this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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Privacy
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You have to pick a server.
I promise you, that's why
You're probably right and this is the first time I've felt kind of glad for the "speed bump" that picking a server on the fediverse has become. We'll get another influx before too long; maybe a "you need to be this clever to ride the ride" checkpoint isn't such a bad thing.
That's what I thought when I initially signed up but I'm realizing we lack diversity baaaaaaad. I'd wager 90%+ of users are tech people and we are infamously antisocial, which is rough for a "social media"
Selecting a server wasn't an issue for me. The RIF app told me to go to .world and I quickly decided it was the right instance for me to start.
I moreso had to adjust to the slower pace and less engagement on Lemmy compared to reddit, the lack of niche communities, my favorite subs not having a perfect equivalent here.
I was super pissed off with reddit and am still salty, so my anger committed me to making the commitment to Lemmy. I was addicted to reddit and they took away the app I was using for over 10 years. I wasn't ready for the breakup and was scorned. I was highly motivated to make Lemmy work for me.
Users need that level of anger and outrage to motivate them.
Oh no, how am I going to pick a server?! That’s even harder than choosing a shirt to put on!
It's weird, but that shit intimidates non technical people, and there are a lot of them. It would need better if it says something like 'Click on the flag of the country closest to where you live' or something like that.
Linux seems to have managed to do this - I recently did I mint install on my laptop, it was all GUI, no arcane jargon, no need to use the console, really well optimised for the non-technical folk. You'd be surprised how many people see 'server' and think 'I don't have one of those, and I don't think I want one'.
join-lemmy.org now shows you a suggested instance where you can signup immediately. No need to choose an instance.
Is there a reason to expect bots won't overwhelm Lemmy as well?
Most likely, they will. They are not elikely to infect larger instances. Smaller instances will spot them and ban them, I hope.
Why do you expect they will be unlikely to infect larger instances?
They will still infect them but they will be more obvious.
An unusual comment, you don't know it's a bot.
Hundreds of unusual comments and doesn't engage with the local community. It's a bot.
It's partly why online discourse is toxic. There is a disconnect with th real world and online and no social stigma. On a small community instances there is.
The problem though, will be trying to manage which isntances need to be blocked as they are rampant with bota. If the fediverse grows and there are lots of smaller communities,.it will be harder to keep track. Currently it's small and most instances with active users are familiar.
This is the real question here. Especially with advanced AI, it might be difficult to spot bot accounts.
I actually believe AI will provide a far greater advantage to bots than moderators.
I (mildly) am concerned about that also...but bear in mind...the difference between Lemmy and Reddit is you can..defederate...from known bad instances. If Lemmy goes in that direction - and we undertake the idea I mentioned here - https://lemmy.world/post/44633911/22828600
then we can basically recreate a blacklist / whitelist (ala AdBlock). Instance-wide crawlers can still scrape public data, but that's an ActivityPub protocol constraint, not a Lemmy failure.
Instance crawling with bots? Sorry, no soup for you.
Spam bots on bad instances? Blocked from your feed.
Peak "fine, I'll do it myself" energy? Yes. But if you're reading this, you're 1) part of the resistance (lol) and (2) already here, so ...
Not nearly as much financial incentive for the admins to look the other way
/r/rats and tv show discussions for me
This is basically all I use for now. Lemmy doesn't have the infrastructure for every TV episode and movie I watch.
yeah. and even in the generic tv show communities there are maybe a couple people discussing a new episode, if at all.
Compared to thousands for a popular show.
heck, even star trek is barely active compared to reddit. and they did an official migration in the beginning
It still is more populated and has a lot higher activity, which suits slightly better for doomscrolling.
Lemmy needs to get slightly more popular. And maybe a centralized place to find different instances?
Like i haven't found any active fitness related ones.
It's like coming from a convention Hall full of people and going into a minimally occupied hotel.
Centralisation of power is in the first place why we moved away from Reddit. Fuck that.
You can find your own fitness sidelemmy. There are actually a few I found.
Completely fair, just the difference and lack of constant flow of content is going to put off many people and without a significant enough drive there's no point to get used to the new environment.
Mind pointing me in a the right direction?
Because Lemmings can be insufferable sometimes.
So were Redditors 15-20 years ago, though. This place is exactly like the old Reddit ecosystem. Heavily focused on programming, Linux, and Star Trek. The smaller subs for politics, culture, news, etc take longer to build up.
Yeah, we are pretty great 😎
Not gonna lie, I like it this way.
Right... 15 years ago...
I think the downvotes are proving you right 😉
As opposed to Reddit users?
Yes. There's much more grand standing.
Well yea but it's because we're right 👍
Have you considered changing instances?
I just block people. That's much more effective.
Well you are on one of the worst instances.