Hey everyone. I’m a new to Lemmy after making a start to remove myself from big tech. Sorry if the questions are basic. First question is- how to choose which server as your ‘home’. I chose feddit because I’m from the UK, but I live abroad- does that mean I should chose one only from the country I live in? And if you use a VPN does it matter anyway?

I came from reddit and it’s not anywhere near as good unfortunately and obviously there are far fewer people on here, but I’m here to stay so want to make the best of it. TIA

  • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
    0·
    19 days ago

    The geography of your home instance only matters if you decide you care about it.

    No VPNs needed.

    I’m using an account on a finnish instance, currently hosted in germany (used to be in Finland, but the admin moved to get a better deal on the hardware running it).

    The only practical difference what instance your account is on makes, is what other instances it federates with.

    That might matter depending on what you want to access, but it probably doesn’t. Any reputable instance federates with all other reputable ones, while blocking the disreputable ones.

    AFAIK, feddit.uk is a perfectly good choice.

    • JohnSmith@feddit.uk
      0·
      19 days ago

      Can confirm this is a very good instance. Admin team is competent, we seemingly have a decent level of funding going through donations to keep things afoat, and in general things flow nicely in a no nonsense way.

      And you can of course always switch to another instance (with some effort in migrating your settings) in the unlikely event something starts bothering you in this particular shire.

  • SleafordMod@feddit.ukEnglish
    0·
    19 days ago

    I looked at Lemmy.world initially because it’s the biggest server, but I signed up for Feddit.uk because I can see UK-related content in one place by viewing “local” posts on the home page (“local” just shows posts from your server, and “all” shows posts from across all Lemmy servers).

    If I signed up for Lemmy.world then I wouldn’t have that feed of just UK content when I want it. Instead I’d have to visit each UK-related community separately, I guess.

  • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.uk
    0·
    19 days ago

    My best advice to people picking a server is to go with a regional one or one based on a hobby because your local feed should be manageable and somewhat relevant. you So I went with feddit.uk because it would give me UK-based news and topics (English-language places in the Web often default to America), plus there’d likely be a good dose of British humour which may not always travel well.and

    So I reckon you picked well - if there are any topics you are interested in that don’t appear in “local” you can always subscribe to them. We have a light defederation policy, so all the big instances are available from here, your subscribing to communities on other servers will drag the content over here.

    • CrowyTech@feddit.ukEnglish
      0·
      13 days ago

      I’m only a month in to Lemmy, can you explain this bit for me?

      subscribing to communities on other servers will drag the content over here.

      Like OP I joined feddit.UK as a Brit it seemed the most fitting.

      I tent to just view my subbed list and only sporadically come on to local to see what’s happening on the instance.

      I definitely get the Reddit vibe on my subbed feed.

      Are you saying above that what I sub to that is in other instances comes here somehow?

      Sorry for being a bit thick

      • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.uk
        0·
        13 days ago

        No need to apologise, it can be a bit confusing initially and it is good to ask questions.

        All I meant there was that, for example, the main Fediverse community is on .world:

        https://lemmy.world/c/fediverse

        But if you are on feddit.uk, the content from that community is pulled over here, so you are actually viewing it on feddit.uk’s servers, so you are actually viewing:

        https://feddit.uk/c/[email protected]

        Any comments and upvotes done on here, then get sent out to all the other instances, so everyone is seeing their local copy but The Magic of the Fediverse ensures they are all synced.

        • CrowyTech@feddit.ukEnglish
          0·
          12 days ago

          Ahh that makes sense.

          Thank you 😀

          I’m certainly enjoying Lemmy so far and think I’m getting to grips with it

  • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml
    0·
    19 days ago

    The main thing is that it is federated with instances you want to see stuff from and defederated from instances you don’t. Feddit.uk is probably fine. If it isn’t as active, you can browse content from other instances. Tbh I just keep my main feed on “Everything” usually and get quite a lot of content.