Do all lemmy servers host the same content or does selecting an appopriate server really matter a lot? (I was just signing up and had no idea what considerations one should make when selecting a server)
Unrelated: is there a way to do `random search term site:reddit.com` for lemmy?
Picking a Lemmy server mostly matters because different servers will have different moderation practices, UIs, and communities. So you should pick a server that gels with what you want from a community. Also keep in mind many servers have explicit federation block lists.
Once you've picked a server and signed up, you can access any community on any other server by just searching for the community url on your instance. If you subscribe, your instance will begin federating that community to your instance.
So far for me, I've noticed about half of my communities are instance local, and half are federated. The expectation I think is different communities in different instances will win and be the primary places for games, or technology, etc.
>The expectation I think is different communities in different instances will win and be the primary places for games, or technology, etc.
So there will be several r/games, r/videos, r/gifs, [...] on the Fediverse? This seems like a big hassle, no? Is there a built in solution to aggregate these?
One could argue that on Reddit subreddits also competed against each other, but in reality most of the time, the subreddit with the most approachable name always won. r/godot is obviously going to be the main Godot subreddit, even if there is a r/godot4coolkidz "competing" with it.
Yes and no, for example on Reddit there's a cars community and an auto community, they're moderated differently and so have different content even though they have the same subject. There are plenty of smaller communities for specific models of cars too; it's not like there's only the cars subreddit.
Having an instance attached is great imo, because it doesn't allow name squatting, anyone can make a cars community on their own instance now and grow it.
For the fediverse the large instances will probably have a lot of the generic popular communities, but it also allows groups to host their own instance for their niche. I think this is awesome, because those small niche communities are the best, and finding them is actually fun.
For example there's now a programming.dev instance that has the best programmer humor community, there's also a good rust community there. But there's also now a lemmyrs.org instance picking up steam and may take over. I'm subscribed to both, there isn't a limit.
As for finding community, there's a bunch of ways. Sidebars of your current favorite communities may link out to others; the communities tab of your instance, with All selected, will show any community any other user of your instance has subscribed to. But a good place to start looking for communities is https://browse.feddit.de
From my experience no. I picked Lemmy.ca and I'm subscribed to communities all over the place. You can go the Communities tab and just select "All" and start searching for communities regardless of where they are.
Unrelated: is there a way to do `random search term site:reddit.com` for lemmy?