This site is currently struggling to handle the amount of new users. I have already upgraded the server, but it will go down regardless if half of Reddit tries to join.
However Lemmy is federated software, meaning you can interact seamlessly with communities on other instances like beehaw.org or lemmy.one. The documentation explains in more detail how this works. Use the instance list to find one where you can register. Then use the Community Browser to find interesting communities. Paste the community url into the search field to follow it.
You can help other Reddit refugees by inviting them to the same Lemmy instance where you joined. This way we can spread the load across many different servers. And users with similar interests will end up together on the same instances. Others on the same instance can also automatically see posts from all the communities that you follow.
Edit: If you moderate a large subreddit, do not link your users directly to lemmy.ml in your announcements. That way the server will only go down sooner.
Does anyone know if social media is against Oracle cloud free tier ToS? I didn't see anything specific when I googled it, but ToS aren't always in that. Was trying to setup an instance on a smaller vps I have that's idle but 512MB won't cut it.
I'd suggest not to go with Oracle free tier. A lot of people are reporting having their instances completely removed without any communication, then support refusing to help. Would suck to have a community started to lose everything.