Welcome!

There are a lot of explainers on how Lemmy works out there, and honestly? They're all terrible. You've probably heard the phrase "well, it's like email", which somehow, leaves you with more questions than answers.

So, how the fuck does this shit work? Well...

It's just Reddit, but on multiple servers.

No really, that's it. Each lemmy 'instance' is its own reddit. It has users, communities (sub reddits) posts, and so on. If all the other lemmy instances were to go offline except this one, you'd still have a fully functional reddit. Just emptier.

Imagine if reddit had separate domains responsible for hosting groups of communites. Like, maybe one would have /r/aww and /r/pics, and other might have /r/badwomensanatomy and /r/twoxchromosomes. Each would have different global rules which applied to everything on that domain.

The special sauce is that other lemmy servers all share their data. This is the part that everyone refers to as 'like email'. This means, to access a community hosted on another sever, you don't need to visit it. You can access it from your own server!

But how do I do that?

[Your instance URL]/c/[Community Name]@[Other Instance URL]

For example:

https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/c/[email protected]

From your account on FMHY, this accesses the 'cats' community on the sh.itjust.works server.

You can search for communities on all servers by clicking the search button and narrowing to community. Or you can use a fediverse browser like this one: https://lemmyverse.net/

But what happens if two people on different servers create the same community. Which one is the 'real' one?

Neither of them.

That's both the strength and disadvantage of this platform. The upshot: if you don't like how a community is run, you can just create your own version on another instance. The disadvantage is that come communities end up fractionalized.

So you can, for example, have [email protected] and [email protected].

It's up to you to choose which one to participate in.

Ok, but where do I create an account. And don't tell me 'it's a personal choice'. Which instance is the best, is it this one?

Each instance has their own rules for users and for federations. Some are more open, some are more closed.

Remember that data sharing thing I mentioned earlier? Well, some instances can choose not to share their data. This means communities can be cut off from one another. This generally doesn't happen, most instances share with all other instances. But there are some exceptions.

Depending on your politics, this might be a good thing or a bad thing.

For example, https://beehaw.org/ has very protective rules against minorities, and is considered a much safer space. But to achieve that, it defederated from a couple very large instances.

To contrast, https://lemmy.world/ has very lax rules and a large userbase. It has a lot of stuff, good and bad.

I chose FMHY as it is a smaller instance that exists in a kind of middle ground. It's federated by essentially all other instances, has set of rules and open culture that appeals to me and my moderation style of /r/azula.

So, unfortunately, it is a personal choice, BUT, for certain personal values, there are better or worse options. You can find a list of instances to join here: https://join-lemmy.org/instances

If you need any help deciding, message me on reddit or create a temporary account here to comment below. You can always join multiple instances!

However, wherever you choose to create your account, you'll be able to access the Azula community. Just type [email protected] into your instance's search!