Here is a comment I usually use on Reddit when people ask about Lemmy or a Reddit alternative

"
Lemmy has 47k monthly active users

Feel free if you have any questions
"

A few questions that get asked quite often

Why no explain what federation is?

Most of the users don’t care about federation. They want a jump-in Reddit replacement, and it’s usually better to keep the message short and simple.

There are users on Sync or Voyager who only use their app, and don’t even know what instance they are on. And they are doing okay, they can still use the platform, see content, vote, comment, post.

People who want to understand more will figure it out later. No need to overwhelm them.

Why those two instances?

Long story short, there is no ideal generalist instance. If you open the top 20 instances (https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy/)

  • Lemmy.world is too big
  • Lemm.ee is federated with hexbear and lemmygrad, something that is not very welcoming to new users (see this thread: https://sh.itjust.works/post/28798607/15305964 )
  • sh.itjust.works names contains “shit”, which can deter users
  • lemmy.ca is Canadian-centric
  • feddit.org, is German-centric, but technically English speaking too
  • dbzer0 federates hexbear
  • programming.dev is topic-centric
  • blahaj is queer-focused
  • discuss.tchncs.de has a difficult name
  • lemmy.sdf.org does not defederate anyone
  • lemmy.zip is federated with hexbear and lemmygrad
  • beehaw is way outdated
  • infosec.pub is topic-centric
  • aussie.zone is country-centric
  • midwest.social is region-centric

That’s how I came up with sopuli.xyz (neutral name, stable, defederated grad and hexbear) and discuss.online (same).

Mentioning one per continent allows users to make one choice, so that we avoid the LW situation where users realize that the server follows European laws (remember the announcement following Luigi: https://lemmy.world/post/22920690 )

I also have no way to know what the person I’m replying to is interested in. Of course if you are commenting on a specific subreddit, feel free to adapt the message for a fitting instance.

Why Voyager?

Same logic, people want one app. Voyager is feature rich and is available on both Android and iOS, and follow the Apollo design that a lot of people might be familiar with.

If people want to change, they will later https://www.lemmyapps.com/

That’s it for now, see you in the comments for any feedback!

Why not use join-lemmy.org?

This website can be hit or miss, with some very negative experience recently: https://lemmy.world/post/24220536

I prefer to just point out to two instances that I know are stable and reliable.

  • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
    1·
    4 hours ago

    Bravo - perfection! Detailed, but organized, and people can skip what they don’t want yet it’s there if they do.

    One very minor potential improvement: make the instance names into clickable links, b/c some people may actually want those instances just purely b/c of what you say there. e.g. don’t just say blahaj but https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/, for people who are looking for a queer-focused instance rather than a general-purpose one.

    Also for Beehaw, I don’t think their users care that it’s using old software? I’m not 100% sure about this text but one thought could be something like… “http://beehaw.org/ uses very old software and is cut off from the largest Lemmy instances” (but is that perhaps too many words, losing the simplicity? perhaps then “http://beehaw.org/ is isolated” or even “http://beehaw.org/ is very zealous about moderation at the expense of more content” - which some people actually want?).

    Here’s a more major point of concern: at this time, given what we know about the instance admin practices, do you even want to mention midwest.social? Especially as something to click on if someone actually is in the midwestern USA and is considering joining it!

    When you use “LW”, new Fedizens aren’t going to have any clue what you mean by that. Say “Lemmy.World” there or elsewhere introduce the acronym somewhere to be found via searching.

    I definitely agree about join-lemmy.org - you could too easily end up on like hexbear.net or lemmygrad.ml or lemmy.ml or something. I much prefer the approach of giving 2 quick options, with the rest of the options appearing in a list somewhere, even if you have to click to read the full list.