I joined this one because I just followed the obvious ways to sign up after looking up what Lemmy was about. I didn’t know about instances until I tried to sign in and had to find mine.
Is there a way to mess up making an alt by joining an unfit instance? From what I’ve read, it doesn’t really matter outside of an instance going down and your profile going with it.
Any help is appreciated.
I’m sorry, but I don’t understand most of what you said.
The super simplified version of it is.
some instances block other instances. Either due to political differences or because too many spammers are in one etc… Bottom line, if it’s not linked or blocked, you won’t be able to see posts to them, and people on those instances won’t see posts you make from your own, (creates kind of a shadow ban, where you think you are posting, but no one over there can see it).
you can see if you go to
https://thelemmy.club/instances
you can see a list of instances they’ve linked with, and blocked.
compare that to say beehaw
https://beehaw.org/instances
You’ll see there’s a big difference in what they do and don’t federate with. Which could be good or bad depending on how you look at it.
If you have a community or 2 that you really care about, it’s worth checking to make sure their instance you want to post to and read the posts of, is friendly with the one you don’t
I want to make an alt for music, video games, general television, and anime. Do I just search those terms and check their sidebars?
90% of instances should be fine, but, if in doubt while you are using this one, do a search for communities for the topics you care about, and either join the community that has the most of what you want, or check their linked/banned list to know which ones not to join.
Come on over to sh.itjust.works; we have a funny URL.
It seems a bit heavy for what I’m looking for. Politics in my time outside of the Internet already gives me a pounding headache.
I’m going to second the sh.itjust.works recommendation nevertheless. Most of the large instances on Lemmy have substantial political talk, but if you just join the communities you’re interested in then and stick to your feed, you’ll stay pretty much just looped into stuff you’re interested in. Meanwhile, browsing either your instance or all is going to turn up a lot of political stuff no matter what instance you choose, because there’s just a lot of active political communities on pretty much all instances. So to a large extent instance doesn’t super matter, which is why I just use sh.itjust.works because it’s pretty chill.
If you do want some alternative instances where I believe most of the hosted communities are more to your interests, though:
Disclaimer that I’m not as familiar with these three, though, and mostly just have some vague impressions of them as chill when browsing all.
Again, the instance you choose doesn’t super matter, though. It can be confusing and lead to choice paralysis, so I suggest just going with one of the ones I recommended here and not overthinking it, not because there aren’t other good instances, but because I don’t wanna overwhelm you.
You could always just block a bunch of communities/users since you’ll probably have to anyway.