Hi all,

I’m new to lemmy and this whole setup, so apologies in advance if this is a stupid question, but I’m trying to work out which instance I should base myself in.

Much like Mastodon, lemmy seems to have the ‘ALL’ view, which as far as I understood it, would pull in all posts from every other lemmy instance. I’ve looked at this ALL view, however, on startrek.website, beehaw.org and lemmy.one, and the ALL view seems to be different for them all, and all with hugely different numbers of comments (smaller instances seems to have an ALL view with more posts with few comments).

Is my understanding of ALL wrong? Should I be looking for an instance that is popular, in order to get a better experience?

Thanks all!

  • SockenklausEnglish
    11•1 year ago

    I’m probably as new as you are but as far as I understand the ALL page correctly, it doesn’t necessarily show ALL existing posts on all nodes in all communities but “only” all posts in communities that federate to your node.

    Since different nodes have different federation policies, you will see a slightly (?) different ALL page.

    Maybe someone who has more experience can elaborate on this topic.

    • @[email protected]English
      8•1 year ago

      I think it’s less than that. It shows All posts from communities members of your instance subscribe to.

      Two instances federation with all other instances might still have different All pages depending on what their users are subscribed to.

      • @RomanRoyEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        That is it.

        It must be federated AND someone from your instance must have subscribed to it already.

        If you know for a fact a community you’d like to join exists in another instance (and they are federated between themselves), you can search for it, subscribe to it and then it will appear in the “ALL” of everyone in the same instance as you.

        • SockenklausEnglish
          2•1 year ago

          Yes it looks like you’re absolutely correct.

          I found a thread on the German instance feddit.de that discusses the reasons why the admins blocked pretty much all NSFW instances. Turns out they actually do this exactly because of the behaviour you described and the circumstance that in Germany you are liable for all content that is distributed on your server.

          See: https://feddit.de/post/809707

          • @RomanRoyEnglish
            1•1 year ago

            It is a blessing and a curse at the same time. But I’d honestly just block the subs I absolutely don’t want to see, as a user. But I also know some instances might grow to be very toxic.

            I know some things may be hell to administer (I agree on beehaw’s stance on it today), as long as it is not permanent. They said they’re mainly waiting for better modding tools in order to administer more effectively.

            • SockenklausEnglish
              1•1 year ago

              Yes I’m with you. I wouldn’t administer an instance even if they’d pay me…

              I can understand beehaw’s step from an administrator’s perspective but as a user I prefer an instance that lets me decide what content. I want and don’t want to see.