This site is currently struggling to handle the amount of new users. I have already upgraded the server, but it will go down regardless if half of Reddit tries to join.
However Lemmy is federated software, meaning you can interact seamlessly with communities on other instances like beehaw.org or lemmy.one. The documentation explains in more detail how this works. Use the instance list to find one where you can register. Then use the Community Browser to find interesting communities. Paste the community url into the search field to follow it.
You can help other Reddit refugees by inviting them to the same Lemmy instance where you joined. This way we can spread the load across many different servers. And users with similar interests will end up together on the same instances. Others on the same instance can also automatically see posts from all the communities that you follow.
Edit: If you moderate a large subreddit, do not link your users directly to lemmy.ml in your announcements. That way the server will only go down sooner.
Soo, stupid question maybe but how does federation work with your own instance?
I've set up a solo instance using ansible and subscribed to !lemmy@lemmy.ml. If I wanted my ALL page populated with posts from other lemmy.ml communities, would I have to subscribe to each individually? Or does my instance fetch lemmy.ml's Local eventually?
I've confirmed that federation is working using the method described in lemmy's docs and lemmy.ml (+ a few other instances) is listed under "Allowed instances" in my admin panel.
From what I can tell, it won't automatically pull in all communities from another instance - it'll only "know" about a community once someone has searched/subscribed to it, unless I'm missing something.
Also just as a heads up, explicitly specifying allowed instances puts the federating onto an allow-list only sort of mode I believe - if you want to allow federating with all instances you can do so by leaving that field blank (and putting in explicit entries into the blocked list will ignore requests/connections from those instances). Of course, if that's intentional then my apologies! ๐
Good to know, thanks! In that case some way to discover and promote global communities would be really helpful. Does any of the instances have something like this?
And yep, had to remove the allowed instances as your comment was not showing up (and now I can't reply from my own instance, probably takes a few minutes to fetch it now that the Allowed list is empty).
You'll only get new comments after federation started working, it's never retroactive.