Like many people out there, for a good portion of Reddit's early to middling life I enjoyed quite a bit of discussion there. I've found that I prefer topic-centered contened rather than people-centered content, and much of existing social media is incredibly people first, topics second.
As Reddit continued it's slow slide of enshittification on it's way to an IPO, many users began looking for alternatives. The zeitgeist of the internet, however, seems to have moved away from topic-centered social media, and so for many it seemed like there was no alternative!
Lemmy began in 2019, but didn't see quite the userbase it has now until 2023, when Reddit locked down its API in an effort to force everyone to use the official app in the leadup to their IPO as a public company. This is a point that many users came on, and it's when I ended up there.
The Threadiverse
Now, for the rest of this article, I'm going to be referring to this platform as the "Threadiverse" because it is actually several platforms all interoperating using the ActivityPub protocol. Lemmy was the first in this network, but there are three primary platforms for the Threadiverse available.
Lemmy was the first of the three, and while it is a good platform, it has a couple of major problems (in my opinion):
- Pace of development is somewhat slow compared to PieFed or other platforms at similar levels of development
- The team who runs the original Lemmy instance, as well as the primary dev team on the project, are quite outright and opinionated authoritarian leftists and it shows its face in their moderation of both their own instance and in pull requests quite regularly.
Because of this, there are two forks of the project:
Mbin (formerly Kbin until the lead dev of that project had to cease development and it was continued in a fork by users who liked it) was first, and it provides an interesting combo of a thread-based view for regular threadiverse, as well as a more people-based view for accessing Mastodon content. This is made slightly moot by the more recent ability of Lemmy/Piefed to be able to federate with and see Mastodon posts, though it is in a more limited capacity than Mbin does in that it only sees things that Mastodon users intenetionally tag in a way that they will show up on the Threadiverse. In terms off third-party client support Mbin tends to be pretty sorely lacking, and so I would only really recommend this option if your primary method of browsing the Threadiverse is going to be on a computer. It can be done on mobile via web, but it's a far less polished experience.
PieFed is the up and comer that I would be keeping my eye on. It started as a relatively barebones fork of Lemmy due to the aforementioned issues with Lemmy leadership, and since has updated quite quickly to be near parity feature-wise with Lemmy, and has even added a couple features that Lemmy dragged its feet on. If you're starting fresh, PieFed would be the one I would probably recommend trying first and only going to Lemmy if you're running into friction with some part of the current PieFed system. You won't miss any content and can see content from all Lemmy Servers.
Choosing an Instance
While you can "just pick one" and go for it, as mostly they all access the same shared virtual space, it will actually change the content you see.
This is because Threadiverse instances have the ability to "defederate" from eachother. This means that they have decided to no longer send or receive content to a particular instance, meaning you won't see their communities and they won't see the communities from your instance. Some instances (such as lemmy.world) defederate from an absolute shitload of instances. Some for good reasons, some not. The point is that some instances shut you off from a lot of the content that exists out there, even some you may actually be interested in. I think this may be one of the reasons some people find the Threadiverse "boring" when they join to check it out and they choose a server that has defederated lots of the content (or nobody ever shows them good methods of content discovery).
Before creating an account on an instance, put the instance's hostname into https://federation-checker.vercel.app/ - this will tell you all of the instances that have chosen to be defederated from your instance and all instances yours has chosen to defederate from. The way I personally like to use Lemmy is joining instances that defederate from very few (if any) instances, and do the blocking and filtering myself so that the content I see is a little less curated by someone else.
I encourage you to browse around https://lemmyverse.net/ and see if there are any instances there that seem to have a vibe you like based on their descriptions and images. Before signing up though, run it through that federation checker just to see if you're losing out on a lot of instances. But really, just pick one and move around if you decide it doesn't fit you. There isn't a great migration feature, but all you really lose are your subscribed communities, and there are even tools to help you migrate those.
As for instances I recommend if you're getting started:
- mander.xyz - STEM focused instance that defederates from basically nobody and has good admins/mods
- sh.itjust.works - Canada based server that is probably the better of the most popular instances. Generally good admins but defederates from more instances than I would like
- lemmy.zip - Newer but recently popular instance that seems to have generally good admin and mod teams - also has a piefed.zip option!
- programming.dev - Programmer and sysadmin focused instance
- sopuli.xyz - Finnish based server with generally good admins and mods
- slrpnk.net - Solarpunk-focused but you can still subscribe to wherever you would like
- lemmy.sdf.org - Run by everyone's favourite SDF Unix Public Access system for all you older Linux/Unix/etc. nerds out there.
Onboarding
After you've picked your instance and created your account, this is how I like to set up if I've just changed instance and my recommendation when creating a new account:
- Log into your instance in the browser and navigate to the homepage
- Click "Communities" typically found in the top left once you are logged in
- Make sure the options at the top are set to "All" and "Top all time"
- Go down the list, as many pages as you dare, and smash that subscribe button on anything that remotely interests you.
This community list will include every instance that anyone on your instance has subscribed to even a single community on.
Lastly, if you want to subscribe to a community that is on an instance nobody on your instance has ever contacted, then you CAN still subscribe. Go to the community you want to joins URL. For example, sopuli.xyz/c/Memes - copy the URL, and then on your own instance's page (after you are logged in), paste that full url (https://sopuli.xyz/c/Memes) and hit enter, and you'll be taken to the community page on your own instance which you can now subscribe to, connecting the two instances and starting federation between them.
Not only does this allow you to subscribe to the remote community, but it also allows you to connect more instances to yours and have more people and posts to talk to and see, making your feed more full and refreshed with sweet, sweet content.
When choosing apps for lemmy there are actually a bunch of good ones, just search "lemmy" or "piefed" on your preferred app store. My current favourites on android are Boost for Lemmy and Thunder for Lemmy. Both have limited Piefed support, primarily due to the lack of fully polished API in Piefed, but that should change sooner rather than later. I have found that people tend to have varying opinions on what they want their app UI to look like, I personally like mine as close to the old Reddit is Fun app as I can get it, which I do with Boost for Lemmy. Just try whichever and switch it up if the one you chose doesn't work for you.
The Threadiverse and Privacy
Due to the heavy overlap between privacy, piracy, and Linux communities, it feels necessary to discuss how "private" these services are. The answer is: not very- it is a public facing search engine indexable forum, and you shouldn't say anything on an account easily tied to your identity that you wouldn't want associated with your real life.
The Threadiverse is quite transparent, and this comes with some good and some bad. My favourite transparency feature is the modlog. This is a publicly viewable log of moderator and administrator actions against users that make it quite obvious when people are being power tripping bastards and they can be publicly ridiculed or usurped as needed.
The part I like less but that I have accepted is that you should not put any personally identifying details into your Threadiverse accounts. Because instances are federated together, they need to pass quite a bit of information between the different various computers running the instances around the world. This means that anyone who cares enough to set up their own instance and federate with yours can see everything any account has upvoted, communities they are subscribed to, etc. To my knowledge your IP is only visible to your personal instance's admins, but don't take my word on that one.
The point is, anything you say or upvote/downvote on these services is available, so either take precautions and provide no identifying info in posts/comments, or accept that your thoughts on that account may be tied to your identity and act accordingly.
You best believe that the Threadiverse is being scraped, even though it is less popular than other social media. Many instance admins have had to add Anubis in an effort to curb the impact of the mass swarms of scraping bots.
Hopefully this serves as a helpful guide on getting into Lemmy, Piefed, and Mbin. Just remember: the best thing you can do for any community is engage. Post, comment, upvote, whatever. I've found I get much better engagement for posts and comments than I ever did on Reddit or other much larger networks.
As always, if you have questions that I might be able to answer, feel free to drop into my support chat on Signal and I may or may not be able to help, we'll see!