Ooh. I like this idea! When I’m at a computer again I’ll look into adding a similar sidebar to [email protected]

It’s great, isn’t it? I was having a conversation with someone on here the other day and didn’t realise they were on Mastodon. I’d shared the original post there and replies turned up in Lemmy and vice-versa. It’s very cool.

The only thing I wish could be improved is the having to manually go back to your home instance and search for a community on another server. It feels even worse than the same process on Mastodon, which already feels clunky.

My wife and I are currently rewatching all of The Good Fight, which is still my favourite thing ever on the telly. We’re also rewatching Ranganation, which totally got us through lockdown.

Tunes wise, I’m working through the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die using https://1001albumsgenerator.com/ - today I’ve got If I Could Only Remember My Name by David Crosby which, if I’m honest, is not doing it for me.

Having to listen to everybody else moan about hayfever!

Seriously, though, it really does feel like everyone except me gets it these days.

I think the power of the fediverse is in there being more, smaller servers. It makes moderation easier and should scale better. It prevents one person or group getting control over the whole network.

The advantages of having your own server are about having control over the instance. I can choose which servers I do it don’t federate with. Also I know my data isn’t being misused. Plus, to be honest, I’ve got lots of experience running this sort of thing and I like the idea of offering the benefits of that to the community.

In my case I decided to base my Mastodon server and Lemmy server on my local area. I like the idea that the local timelines and local posts would be relevant for that geographic community.

Running your own server isn’t for everyone though. It takes a certain amount of commitment and money. I get some donations - which are lovely - but I’m still basically funding it out of my own pocket.

Yeah, I run a Mastodon instance for the my city. It only has double digits of active users but that suits me because it’s not too expensive to run and I want to prioritse the user experience over growth for growth’s sake. I’d like to do the same thing with this Lemmy instance.

I think it’s one of the real strengths of the fediverse that you can be on a tiny, friendly instance and still play a part in a huge community.

I just set up a Lemmy site and am basically posting here to try out how federation works! Other than that… stressy meeting-filled work week!