I'm one of the people who has very recently tried Lemmy and decided to drop Reddit. Initially because I will no longer be able to use SyncForReddit, but now also because I just like the vibe a lot more here than Reddit.
I'm not a massively technical person, but I understood the broad concept of federation - different instances/servers that sync to form a big conversation/forum of sorts.
I heard a lot of people joining and saying positive things about lemmy.world, so I signed up there.....and that's it.
But, am I using it right? Is the idea to sign up in one place and use it to participate across the LemmyVerse/FediVerse? Or should I be seeking out lots of niche instances of interest?
I hear lemmy.world is the biggest instance. What if most people end up here, does that defeat the purpose? Is this inevitable?
You need a critical mass of users, so a quiet instance with few posts is not attractive. If I search for Xbox, there are lots of empty places or places with 3 posts. If there's one big one (often ends up being in lemmy.world) that's where I'm subscribing.
How are you using Lemmy, are you participating in a bunch of instances or just one?
Image Transcription: Text and Image
[An interconnected diagram with six cloud-shaped bubbles with text and images of the reddit mascot snoo in them are shown. There are lines going between them connecting all of the bubbles to one another in the approximate shape of the fediverse pentagram logo. The top left bubble says "r/aww" and has two images of the reddit mascot. The upper middle bubble has the text "r/gaming" and "r/Music" with one image of the mascot. The top right bubble says "r/funny" with one mascot, the lower left says "r/Pics" and "r/science" with one mascot, the lower right says "r/art" and "r/ask science" with two mascots, and the bottom centre bubble has the words "r/space" and r/videos" with one reddit mascot. The Lemmy logo, a black and white cartoon mouse head, sits in the bottom left corner of the image. Below the web of connected bubbles, there are three small cartoon drawings of people standing next to each other, with the text "Lemmy devs" beside them, and a large purple speech bubble above them that reads as follows]
We donated Lemmy to the world, we can't control what people do with it.
^I'm a human volunteer transcribing posts in a format compatible with screen readers, for blind and visually impaired users!^
I love how you guys came over too! Even keeping the signature!!
Thank you for your work. Love to see communities transferring.