this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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None, it's all 1 big network. Each instance is a different flavor of the same thing.
Tangent: I don't understand why existing in an instance somehow makes a user any different than anyone else. Yet, I hear people saying things like "typical lemm.ml user" or crap about Hexbear users. It's like people are taking the ideologies of the instance owners and labeling anyone in it to have the same ideologies. Where did this come from?
Well those instances are very specific and you can assume a lot about the users who signed up there. Other instances seem to have normal spread of people.
Bias is real, does not demand bigotry, and is sometimes existentially beneficial.
We shouldn't make assumptions, but on the other hand if a user doesn't want people to assume they're a Trekkie, maybe don't sign up to StarTrek.website.
Instances have specific signup rules, moderation strategies, and accepted speech/posts.
It's ok to not understand things, but be informed that instances literally materially differentiates users. The impacts are internal and external facing.
I signed up to lemmy.ml because it was the "main" one. It had more content than any other instances, and it was the first result on Google search
Ok
There’s a little insight into human psychology provided by this whole decentralisation thing. People tend to get pretty tribal about which instance they’re on pretty quickly. It’s obviously pretty silly most of the time, but that’s human nature. In the end I think it counts toward a flaw of decentralisation, though not a fatal one … a lot of people don’t align strongly with any particular instance or their admins and moderation choices and the tribal baggage that comes along with it all, they’re more interested in the whole network … and yet we’re all forced to pick an instance because that’s the architecture.
Strong ideologically driven instances may be more invested in spreading the gospel, so depending on the frequency of posts that populate /c/all and topics that garner a lot of attention it can lead to certain instances standing out compared to more generic ones. It's kind of becomes like someone sporting a sports jersey versus others that might just be more generic clothing as an example.
Maybe better example might be like how people assume things by the bumper stickers people have on their cars, or signs and flags they choose to display in front of their houses compared to the general neighborhood. There's some passion that may be assumed.
Having 6 accounts on 6 instances Id just like to point out that whatever instance Im currently on is the best instance on lemmy. I am poly-situationally-tribalistic.
Lemmy.world is a general one. I'm thinking more along the lines of places like exploding heads to give an idea of a strong ideological instance.
I generally agree, but hexbear exists mostly as a place where r/chapoTrapHouse users went after it got banned from reddit, so it tends to have a specific type of user. (not that I agree with de-federating them, despite not being exactly aligned with them politically)