Don't forget, there's https://lemmyverse.net/communities to help find communities across all Lemmy instances. You can set your home instance to lemmy.world and then click through to the subs you want to subscribe to. 👌🤗

I'm glad you knew exactly the community to turn to first 😂

Welcome to Lemmy,I hope you like this place!

I use the Android app Raccoon it looks nice + feature packed, On IOS you can use Mlem and Echo(Proprietary)

If you can you may also choose to spin up your own instance.

I got tired of The Toxic Redditors which what made me leave in about September 2023 and the companies weird and awful decisions.

Welcome to Lemmy! I'm glad you joined. There are tons of tutorials out there for how to use the platform, but if it helps, here's my advice:

I use the Android app Sync For Lemmy. Reminds me a lot of rif is fun from before Reddit shut down 3rd party API access about a year ago.

Lemmy.World is the name of the biggest instance on Lemmy. Think of it as a discord channel with different sub-channels except those are called communities here (and instead of r/ for subreddits we have c/ for communities).

There are still trolls here. What's nice about Lemmy is that you can block individual trolls, communities of trolls, or even instances of trolls (if you deem them so). Conversely, if you get banned from any of the above, you can make a new account on any other instance (like dbzer0 or shitjustworks) and still have access to the content from those people/places. The same is true if certain communities/instances change their policies on things like Luigi, which happened on Lemmy.World recently. I switched over to dbzer0 to avoid that censorship and to also see stuff about pirating - that which is banned on Lemmy.World.

Lastly, we can see posts/comments from other people on the Fediverse, like from Mastodon (Twitter alternative) and others.

Hope you enjoy your stay here! Lemmy is primarily tech- and politics-focused rn, but a lot of people draw parallels to Reddit's early days, which is good!

Their policing of Luigi posts was the last straw for me.

Meanwhile on lemmy

Welcome!

Welcome! Always happy to see new faces showing up.

This place is significantly smaller than Reddit, and also significantly more spread out. It grows on you, but it's important to look beyond the similarities between how lemmy.world and Reddit look. Under the hood, these are very different spaces.

"Lemmy" is actually a large network of independently operated Lemmy-based (or not... more on that later) websites. Each website has their own rules, and their own "communities" (AKA sublemmies, magazines, groups, etc.). You're using one of, if not the, largest website in the network, and the one that is probably most Reddit-like (pre-IPO) in terms of rules and policies. It's a general purpose content aggregator.

There are quite a few other medium-to-large general purpose content aggregator sites on the network. lemm.ee comes to mind, as does sh.itjust.works. And, of course, lemmy.ca, which is where I'm commenting from. Each of these websites has its own communities, and houses mirrors of remote communities that their users have subscribed to. Remote communities with local subscribers synchronize with the host website every so often (it can be quite frequently, but usually isn't instantaneously). This makes the whole thing kind of like being on a web forum, but being able to follow topics from other web forums.

As you can imagine, this means there are some niche websites on the network. ttrpg.network is dedicated to table top gaming; startrek.website is focused on... I don't know, some tv show or something; programming.dev hosts a bunch of communities focused on software engineering; lemmy.kde.social is focused on the KDE desktop environment for linux. These are often low-population sites, but they can see a lot of off-site engagement. Focused sites like that are great sites to use if your primary interest is the topic at hand; it really makes the Local feed super valuable.

If you remember that we're not all using the same website, and that the different websites are, in fact, different websites, with their own rules, cultures, and norms, it helps grok the space a lot more. It also makes it easier to understand why there might be 8 different politics communities, and that c/politics on lemmy.world might be very different, both in terms of who is posting there, and also what they're interested in discussing, from c/politics on lemmy.ca, or on aussie.zone.

Now, one thing that's not obvious from lemmy.world (or any Lemmy-based website, really), is that not every website you have access to here is actually running Lemmy. kbin.earth and rimworld.gallery both run mbin, which is a different content aggregation webserver. community.nodebb.org runs nodebb, a web forum server.

People have access to Lemmy communities from an even wider range of website types. Users from Mastodon-based websites, Friendica-based websites, Hubzilla-based websites, and probably quite a few more.

We're all on different websites. Some of those websites are significantly more different than others. That shapes this space in ways we haven't even begun to truly explore yet. And it adds a little jank.

But the jank is worth it, as far as I'm concerned.

Hey, welcome. Hope you find the places you like here. That's all.

There's no going back anyways. I've tried making new accounts. It's impossible to post anywhere.

The account vetting filters block me everywhere. Can't post unless I'm a vetted poster. Can't become vetted because I can't post to begin with. I can't be bothered to seek out and karma farm on random subreddits that aren't a mess of filters.

Welcome comrade!

Going straight to shitpost is certainly a choice, welcome anyway.

I've been here about a year now. Good times. Your voice counts on lemmy in a way it really really doesn't on reddit. People will engage with you because you're human and say human things. It's much more welcoming for people who like to talk somehow than reddit ever was. Don't know why.

By the way, people talk a lot about how lemmy.world censors luigi, but I use lemmy.world and see, upvote and sometimes comment on plenty of luigi stuff without mod intervention. Maybe it's just one of two communities (subreddits) where it's enforced.

If you're a communist and don't like to hear China (or sometimes for some weird reason Russia) criticised, and if you feel that the USA is the Imperialist power that needs to be broken first, you'll feel most at home in lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, but also lemmy.ml if you want to keep access to stuff from lemmy.world.

If you're progressive or liberal, you'll be fairly happy here on lemmy.world. If you're a conservative, I don't know where to recommend you.

There are various country specific ones you might find suit you for other reasons.

All in all I'm not sure it matters a great deal as much as it sounds in my post. People from different instances turn up and say stuff anyway.

The best advice is that you don't have to lurk as much as you used to on reddit, you can show up and engage and the conversation will start around you.

Hello fellow lemming. Welcome aboard!