Hello, welcome to my Lemmy instance! Feel free to take a look around.
What is Lemmy?
Lemmy is a federated link aggregation platform. You're familiar with the "link aggregation" part, I'm sure (think Reddit), but probably not so much with the "federated" part.
A federated platform is one in which individuals and/or communities create their own instance of the platform and share content between them. Think about it like two cities existing independently, but trading goods and services. lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz is an independent instance, as is lemmy.ml, but they can communicate with each other and share content.
Each Lemmy instance will host and make visible locally any content that has been either created locally or federated by a user. This means you'll see any communities (think subreddits) created locally, as well as any communities from other instances that a user of your instance has joined.
For example, I have joined [email protected], which means that community is visible here. And even though it's not hosted here, you can interact with it here just as if it was.
Now, just because I have joined that community, and it's visible here does not mean you have joined that community. If you create a user, the community I subbed to will not show up in your "subscribed" list unless you also join it. It will just show up in the "all" list and be easily accessible.
So if everything is federated, where should I make an account? What even is an account?
A Lemmy account represents your presence on that Lemmy instance and any federated content on other instances that you interact with. It's entirely possible to have multiple Lemmy accounts on multiple instances, and that's not an uncommon way for people to split their interests and interactions.
So you can make an account on a smaller instance like this and go find content via federation. Or you can make an account on a more popular instance to make content discovery a little easier. Either choice is perfectly valid.
Some instances have open registration, some (like this one) require admin approval, and some are currently closed to new users.
Your account is identified similar to smashing a Twitter handle and an email address together. For example, my account is identified as @[email protected]. Similarly, if I made an account with the "frozen" username at lemmy.ml, it would be identified as @[email protected].
Joining other instances' communities
In order to subscribe to other instances' communities, you follow a simple, though not exactly intuitive, process. First, visit the community you wish to join, for example https://lemmy.ml/c/memes. Select and copy the entire URL. Next, open the search functionality on this instance (using the magnifying glass in the top right), and paste the URL in the search box. Then click the top drop down and make sure it says "All" (you may need to select something else and then re-select "All"). Finally, click the community name (not any posts or comments, just the community name, for example, [email protected]), then click "Join" in the sidebar on the right.
Congratulations, you have now federated that community with this instance! The only caveat about federated content vs. local content is that federation only obtains new content that's been created since it was federated. In order to see historical content for a federated community, you must manually visit the community on its original instance.
Finding other instances and communities
The easiest way to find communities to join at the moment is to visit the biggest instances (lemmy.ml, lemmy.world, and beehaw.org), click Communities at the top, and browse that instance's local communities. There are also a lot of resources to find active and popular instances and communities:
- https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances - A list of instances in an easy-to-read table.
- https://lemmymap.feddit.de/ - An interactive map of all federated Lemmy instances.
- https://browse.feddit.de/ - A search engine specifically for finding Lemmy instances and communities.
- https://lemmyverse.net/ - Another search engine for finding Lemmy instances and communities.
Lemmyverse is very helpful in subbing to new communities. You can search for the instance on which you have an account, set that as your home instance, then go search for communities on all instances. When you open one, it will automatically open the community through your home instance, so you can immediately subscribe.
So, to sum up:
- Lemmy instance - an independent website hosting its own Lemmy platform (like an entire Reddit website)
- Community - subreddit
- Federation - sharing content between instances
And I think that wraps it up. Once again, welcome! Enjoy your time here, and feel free to contact me directly with any questions. And make sure to subscribe to this announcements community! I won't spam your feed, I promise. :)