I joined this one because I just followed the obvious ways to sign up after looking up what Lemmy was about. I didn't know about instances until I tried to sign in and had to find mine.

Is there a way to mess up making an alt by joining an unfit instance? From what I've read, it doesn't really matter outside of an instance going down and your profile going with it.

Any help is appreciated.

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[–] 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (28 children)

Pretty much it's like an e-mail service overall. obviously for the "MOST" part you can join any instance and it will let you view content on almost any other instance.

Like say beehaw I believe defederates from instances that don't have verification steps at the start.

instances like, lemmygrad, hexbear etc... are considered tankie, so a handful of places defederate them. and I believe a few like that tend to lean right and get defederated by most.

Edit: fixed misassumption on what hexbear was,

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  • [–] 13 points 1 month ago (16 children)

    "considered" lol

    Nobody would be surprised if it leaked tomorrow that they're literally operated out of the Kremlin or military city Beijing.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 1 month ago (15 children)

    Wait, is "tankie" a synonym for fascist or something? I thought it meant durable. Lol

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago

    Tankie is a word coined for people who support the idea of a country using its military against its own people. A person saying that there was nothing wrong about the Tiananmen massacre is a tankie.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 month ago* (13 children)

    Yup, Red Fascists who support Russian invasion of Ukraine and think China owns Taiwan and definitely aren't committing multiple genocides within their territories. The pretend to care about worker solidarity and international peace while they promote Donald Trump and oppose NATO. They pretend to care about civil rights but they oppose liberalism and they think Trans people are a western psyop.

    Here is a megathread detailing their behavior, hosted on lemmy.world but posted to the community !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works

    https://lemmy.world/post/29072279

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 1 month ago (12 children)

    I think I should probably just keep the alt in this general instance. I'm not looking for political talk or niche interest spaces. I just want to find a consistent and dependable place for mainstream topics.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (10 children)

    Yeah, that is likely to work. And you'll get basically all of the same content no matter where. Some defederate the Tankie Triad, which results in better content.

    I chose mine mainly based on it running on PieFed instead of Lemmy, because PieFed has a little more features and a nicer UI. And then secondly by this being hosted in the Nordic countries, where it is legal to say that genocides are always a bad thing. If there was something that defederated from the Tankie Triad, but fulfills the other two requirements I'd absolutely make the switch to that :)

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (9 children)

    I do love the UI. I tend to wing stuff, so I'll just go ahead with this.

    Umm, any recs on how to get started before I stumble in the dark?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (8 children)
  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 month ago (7 children)

    With making an account there.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (6 children)

    Well, there's still the problem of finding an instance ;)

    For choosing my own instance, I've found this tool very handy: https://piefed.fediverse.observer/list .

    Click the top of the column for uptime percentage. The ones with 100% are probably a bad idea, because that means they've never been updated. Then maybe take a look at where the server is located. If something looks good by these statistics, click the name of the instance to check the server version number. You generally won't want an instance that lags far behind others in the version number – that indicicates a lazy server admin. It's also good to read the instance description.

    Also, note that this listing currently conflates PieFed and PyLova, even though they are now two separate codebases. They still look and feel about the same because PyLova was forked from PieFed such a short time ago.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 month ago (5 children)

    Can I use the same email for different instances?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (4 children)

    Yes. The two instances are completely separate servers and don't know about each other. Also, remember to take backups of your data regularly in case that your instance goes down.

    Go to Settings, then "Import & Export" and press the "Export" button. You'll get a file that you can upload to another instance and keep going almost as if nothing had happened.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 month ago (3 children)

    Oh, that solves the biggest issue for me. I don't want a bunch of new emails. Thanks.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago* (2 children)

    For the record, I have about 15 accounts (alts) on various instances here. It took me "some" time to find out where I belong 🫣🤣

    And when I finally did, I soon noticed I'm trans and that caused my old username to feel kind of "wrong" – a deadname of a kind. So, I had to create new alts and stopped using the old ones. Now I've got two alts I use regularly, and a third one I have as backup in case this favourite instance of mine goes belly-up at some point.

    There's an excellent mobile app called Blorp that enables me to be logged into all 15-ish alts at the same time and receive private messages on all of them to what is basically one and the same inbox.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    Blorp? I'm assuming that's an APK download? I don't see it on Google Play Store.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    It's on F-Droid, at least. F-Droid has a lot of open source apps that Play Store doesn't have. Their data security tends to be better than those of apps on Play Store, as well, because they don't send your data to advertisers/spy companies.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    piefed.social isn't very big on the political side last time I checked, that's why I chose feddit.online instead, which is also a piefed instance. I highly reccomend piefed instances, or KBin/MBin, because the Lemmy instances in contrast are developed by those Tankies.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    lemmy.ml is actually pretty widely federated, but defederates most/all nsfw. hexbear is marxist/anarchist, not right wing lmao

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    ah got it, kind of never really dug that much in, just see it mentioned as extremist, so admitted getting some flipped going off of vague info

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago

    just see it mentioned as extremist

    from my understanding the community formed after /r/chapotraphouse was banned for people john brown posting a little too hard.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 1 month ago (7 children)

    I'm sorry, but I don't understand most of what you said.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    The super simplified version of it is.

    some instances block other instances. Either due to political differences or because too many spammers are in one etc... Bottom line, if it's not linked or blocked, you won't be able to see posts to them, and people on those instances won't see posts you make from your own, (creates kind of a shadow ban, where you think you are posting, but no one over there can see it).

    you can see if you go to

    https://thelemmy.club/instances

    you can see a list of instances they've linked with, and blocked.

    compare that to say beehaw

    https://beehaw.org/instances

    You'll see there's a big difference in what they do and don't federate with. Which could be good or bad depending on how you look at it.

    If you have a community or 2 that you really care about, it's worth checking to make sure their instance you want to post to and read the posts of, is friendly with the one you don't

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    I want to make an alt for music, video games, general television, and anime. Do I just search those terms and check their sidebars?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago

    90% of instances should be fine, but, if in doubt while you are using this one, do a search for communities for the topics you care about, and either join the community that has the most of what you want, or check their linked/banned list to know which ones not to join.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Come on over to sh.itjust.works; we have a funny URL.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 month ago (2 children)

    It seems a bit heavy for what I'm looking for. Politics in my time outside of the Internet already gives me a pounding headache.

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  • I'm going to second the sh.itjust.works recommendation nevertheless. Most of the large instances on Lemmy have substantial political talk, but if you just join the communities you're interested in then and stick to your feed, you'll stay pretty much just looped into stuff you're interested in. Meanwhile, browsing either your instance or all is going to turn up a lot of political stuff no matter what instance you choose, because there's just a lot of active political communities on pretty much all instances. So to a large extent instance doesn't super matter, which is why I just use sh.itjust.works because it's pretty chill.

    If you do want some alternative instances where I believe most of the hosted communities are more to your interests, though:

    • mander.xyz is a chill science instance but is currently down because of an issue with the hosting service they were renting space from.
    • ani.social is specifically for anime fans. I'm pretty sure there's also a lot of porn on here LOL, but that's just kind of the tradeoff.
    • lemmy.zip is more about gaming, especially PC gaming

    Disclaimer that I'm not as familiar with these three, though, and mostly just have some vague impressions of them as chill when browsing all.

    Again, the instance you choose doesn't super matter, though. It can be confusing and lead to choice paralysis, so I suggest just going with one of the ones I recommended here and not overthinking it, not because there aren't other good instances, but because I don't wanna overwhelm you.

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