When other instances have abstract requirements and a manual approval process that takes who-knows-how-long, though, that’s not always such an easy ask. People want to be where other people are, and those busier instances are the ones that set harder requirements.
When I left Reddit, I signed up on two instances: lemmy.ml and beehaw. I was eventually approved for lemmy.ml, but even now trying to access beehaw just hangs on the login page perpetually, presumably because I have not been approved and there’s nothing else I can do on my end.
Ironic that “accounts will be portable - if you don’t like the behaviour, practices, or community of one instance, you can take your data and leave” was touted as the big selling point of the Fediverse.
On more mature projects this is indeed the case. Lemmy only started federating a few years ago and is very much still in beta. We’ll get there eventually and it is already in the dev queue, but keep in mind that there are only two people working on the entire codebase full time.
When other instances have abstract requirements and a manual approval process that takes who-knows-how-long, though, that’s not always such an easy ask. People want to be where other people are, and those busier instances are the ones that set harder requirements.
When I left Reddit, I signed up on two instances: lemmy.ml and beehaw. I was eventually approved for lemmy.ml, but even now trying to access beehaw just hangs on the login page perpetually, presumably because I have not been approved and there’s nothing else I can do on my end.
Ironic that “accounts will be portable - if you don’t like the behaviour, practices, or community of one instance, you can take your data and leave” was touted as the big selling point of the Fediverse.
On more mature projects this is indeed the case. Lemmy only started federating a few years ago and is very much still in beta. We’ll get there eventually and it is already in the dev queue, but keep in mind that there are only two people working on the entire codebase full time.
Not all instances do that. Many instances accept you right away.
At the bottom of any webpage (rather than the app) there is an Instances link that lists pretty much all of them. Click a few that catch your eye.