One thing I’m not clear about is the impact my home instance has on me. I joined lemmy.world and am currently using the connect for lemmy app. I know when I sort by Local it will only show me posts from lemmy.world, but beyond that are there any things to keep in mind?
I have read that lemmy.world has been hit by DDoS attacks but I’ve never had any problem using connect for Lemmy during those times as far as I know.
If your instance goes down, you lose all you posts. vlemmy.net was an instance and they just vanished recently. lemmy.fmhy.ml just disappeared yesterday, I couldn’t find much info besides a post vaguely mentioning that their domain name got seized by the Mali government (idk why). Besides being shut down, also due to federation issues. beehaw.org has defederated from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, meaning you can’t really interact with each other for the most part. Some instances like lemmygrad.ml and exploding-heads.com are disliked by many instance owners due to politics and got defederated so they are sorta on their own island.
Edit: Well… techically, your posts aren’t lost, you can still find them in other instances. But your images are gone since images do not get federated (unless someone made an archive) and you lost the account and any direct messages, and you have to manually check if you want to see any comments to a post that you posted before it got shut down. Just a huge inconvenience.
Former vlemmy user here, was very miffed when it vanished without a trace and with no warning.
Honestly, I think Lemmy needs something equivalent to the Mastodon Server Covenant.
I dont have my account on lemmy.ml because my opinions do not align with theirs.
Also choosing an instance with servers close to you is a plus as well for loading times
