One thing I’m not clear about is the impact my home instance has on me. I joined lemmy.world and am currently using the connect for lemmy app. I know when I sort by Local it will only show me posts from lemmy.world, but beyond that are there any things to keep in mind?
I have read that lemmy.world has been hit by DDoS attacks but I’ve never had any problem using connect for Lemmy during those times as far as I know.
Really the biggest effect your home instance has is who you’re defederated with. Your instance admin can choose to defederate with an instance at any time, blocking your communication with that instance.
For most instances this isn’t a real problem because nobody defederates without a clear reason, but in some cases like Beehaw users were upset that the admin decided to defederate with instances they use.
I recently signed up and didn’t know where to park myself. So I got accounts on both lemmy.world and beehaw.org.
From lemmy.world I’ve added to a few of the beehaw subs that I’m subscribed to there. But I can tell you I see different content in my lemmy.world feed.
Don’t know why. A delay in the content making it over from beehaw to lemmy? But my home feed certainly looks different in both (even subscribing as closely is I can to the same feeds).
So for now I’ll stick with both and see how the dust settles.
or you can join a smaller instance that beehaw has not defederated and interact with both beehaw and lemmy.world communities
Doesn’t defederated mean cut off? Because I certainly get beehaw content at lemmy.world. Just when sorting by “hot” seems different. Then averaged over a bunch of subs, my home feed is quite different.
Anyway 🤷♂️
It’s because Beehaw defederated with most of the popular instances. Their communities still exist but none of the posts will come through to Lemmy World and vice versa, they can’t see any new posts in Lemmy World communities.
IMO just stick to lemmy world and avoid beehaw communities (they’re effectively dead for us) unless you want a “safe space” and live in the small Beehaw instance.
That’s a little harsh. I was here before beehaw defederated, and the content over there was high quality. Some bad actors spoiled it for everyone over here.
Hopefully they’ll be back once the mod tools for cross-instance content management improve.
No need to sneer at them, it was a community decision. You can still interact wth the content on most other instances than .world and .itjust.works
But I still see some posts at eg gaming@beehaw.org from lemmy.world. And comments and votes. But maybe 20% of what I see if I’m looking from my beehaw account.
Could these be crossposts and comments from non-beehaw users? Ie stuff that hasn’t originated at beehaw?
- local filter for posts in communities you’re not subscribed to
- defederated and blocked - of the instance and from the instance
- hosting, updating, performance, uptime, sustainability, risk of disappearance, security, responsiveness on issues
- settings, UI, additional hosted tools
- rules and focus for local communities
IMO there’s nothing to keep in mind on everyday use. But these things are things to consider when deciding what to use in a mindful manner.
Some instances have a tight thematic focus and, if you want to create communities, you should probably do it on an instance where it will be on-topic. That’s the reason my main account is on midwest.social instead of the first instance I signed up for: slrpnk.net has a tight focus on environmental sustainability.
Another important thing to consider is governance and privacy/security. You’re trusting the admins to not missuse your data, to not read your messages, and that they agree with you on how federation should work (ex. Who they choose to federate / defederate with). There’s also the side of donations and how upfront they are about costs, where they choose to store your data, etc.
If an instance is being run transparently like a non profit, with good governance and regular updates, then that’s amazing. Not all instances can do that
If your instance goes down, you lose all you posts. vlemmy.net was an instance and they just vanished recently. lemmy.fmhy.ml just disappeared yesterday, I couldn’t find much info besides a post vaguely mentioning that their domain name got seized by the Mali government (idk why). Besides being shut down, also due to federation issues. beehaw.org has defederated from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, meaning you can’t really interact with each other for the most part. Some instances like lemmygrad.ml and exploding-heads.com are disliked by many instance owners due to politics and got defederated so they are sorta on their own island.
Edit: Well… techically, your posts aren’t lost, you can still find them in other instances. But your images are gone since images do not get federated (unless someone made an archive) and you lost the account and any direct messages, and you have to manually check if you want to see any comments to a post that you posted before it got shut down. Just a huge inconvenience.
Former vlemmy user here, was very miffed when it vanished without a trace and with no warning.
Honestly, I think Lemmy needs something equivalent to the Mastodon Server Covenant.
It matters. The admins mater. They control federation, styling, upgrades, security, performance, and admin-level moderation things. Also, some instances try and cater to certain communities (e.g. lemmy.zip tries to focus on gaming and tech).
