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?
I looked at a few instances a week or two ago and decided on fmhy as they seemed, by name, prepped for Reddit users. I then subscribed to a lot of communities often on other instances or kbin. I've found that my local feed is not what I want, lots of piracy & porn, and my subscribed feed has a lot of repetition as a lot of communities are cross posting stuff. Also uploading media seems broken.
I've created an account on a smaller instance with a local feed that is fairly quiet, inoffensive and a little more niche, which makes for a pleasant homepage. Switching to the 'All' feed gives a nice overview of the lemmy & kbin world.
I think I'm gonna avoid the subscribe button for a while and watch, post, comment & vote instead. The entirety of lemmy & kbin is about the size of a medium subreddit at the moment. I think the 'All' feed with some sorting options alongside the search and alert system may be a better way to navigate the current landscape than subscribing to 1234 communities with liberal use of copy & paste.