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"
  • 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]
      hexagon
      ·
      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]
          hexagon
          ·
          edit-2
          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