Bouncing between several since lemmy.world is being hammered right now, I'm sure once the dust settles things will calm down. Right now I'm on infosec.pub because it was recommended to me as a smaller server. It really doesn't matter so long as whatever you're on communicates with everyone else.

it was the only one when i joined

Not seeing anyone mentioning lemmy.one and I'm starting to think I made a bad choice.

I have two. I have this one (lemmy.ml) as my broad-access instance. My other is lemmygrad, but as that is a bit more widely blocked I keep this one still. That one is used for most of my politics, and this one is my more general interest. It's kind of nice to have different communities died to different user registrations.

As to why those two in particular, I am a Marxist-Leninist so...yeah.

I made my first account on lemmy.ml because it had a commitment to free and open-source software with a focus on privacy.

I have a few now just to test it out. I want to use feddit.nl as my standard server, but I just haven't fully figured out how this all works.

Like for example I'm on lemmy.world and subscribe to something, that channel/sub doesn't seem to appear on feddit.nl. there can be a channel with the same name but it isn't the one I subscribed to.

I joined lemmy.ml a while ago because following cool opensource projects is my jam.

I wanted an instance specifically for Australians... so I made one 😀

I want to be in control over my own data. So I spun up my own instance

I’m in Kansas City so I joined https://midwest.social 😄

it was canadian

It was nearby geographically and the guy running it seemed to know what he was doing from a technical aspect.

I'm into general instances and also a long time user of Fediverse, so I know 10-200 user instances work best. That's why I picked the first one with not too many and not too little users (the join-lemmy page only showed 50 new users when I registered, damn)

I was looking for a lemmy instance that would let me create communities, downvote if I wanted to downvote, and that would take care of troublemakers without being too overly restrictive.

I also wanted to ease the burden on the very busy lemmy instances that were being overwhelmed by the reddit Exodus.

It seems I have found a place. The SDF has a very long history of serving several communities in the internet and Linux world. I first ran into them decades ago, and they are still here.

Lemmy.world didn't require/disapprove my application!

I wrote in the beehaw application that I'd contribute empathy, humor, comments, and memes. I feel like a rejected tinder date in denial, "maybe their servers just have a lot going on right now"

Lemmy.ml was requesting people register on other instances, and lemmy.one stepped up to fill the void.

But when people ask me what instance to sign up for, I tell them lemmy.world. it doesn't really matter, but being based in a bigger instance reduces the friction of finding communities.

I picked Lemmy.world because I wanted a fairly large one that will likely maintain support.

Decided to go with a smaller instance from the start, as I think we can all see what happens when one entity holds too much power within an ecosystem.

Also wanted to go with one that was not defederated from other instances (nor defederating others as well). Checked a bunch of lists, and decided to go with my current one.

When I got started on Lemmy, there were only a handful of instances and they were all general-purpose. I went and made my own so that it was exactly what I wanted.

These days, I'd probably use a list like this and choose an instance that isn't too big with a cool domain name: https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances

I run my own private instance so I am in control over my own data.

Tbh, I don’t think it matters what server you choose. Lemmy.world, Lemmy.ml, and Beehaw seem to be the big ones so picking a server that federates with those would be ideal.

Set up the server myself. For me, that’s part of the fediverse experience.

I joined Lemmy a few weeks ago when a lot of other reddit refugees were making the switch. A lot of the servers were overloaded, so I just went ahead and hosted my own. My instance is never overloaded because I'm the only user, and because Lemmy is federated I can subscribe to communities on any instance I want.

A friend owns it and it has a funny domain. Bonus of it being smaller is that it didn't have any performance issues yesterday/today.

Initially made an account with the instance opened after my country's subreddit made the shift, but on Jerboa trying to look at other instance content was really rough.

So I joined here since I enjoy the content, and raise the black flag every so often.