Asklemmy

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How would you explain to a new user how Lemmy works? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by maniac to c/[email protected]

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I plan on making two videos, one where I explain how Lemmy works and then how to post in a community. I'm going to do my own research but is there any points you want to give to a new user?

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[–] maniac 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Other than Countries, size and content (I've seen general purpose, or NSFW) what are some other reasons to choose a certain instance? I don't want to make it a heavy point in the script but I do want to mention it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I don't think there is much concrete, but here are some things that it effects.

Performance. You view almost everything via your instance. So picking one running with capable hardware and ideally close to you (network wise) will give you a better experience.
Reliability. If your instance goes down you are basically offline. This can be hard to predict for the future.
Trust. Your identity is "owned" by the instance. So if they wanted they can impersonate you. This can also be very hard to gauge.
Longevity. If your instance shuts down it will be quite inconvenient and your identity will be lost, so you may want to try to predict which instances are likely to last.

Content is actually not really on my list since you can subscribe to any communities from any instance. It is true that the instance can provide some content discovery purpose via the local and known communities page but I would argue that separate service which track communities across all instance are better for this purpose.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would look at what communities they host locally? Do they seem well run? Have they been around for awhile?

Since I signed up, I've noticed an explosion in new instances being added that have impressive user counts but host nothing at all. I suspect these are bot-driven instances and would steer well clear of them.

[–] maniac 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's really hard to get average users to take this into consideration or even care.

Take in consideration of the content, country and other factors.

Under "other factors" I'll mention these points.