operations Team are a stand-up group. Their focus is on delivering stability.

You'll basically get access to all content (and all "features", like up-vote and down-vote - I'm looking at you beehaw).

What I've heard from other people is that they want automagic curated content... so you won't find that a lemm.ee, but for me - I'm happy to find the content that's meaningful to me.

People frown upon lemmy.world because it's a politically American center-right instance on a leftist social media platform that bans leftist discourse via defederation.

If your politics align w them and you don't mind them deciding what you can and can't see on your behalf, you'll do fine there.

I switched from lemmy.world because of that and switched to an instance that doesn't make a habit of defederating from the most active instances (ie hexbear) and there's also another center-right instance named lemm.ee that also doesn't defederate.

A small list of cool instances:

• lemmy.blahaj.zone : chill place and people, LGBT (and especially trans) friendly

• hexbear.net : very active and friendly instance that used to be separate from Lemmy. Most people are very various lefties

• lemmy.ml : generalist instance, moderated by the devs of Lemmy. It is not marketed as a left instance but some socialists join there because of the .ml (Marxism Leninism)

For astronomy there is !astronomy@mander.xyz. The communities on mander.xyz are STEM focussed and usually well moderated.

You could also try

• !astrophotography@lemmy.world

• !space@mander.xyz

• !space@lemmy.world

As for the instance, stay wherever you feel most comfortable. I have a few alts on other instances, including lemmy.world. You're also free to move later if you decide to.

If it helps I am based in the UK.

You can also check out the instance / communities at

https://feddit.uk/

Try different ones out. I personally avoid Lemmy.world as there more pro capatilism and Oligarchy then other instances. And tend to block instances that are against capatilism and Oligarchy.

Interested in astronomy you say? Well mander.xyz describe themselves as a "An instance dedicated to nature and science.". They have a astronomy community with, some activity - !astronomy@mander.xyz. I'm not on mander so I don't know how things are there, but I pretty much don't ever see anyone complaining about it.

feddit.uk is a UK instance. So there might be some interesting things there for you.

lemmy.ee is known for not defederating unless absolutely necessary.

On the topic of defederating, lemmy.world is somewhat disliked due to their defederation happy tendencies. For the most part, though, this whole instance wars thing is mostly due to disagreements on what kind of political discourse should be allowed. Instances like lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net and lemmy.ml are a bit too left-wing for many people from the center-right to handle: the world views are just too different.

I could rant about the dam instance wars, but it is not what you came were for.

Feddit.uk is good if you’re in the UK. Then you can switch to Local and see lots of UK stuff.

You cab join any instance.

In the UK there is feddit.UK which you should definitely checkout!

Or you can spin your own instance too.

Don't worry about it. If you don't post anything they disagree with (and most people don't), you will not be annoyed by them.

If you have only mainstream opinions, you will be fine. You don't question mainstream science, you think everyone needs to vaccinate for the public good, and so on. Nothing strange for the majority.

Discuss.online has near 100% uptime and is very fast

The administrators are p. Cool, they're a good community

If you want to stay on lemmy.world, you can. As you can see in the comments, everyones username is @username@instance.name, you can follow communities from any lemmy instance and people from any instance can comment.

As for picking an instance, i'd avoid beehaw.org, hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml and lemmy.ml.

Lemmy.world is frowned upon because its too big, so it has some performance issues and moderation issues.