Unfortunately that link doesn’t help much. Currently among the list of “recommended instances” (followed by a claim that it “doesn’t matter” which of these you choose) are a French-speaking instance, a crypto instance, and an anime instance. Hardly welcoming places for your average person, unless you happen to be a French crypto bro looking for porn in which case you are definitely well catered for.

OP might not have all the details worked out but their point is a good one, and it’s an issue on Mastodon as well. It’s all well and good having a one-liner description about each instance but it can be quite a trawl to find the actual important info you need to make a decision.

A couple of the apps do have this “multi community” feature, if you’re a mobile user. Summit definitely does, Raccoon (the one I’m replying from now) technically does but it’s pretty broken so I’m hoping that gets looked at soon. And tbh maybe more of them do now, it’s been a while since I checked!

You’ve had some well-meaning but ultimately not quite accurate answers in this thread so just to clarify:

You can follow, post to and interact with Lemmy communities from Mastodon, because they’re treated the same way as a “group” on Mastodon in general.

You can NOT follow and interact with Mastodon users from Lemmy, because Mastodon accounts are individual “users” and Lemmy doesn’t have the concept of following and interacting with users, only with communities. If Lemmy ever does add a feature to let us follow other users, then in theory following Mastodon users will also become possible.

That’s definitely the way to go for now. PT is pretty ok software from the creator pov but it’s atrocious as someone just looking to view! We’ll see how things develop, maybe that changes at some point.

I think it’s just a misunderstanding. With most other Fedi software, servers federate via the users themselves following content from other servers and then the admins have control over whether to sever that connection by defederating. With PeerTube it doesn’t work that way, federation is controlled by the admin of each server in the first place and they tend to keep the list quite short (on a particular theme, or just servers by other admins they trust, or whatever).

I expect the fundamental reasons for that are the expense of hosting video content and also the risk of extremely NSFL material if you throw the doors open by default. It definitely results in a lot of behaviours that seem very strange if you’re used to the usual fedi way of doing things.

As much as I love Lemmy, it’s just honestly not ready for another big influx yet. The 0.19 update broke so much, it really brought home how precarious this whole thing still is. Those of us who are here either a) kind of enjoy the jank because it feels like an adventure b) were morally outraged enough to make a stand against Reddit or c) both.

I have a very small amount of influence in the niche community of fibre crafts and especially cross stitch. Would I be able to explain Lemmy to my audience in a way that made sense and that they might even want to try out? Absolutely. Would I actually do that until it’s a bit more stable? Absolutely not, apart from a couple of specific individuals that I’m already working on.

Trying to force people to join platform B when platform A is already serving their needs makes no sense. You need to find the people who are dissatisfied, the people that would actually benefit from trying something new, and then make sure they’re aware of the option.

Don’t get me wrong through, I do encourage people to learn about and dip their toes into the Fediverse in general. Just last week I convinced a wave of fibre crafters (often older ladies who have barely ever ventured outside of Facebook) to try out Mastodon and Pixelfed and some of them have really taken to it! Alt text and content warnings and everything! One or two fellow YouTubers are even setting up PeerTube channels to bring over more crafting content.

Why did I tell them to join Mastodon over Lemmy? I’m literally moderator of !knitting@lemmy.world and !lemmy_stitch@sh.itjust.works so surely it’s in my best interests to bring them over here?

No. I know the demographic, I know what they’re annoyed about with big social media, and I thought Mastodon / Pixelfed were the best replacements for them.

As much as we would all love to see Lemmy become huge, you have to meet people where they’re at. If Lemmy is genuinely the best choice for everyone who is currently in /r/adelaide or whatever, then brilliant, your strategy makes sense. But if it’s not actually in their best interests, if they’re just going to be annoyed by things breaking and not see enough value to make it worthwhile, then there’s no point doing it just because you wish Lemmy was bigger.

Maybe the moral of this story is that the real strategy you want to be looking at is getting tiny niche influencers on side! 😄

Thank you.

I cannot for the life of me figure out what this actually is. But congrats on building it and yay for more federated stuff!

Astounding achievement!

This took me a couple seconds but I’m happy to report that once it clicked it got an out loud “oh my god” from me irl 🤦‍♀️

DID YOU KNOW? Knitting isn’t just about cosy socks and sweaters in winter, it’s also a summer-appropriate activity with cotton yarns, lace patterns, cute home accessories and suchlike.

This has been your knitting community fact of the day.

This turns my tendency to Lemmy while wrapped in a cosy electric blanket into a deep metaphor.

I do appreciate where you’re coming from, there. Some people will unfortunately take any opportunity to exclude others.

Glad to hear other folks having positive experiences here too! Idk about you but every single time I’ve corrected someone for referring to me as “he” on Lemmy, they’ve actually apologised. Quite the change from Reddit!

Being welcoming to people in general goes without saying. But we’re specifically in a thread about encouraging more women to join and making them feel safe to do so.

Woohoo! Get them over here, December is going to be SOCK MONTH it’s very exciting haha 😄

I’m a woman, and make no attempt to hide that fact in my posts. That said, I also don’t personally have much interest in talking about being a woman, so don’t sub to any of those places you linked.

Over on Reddit I just sort of let people assume I was male a lot of the time, since it wasn’t really relevant to what we were talking about. But from the start on Lemmy I’ve made sure to call out incorrect assumptions, downvote and give a talking to people stereotyping or being misogynistic, etc etc. And the more of us (of all genders) that make that same decision, the better things get.

I also mod !knitting@lemmy.world which as you might expect is largely although by no means entirely women. Any questionable comments over there are dealt with swiftly, I am absolutely not having it.

I don’t necessarily see it as a “problem” that Lemmy is seemingly male-dominated (I say Lemmy because my Mastodon is very much female-and-NB-dominated). It’s more just a fact of early adopters tending to the techy interests that skew male. But if someone does see it as a problem and wants it to change, there are basically two things to do:

1. Make sure you’re helping make Lemmy a welcoming place for non-males
2. Invite your non-male friends

All that said, other women may disagree but I don’t particularly feel like a minority on here and never really think about it until coming across something gross (which is a LOT less often than on Reddit, thankfully). There may be few enough women that I recognise their names often when they post, but let’s be honest Lemmy is a small world and that goes for most regular posters in general.

(And it helps that I’m middle-aged so if any little boy thinks they can upset me with comments about my gender or appearance or whatever, lol, the self-confidence of age is a wonderful thing 😉)

Edit: Just wanted to add, if you’re not a man and you’re reading this thinking “wow she’s lucky, I’ve had such a bad experience here” then first, I’m sorry you’ve had that experience, people suck sometimes. But also, drop me a DM let’s see if we’ve got any interests in common and I can maybe signpost you to some more friendly communities and people. Between my two accounts I spend WAY too much time on Lemmy!

What does “saving” a song even mean? I’m old and confused