Quick post to answer some basic usage questions that can throw off new users.
Where should I register?
The age old question of fediverse. The answer is pick an instance that is not right-wing and you should be fine.
https://join-lemmy.org/instances makes this very easy. Once you find an instance, just go to its /signup endpoint. For the instance you’re reading right now, it would be: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/signup. Another great option is to use the lemmyverse which provides a lot more info about potential instances and communities, including a trust score.
Do I need to create a profile for each instance?
No! Each instance can access each other instance, unless it’s been defederated because its admins are toxic (this is why I told you not to join right-wing instances earlier).
I joined an instance, but the community I am interested in is in a different instance
No problem. Simply add the instance domain at the end of the url endpoint.
For example, say you’re in lemmy.ml and you realized that stable_diffusion is in lemmy.dbzer0.com. To access it, simply add @lemmy.dbzer0.com at the end of the url after the community name. So:
https://lemmy.ml/c/stable_diffusion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Or to put it differently, you can access any community, in any instance by adding /c/ (The requivalet of reddit /r/) and then community_name@instance.domain
If this doesn’t work, then it’s likely this instance is not yet federated with yours. To solve this, you need to search for it. See the next section.
But how do I even find the community I want to if it exists in any of hundreds of instances?
One option is to use the lemmyverse, as it’s very user friendly, if you specify which instance if your home, it will automatically convert all links to your own instance.
Alternatively use the use the built-in search.
Note that if you search for an community in an lemmy instance your own instance doesn’t yet know about, it won’t find it. You need to give it more precice instructions to find it, which require the whole “address”. To follow our example above, you would put !stable_diffusion@lemmy.dbzer0.com in your search field.
When searching for a community in a new instance, it might take a few minutes to take effect. The first search will not return anything, but if you search again after a couple of minutes, it should appear.
How do I find my community from reddit?
https://sub.rehab allows you to search for any subreddit and see if its official community exists in the threadiverse. You can then search for it specifically to subscribe. If you’ve already registered an account somewhere, make sure you visit the settings in sub.rehab and set your home instance there, so that all links go through it.
Community? Instance?
An instance is a lemmy server hosted by someone. it has its own set of users and communities. lemmy.dbzer0.com is an instance. You can access (almost) every instance from any other instance.
a community is like a subreddit in reddit, or a channel in discord. It’s a topic in inside an instance. stable_diffusion is a community inside the instance lemmy.dbzer0.com.
In more plain terms, consider a lemmy instance like a street, and a community like a number on that street. When you write !stable_diffusion@lemmy.dbzer0.com you are giving the exact address and number to search for.
I keep seeing the same posts
In you’re in a smaller instance and you’ve subscribed to communities in other places, you might have set up your default visibility to not show them.
Switch your view to Subscribed/Hot to get a similar view like the reddit frontpage.
Switch to All/Hot to get a similar view to reddit /r/all
You can store this setting permanently as default in your user settings
Tips and PSA
- Protip: Use instance or relative links
- Upload images on your text posts
- Use Firefox’ bookmark keywords to navigate quickly to a community
- Protip: Use the instance switcher script
Also see
I wish I read this before I made 8 accounts lmao
deleted by creator
Lfg
Hey everyone & Thanks for the instance db0!
Welcome to Tortuga!
Many many thanks for this. Got up and running in no time. Loving the communities and the lack of toxicity in the posts and comments. What a breath of fresh air!
Just needs traction and more users. Doing my bit posting and getting involved in the discussions. Really scratches that Reddit itch without the dirty feeling that I am supporting some wanker CEO.
that’s the spitit!
I made a userscript (Lemmy post) which rewrites all links everywhere (not only on Lemmy) to always point to your home instance. It helps a lot with subscribing to communities and in general makes browsing the web and finding Lemmy links nicer.
Full extension when? :)
Also, this userscript also works on Firefox on Android with the Tampermonkey extension, which wouldn’t be possible with a regular extension since those have to be separately approved.
I’m not sure why? This is already fully featured.
Well I have to run greasemonkey now :D
Actually I just noticed the script can’t work in greasemonkey anyway, it only works in tampermonkey and violentmonkey.
violentmonkey is better
Thanks for this, I was quickly able to understand what I needed to know.
Sorry, I’m just stupid.
So I made a lemmy acccount in this instance lemmy.dbzer0.com. From my very limited research, apparently I can just login to other “federated” instances, but I can’t login (infinite time “loading circle” in login page) with the same username and password in both https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/login and https://lemmy.ml/login. Why is that? Any help would be appreciated, sorry if it’s obvious because it’s not to me
Don’t try to log in with your lemmy.dbzer0.com account in lemmy.fmhy.ml. It won’t work and the login error report is broken (which is why you get the infinite spinny).
If you want to subscribe to a fmhy community, simply search for its url in the lemmy.dbzer0.com search and then click the link in that. This will take you to that community via lemmy.dbzer0.com, which will allow you to subscribe to it.
Alternatively, just go to that community via URL like so: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/freemediaheckyeah@lemmy.fmhy.ml
I.e. simply add
@lemmy.fmhy.mlat the end of the community name, if it’s a community hosted in fmhyAh ok, thx :)
One correction/clarification and some tips:
For example, say you’re in lemmy.ml and you realized that stable_diffusion is in lemmy.dbzer0.com. To access it, simply add lemmy.dbzer0.com at the end of the url. So
For now this seems only work if the community has already been federated. The first subscriber needs to use the search with either the !stable_diffusion@lemmy.dbzer0.com format or the community’s url. Make sure you have “all” selected so that it’s not just searching locally. Then the search results usually show “No results” even if it’s syncing in the background. After it’s been federated it’ll show up in searches, in the communities list, and will work with those /c/ style links. The UI for federating new communities definitely needs a bunch of work.
To find and subscribe to communities go to https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/communities, then selecting ‘All’ to look through any that are already federated. If you want to find more, https://browse.feddit.de/ has a mostly complete list of communities. Just watch out though, because it includes instances that are blocked from most sites for obvious reasons.
A few instances I’ve found centered around various topics:
https://slrpnk.net - Solarpunk
https://mander.xyz - Science
https://programming.dev - Programming
https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech - Pop Music
https://pathfinder.social - Pathfinder/Starfinder TTRPGs
https://sub.wetshaving.social - Wet Shaving
https://pawb.social - Furry
https://lemmy.studio - Music
There’s more for other topics, but a lot of them don’t have any moderation policies listed so I’m not going to recommend them yet. There’s also a bunch of general purpose instances, as well as location based ones.
One thing that a lot of people find confusing is how there can be multiple communities with the same name, just hosted on different sites. In those cases it’s not a single community viewed in two places. For example !technology@lemmy.ml and !technology@beehaw.org are two separate communities that both exist, and you can subscribe to either or both. Each will have different rules, mods, posts and comments. The full name of a community includes the domain, sort of like an email address.
I’d also recommend people change their default settings to ‘Subscribed’ so it’s not just showing the posts hosted here. You might also want to set sorting to ‘Hot’, since ‘Active’ tends to show the same threads for days at a time as long as people keep posting in them.
Right now the federation with kbin.social seems to be broken since they added cloudflare protection. We probably need to wait for them to remove that before communities there can be federated.
Thanks. Adjusted my post a bit
Is there a possibility to hide this post?
I’ve seen, read and (hopefully 😅) understood it, I would just like to see content straight away instead of this post all the time.
If not, would this be a server or a client feature? So I could perhaps add it to their issue tracker, if it doesn’t exist yet.
unfortunately you can’t hide posts yet, but there’s a feature request for it yes
This whole fediverse thing is bizarre to me, and learning how to navigate it and understanding what the hell is going on is weird. Ive signed up like 4 different instances without realising they interconnect and now i feel like i gotta choose one.
I mean, you registered already. The only thing to choose is which one to use as your main “portal” to the fediverse.
hello! hey db0, im here because of you… literally. I was starting in the r/piracy and
spez happened… then, a few days later, i saw ur post about moving to this platform (which i honestly had never heard about, but that doenst matter)… and since i was really upset with the way that motherfucker dealt with was, to me, a sacred thing in reddit: the decade-long golden relationship between company and users (so much so that Reddit itself could capitalize on ads using sheer amounts of “good will” bcs of how the community and therefore the world saw the company)… and throw it in a river of radioactive poo aka his mom, so i decided to join here and try to help in anyway i can! problem is… im kinda noob to the whole piracy, datamining, AI and whatever other tendencies nowadays, so im not sure how much (nor where) i can help… and thats why im writing this: do you mind if we chat a bit in private so u can explain the whole situation, its ramifications and propose ways that i could do my part? it would be great.lmk yeah? a handshake from brazil
Hey mate, I’d love to chat, unfortunately I’m up to my nose in work. I suggest you post in /c/piracy with your questions, or with a general post with a similar vibe as this comment. I’m sure others will join in to chat. Or you can post in /c/div0 instead.
Ill do that, thanks. But i still would like to chat w u about all the stuff thats happening, in order to get a wider POV, then try to deduce whats going to be their next steps and its overall impact to, finally, try help by making suggestions, debating, brainstorming etc. Talking to you specifically is a key point bcs i cant think of another person thats more “in the eye of the storm” than u (maybe other former top mods from different subs, but i dont know them), so u can be REALLY enlightening. If ure wonder what i have to gain with this, its simple: knowledge. as i said, im a noob in this area but my interest on it is huge, so the mere act of chatting with u and other veteran guys will be insanely helpful for me (and ultimately for everyone here, as more knowledge = more ways to help). its a win-win.
i understand u have ur pants full of work (dunno if its IRL or online, but nvm its work anyway), so i will wait until u can talk. seems good? in the meantime, i will do what u suggested and try to check out this platform.
do u have an idea of when things will slow down for u? approximately or not, whatever. if no, then ill just msg u from time to time, ok? i hope i don’t bother u.
knr
hey I’m gonna be honest, I won’t have time for a long while. between Lemmy, AI Horde and Family, I am constantly busy. However if you have any specific question you want to ask, fire it over. It’s way easier for me to write asynchronously.
I’m migrating here from lemmy.world. Is there any way to import the communities I followed there? Or do I have to search and follow them manually?
Unfortunately not. Hopefully in the future we can get at least an export/import mechanism, if not a direct account migration tool
An export/import mechanism would be neat. I guess I’ll follow one by one when I’m bored.
Thanks!
You can follow this issue for the same feature request.
In the same issue, there’s a reference to a potential workaround. I haven’t tried it, but from skimming the post, it seems to require less effort while not being fully automatic.
I’m confused about the exclamation point. Can you explain what that does? Thanks.
It’s just a formatting thing, like the @ in an email address. It makes it easier to tell apart users @kholdstayr@lemmy.dbzer0.com vs. communities !div0@lemmy.dbzer0.com.
Thank you for the guide. I have plenty of friends still on Reddit but they are reluctant. Hope to see more guides in the future.
Could you help me figure what I’m doing wrong when it comes to adding the anarchy chess instance? I have and have been trying the exclamation point thing, but it doesn’t seem to want add on Jerboa. Is it not federated or am I just not doing it right?
For now there’s a bug in the app that doesn’t let you subscribe to communities that haven’t been federated. Until they fix it you have to go to the website if nobody here searched for it from the site yet.
I searched for !anarchychess@sopuli.xyz now though so you should be able to subscribe through the app.
Sorry for the late reply. Thank you so much for the answer. I guess with how active and busy lemmy has gotten, that it might be overwhelming/over loading the system until it catches up and federates everything. I’m on the good ol’ anarchy chess now.
what is the community name and instance?
Thanks for asking and I really appreciate everything you’re doing here and and for the community. Sorry I wasn’t able to respond sooner. Some IRL things got in the way. Underscores kind of came to the rescue with the insight I needed. Guess the instance hadn’t federated yet, but now it’s showing and I’m subscribed. Still getting used to this lemmy thing.
I’m trying this sole android app in playstore for Lenmy and so far it’s working fine. I did have to register thru browser tho.
