What caused users to sign up to specifically lemmy.ml, instead of other servers? I am aware a lot of users signed up after the spez AMA, but even before the AMA the site was overloaded.
The fact that when people started joining about a week ago or so, lemmy.ml was at the top of the recommendations in join-lemmy, the fact that it had in its description that lemmy.ml is ran by the developers of lemmy and the jerboa app so people assumed this is the correct one and lastly, unfortunately during that time the only alternative instances at the top of the recommendations was lemmygrad and I don't remember the other one that screamed communism so people flocked to other ones.
I joined before the AMA, but not on lemmy.ml.
Frankly, my first temptation was to ignore the overload warning for fear of missing something by joining another instance. Fortunately I spent more than two minutes figuring out how it works and decided otherwise, but that might be the reasoning behind other people's choice
My first impulse as an ex-redditor is to flock to the server with highest population, because I am sheep. I want to see the most content and comments. For me fortunately likewise it took two minutes to figure out that you can see any content from any server. Maybe the server list on join-lemmy.org should show "load percentage" instead of "number of users" :)
Frankly, my first temptation was to ignore the overload warning for fear of missing something by joining another instance.
I think many non tech savvy users won’t understand how Lemmy works and just give up trying to understand how to signup. Plus some instances have a form and users are waitlisted. I think that’s the biggest con of Lemmy.
It's been linked to all over Reddit when they should be linking to join-lemmy instead. Federation is a bit confusing if you're new, plus you have instances like Beehaw and lemmygrad with their own questionable policies...
Yeah what’s wrong with them? There seem to be many interesting communities (at least going by first look or familiarity through comparable subs on reddit)?!
Just from looking at introductory stuff, I get a weird vibe. Several pages of just reading about it and positivity and how the rule(s) are vague/broad for a reason and its a little offputting. Im sure im just overreacting or something, and im sure everyone there is actually super nice, but ive always been slow to trust, and beehaw sets off alarm bells for me. Do wanna reiterate tho, everyone there does seem very friendly and im sure its great.
For me, I think it was a combination of not understanding the system and not knowing anything about any instances. Which ones can you trust to not just shut down and make you loose your data?
This, I wanted to join an instance with management I somewhat agreed with on matters of federation and had longevity. I didn’t want to join beehaw or lemmy.one for the first reason; and the others don’t really have the longevity to see how admins will react in certain cases.