You can join any lemmy and still interact with the others. Lemmy.ml does not require an email but you have to answer a questionnaire and wait to get approved. I got approved after a few minutes. The site is pretty overloaded now and some people are running into problems making accounts. lemmy.world requires an email, but you can use a temporary email and there's no questionnaire. Here's a list of federated lemmy sites https://the-federation.info/platform/73. Be wary of beehaw.org, they have some sketchy lib mods who have already blocked hexbear as a hatespeech site, which is unfounded to the point of absurdity. I would steer clear of associating your account with them, although it probably doesn't matter.

so, iirc, during account creation lemmy.ml has you answer three questions, which I think were:

  • why do you want to join lemmy?
  • what communities do you want to join?
  • why did you choose this username?

my responses (which you can probably get away with paraphrasing) were something like:

  • "i like the idea of a social network with no owners or venture capital calling the shots and shaping discourse"
  • (i just glanced at the community list and named a few I liked, including /c/socialism, /c/china, and like /c/music)
  • "[username] is already my username on another leftist forum that will probably federate with lemmy in the future"
  • familiar [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Get in the /all/new queue and reply to shit. Also tell people with feature requests to contribute on the Github, and that "Lemmy doesn't need to be like Reddit and that's ok".

    Also go on /asklemmy/new and /worldnews/new

    • familiar [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Remember how on r/cth, everyone was like "post post post, doesn't matter if it's good or bad or what your vote ratio is, just fucking post!!"

      Do that, it's kinda fun right now and a handful of us could easily steer discussions early on with that kind of dedication.

  • culpritus [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I already have lemmy and lemmygrad accounts, trying to use the lemmy one most with the recent events. Went to peek at beehaw, and noticed they are using hexagon 'honey-comb' UI elements. They really seem to be our antithesis.

    • CannotSleep420
      ·
      2 years ago

      I think the community images are hexagons, but the dom element is still circular because they haven't forked the UI.

  • asaharyev [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I have an account already and can't even log in on .ml

    My assumption is that they're overrun by people leaving Reddit.

    • familiar [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      It should work, may need a couple of tries, but I'm using it now.

  • beef_curds [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    .ml is so overloaded I've never been able to sign up. It's either entirely dead or the form submission is dead whenever I try.

    • temptest [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      There are many others which federate widely (incl. with lemmygrad and with those that block lemmygrad) so you can sign up to those, even temporarily.

      • beef_curds [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        hell yeah, finally got through. don't know if it's because I happen to be on vpn right now from the other side of the world.

  • sadschmuck [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Lemmy.world doesn't have a questionnaire and you can use a temp email. It's also not overloaded like lemmy.ml

  • GarbageShoot [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Beehaw is flatly evil, and sopuli.xyz and [unfortunately] that blahaj site are also pretty awful

  • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I'm thinking about it. Is lemmy.world OK or is it full of lib dipshits who are going to defederate from leftist instances? I'd rather try to avoid putting more stress on lemmy.ml.

    • iie [they/them, he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      it has a weirdly even mixture. you can find threads where communists and anti-communists get similar numbers of votes in a back and forth.

      • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        OK, I signed up.

        lol, they just closed the ”Does lemmy.world allow criticism of the CCP?” thread after I made fun of someone's le Winnie the Pooh social credit post :xi:

        • iie [they/them, he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          i had like three comments I was writing when they closed the thread :stalin-stressed:

          that's more on me for being such a scatterbrain though, the comments probably sat there for an hour