idk where to find a crashcourse but here are my opinions(!) on top of my head after nearly 3 years on different instances:
- hexbear and lemmygrad are to be avoided by all costs. weird tankies. they are blocked by most instances either way.
- .ml(stands for marxist leninist) is the instance of the lemmy devs(i think?) and is still populated by a lot of non-lunatics. But i blocked the whole instance either way.
- idk what the deal is with quokk.au(?) users but i noticed over the years that they tend to post weird shit/takes.
- kbin was a fediverse alternative to lemmy. kinda fell apart a few years backs. a few instances are still around. they are alright.
- mbin is the successor/a fork of kbin. if you want to try a different ux to lemmy its worth a look.
- beehaw was already a pretty tightly knit community before the reddit api debacle a few years back. they have self proclaimed higher posting standards.
- db0 is an anarchist instance. good for piracy topics. otherwise i dont care or have an opinion on them. tend to be a bit more ai tolerant i believe.
- lemmy.world was/is the biggest instance. they get/got a lot flack for some reasons and others. most of the drama was imho pretty overblown.
- feddit.org is an european instance. most of its users are german.
- piefed is yet another fediverse alternative. i like it.
otherwise there is stuff like lemdroid with a focus on android or instances with a focus on anime. but tbh just start using lemmy and make your own experiences and feel free to block all the weird shit you dont want to see.
blahaj.zone is the home to the LGBT community and they are prolific shitposters.
Or just stick with an instance that doesn’t block others and judge for yourself. I thought Hexbears were descent people experiencing crisis as we all flooded in.
idk what the deal is with quokk.au(?) users but i noticed over the years that they tend to post weird shit/takes.
this is how I feel about the hilariouschaos instance
Iirc, HC is pretty explicitly a troll instance
deleted by creator
TL;DR I don’t know how any of this shit works.
So when I left Reddit I wanted a similar experience, you know just the basic part, getting news from different viewpoints, cat videos, jokes, commentary TIL, ask Reddit, everything. I looked up online alternatives to Reddit and wherever I was had Lemmy as the top one. So I went there and when I was asked, I of course had no clue how to answer, so I picked .world because why would I want LESS than the whole world. I mean I didn’t see an option for .universe. Later, I was criticized for picking a shitty one by some random guy. So I went in the pullout on the side and couldn’t see any way to even change it.
I almost never post because when I was on Reddit and tried to post it was almost always taken down for some reason. Once I tried to post on Lemmy. I put it in asklemmy. It was a question about Linux and I was getting some really great feedback. I was delighted and sure enough my post was deleted and I didn’t even understand the reason. I think it said something about me not belonging to the instance. So I’m thinking why did it let me post in the first place and why did it let them answer and if it’s technically possible to do it in the first place, why disallow it? For, I guess some broken guideline? Just let it slide or maybe move it the the right place and tell me where it went.
I’m sure some of you will criticize me for not learning how it all works but man I just want to surf around and learn and be entertained and informed. I’m not looking to figure out a whole ecosystem. Some people want to take the whole car apart and others just want to get where they’re going.
The thing that made federation make sense to me was comparing it to email. Email is a shared protocol and anyone who has an email address can send one to any other email address. There are lots of providers, like Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, etc, that all offer access to an email address.
I picked .world because why would I want LESS than the whole world. I mean I didn’t see an option for .universe. Later, I was criticized for picking a shitty one by some random guy.
You might make a Google account because gmail is the first email service you heard about, and realize that you disagree with the company or want different features, so you go make an email on Proton instead. From either platform, you can still receive email from Yahoo users and send it to them. However, you aren’t necessarily able to just ‘transfer’ your email account from one provider to another.
sure enough my post was deleted and I didn’t even understand the reason. I think it said something about me not belonging to the instance. So I’m thinking why did it let me post in the first place and why did it let them answer and if it’s technically possible to do it in the first place, why disallow it?
Sometimes, other providers might have rules about who is and is not allowed to send email to their platform. This is usually to protect against spam.
Where those actions are automatic upon receipt with email, that isn’t always the case on Lemmy. Reddit had similar rules in many communities, where people with new accounts or low karma weren’t allowed to post.
Edit: fixed a typo
Don’t forget fedinsfw.app
No.
You just need to read the sidebars of the various instances. They will tell you what they are about. Basically there are generalist instances… and there are specialized ones that are build around a specific place, hobby, or politics.
I stick to the generalist instances because the userbase is less insane. I notice the majority of unhinged people come from the specialized instances, and blocking those instances reduces a ton of the hostile and stupid posts and comments.
If you love rage bait, circle jerking about your superiority, and being hateful and miserable that people aren’t 100% like you are evil, you might love some of the specialist instances, as that seems to be the vast majority of their content.
There is culture/history behind instances? The only thing I can think of is, anything ending in .ml is better avoided. Or not, if you really like dictatorships. You do you.
Other than that, I barely register instances I interact with.
Here’s a list of anarchist instances:
lemmy.dbzer0.net (flotilla)
quokk.au (flotilla)
anarchist.nexus (flotilla)
The flotilla instances are pro-AI, while SLRPNK is pro-sustainability and MULTIVERSE is pro-occultism
Pro self hosted AI or do the anarchists support corporate server farms?
We support open source/weight models running on local machine with FOSS software. We don’t support corporate GenAI. E.g. see AI Horde
Have been on db0 for a few months and loathe genAI. I still have yet to get a solid understanding of the db0 admins stances on AI. I just generally ignore it since the userbase is pretty chill.
We support open source/weight models running on local machine with FOSS software. We don’t support corporate GenAI.
I don’t want to repeat what others have already said as that’s all pretty accurate. As a rule of thumb, just look at the site sidebar for various instances and just avoid any that base themselves around any form of identity politics. Sadly, that’s a lot of them, but life is better without those kinds of attitudes in your face all the time.
There’s three factions.
On the liberal instances, you can easily get banned for questioning the USAGM script and saying anything positive about Bad Country (For instance, perceiving and mentioning anything ever happening in Ukraine before February 2022)
Their ideological opponent is the ML instances. The most likely reason to get banned on these instances is doing racist dog whistles, even ones that are traditionally tolerated in the west. A common pastime is liberal posters coming to the ML instances and posting the most insane mask-off fascist takes and getting banned, then starting drama posts in the several comms they have for this purpose
The anarchist instances are (unsurprisingly) less in ideological lockstep. The interesting thing that can happen is getting banned for hating on AI too much. Sometimes they will side with the liberals, sometimes the MLs, depending on the issue
Then I suppose there’s also instances like .zip that by all appearances are neutral in the conflict
