hey there, returning to lemmy after checking it out like 2 years ago. does it matter what instance i use? currently just using the account i previously made.
Yes, it does make a difference, but like with many other things you should not fall into the trap of decision making paralysis.
Your current instance lemmy.world is the largest and perfectly adequate for the majority. It also costs nothing to make accounts on other instances and is done in less time than it takes to decide between them.
That said some reasons to choose one instance over another:
Federation with other instances
Some instances choose not to federate with others. Common reasons being political ideology or NSFW/piracy/violent content. Others might be more liberal and leave it up to their users to block whatever within their own apps. As someone already mentioned world seems to have defederated dbzer0 the piracy focused instance. Some political instances that often also get defederated are the far left ones like hexbear and Lemmy grad (seems like those are defederated by lemmy.world as well).
Server location and performance
Especially country focused instances like lemmy.ca or feddit.uk will have their servers in their own countries. You can of course access them from anywhere, but a European user might have a better time choosing an instance with servers located in Europe, while someone in America might have lower latency with one located there.
Alternate frontends
If you are accessing Lemmy through a browser rather than an app, you might enjoy alternate frontends that change the design. Your current one lemmy.world for example offers 4 different designs that can also be found in the sidebar alexandrite, photon, voyager mobile and one looking like old.reddit.
General ideology of the instance
Your choice of instance might also tell others something about you. If you choose a country specific instance people seeing your profile name might assume you come from there, if you choose one with a particular political view people will probably assume you hold similar views. Same goes for other instances that are related to things like sexuality or hobbies.
Where do you find these NSFW instances? I’m only asking so I don’t accidentally view their content.
Lemmynsfw.com is quite large and purely dedicated to NSFW content.
Nice. I’ll make sure to steer clear. Thanks.
Most (all?) alt frontends can be still be used with any instance, like Photon or Alexandrite
Edit: Voyager link
Not sure if there’s a general link for “old” style known as mylym. The old url seems to have expired but you can always host it yourself for use with any instance.
TIL, thanks for letting me know!
.world has memes and doom scrolling, what else could you want? 🥲
Why didn’t you stay two years ago?
I don’t know about them, but it was pretty quiet even one year ago when I joined. Difficult to come from something as high traffic as Reddit.
I came here in the rexodus a year and a half ago and I haven’t been been to reddit since other than as the result of a search and, I do have to find the answer on reddit.
Congrats. Want a cake?
Sure but I’ll share
the account you already have is goo(d)
Your instance isn’t on the latest version of Lemmy but that won’t matter too much.
Edit: also, welcome back. Hope you like what we’ve done with the place.
No, it shouldn’t matter.
lemmy.world is fine, its just sometimes a bit slow. Welcome back!
No it doesn’t matter that much. Unless you are seeing too many posts of stuff you don’t like (e.g. US politics, tech news) and not enough of what you want to see (e.g. science, local content from a more regional instance, anarchist stuff, etc.), or you have a beef with how moderation is done on your local communities, then you should move to an instance more tailored to your needs.
If you don’t want it, I will take your username it’s awesome.
I mean it depends on the content you want to see. A lot of instances are defederated from others because of their highly opinionated users., or questionable content.
.world is a pretty general instance that appeals to most, so it’s a good place to be.
