If you follow these, you’ll be fine:

Don’t hate on minorities
Don’t post AI content outside of communities made for it
Don’t insert yourself into communities where you don’t belong, eg:

• Don’t comment “As a man, …” in WomensStuff
• Don’t debate the validity of trans folks on Blahaj
• Don’t criticize China in any way on lemmy.ml

DO NOT post anything negative about Linux (unless you’re comparing it to BSD, of course)

Sometimes it’s a bit harder not to offend than on reddit, because posts may hit your front page from an instance that was created as a safe space for a group you’re not part of, and they may react harshly to you budding in.

Hello, and welcone to Lemmy. Glad you made it, here’s my overall advice:

• No need to get hung up over a few early downvotes on your comment that might cause its score to go negative for a bit. People can be strongly opinionated here. Not everyone agrees with me on this, but I do appreciate people willing to post honestly held unpopular opinions and play a reasonable devil’s advocate in threads. (This is different than just being a contrarian.)
• For your own and everyone’s benefit, try to engage in thoughtful, well reasoned and good faith discussion with empathy for others where it’s due. If you feel like a chain of replies is going nowhere good, there’s no shame in walking away from it.
• Report and block the jerks, trolls and spammers you might encounter like on any forum-like site. Don’t let them spoil your experience when most people here are respectful.

Enjoy your time here!

Do NOT mention Nicole.

Wait, shi-

Please do not drag the same tired jokes over from reddit (e.g. broken arms). Stick around long enough to learn Lemmy’s tired jokes.

Each instance has its own vibe. You joined .ml, just a fair warning that a few instances and a chunk of Lemmy users have defederated/blocked it, so you may miss out on some content. Otherwise, pretty chill for the most part.

One thing to note is more often people here reply with genuine comments and in good faith. There is also a lack of clever snarky comments and baiting due to the lack of karma system.

The lemmy instance you choose (for example, you chose .ml) to join will have its own tone, flavor, rules, politics. You will find instances that are left, right, and center. Additionally you will find some that are VERY far-left or VERY far-right. If you are finding the tone for the lemmy community (equivalent of reddit subreddit) different that your position, it may be because its hosted and moderated on an instance with that particular bend.

You may also experience some judgment from others because of the instance you are coming from as it can communicate some of your positional bias. Some users have chosen to relocate to other lemmy instances once they get an understanding of what ideas live where.

All of that said, while lemmy and the fediverse has a much smaller userbase than Reddit, it is so much nicer here. My last post to reddit was over 2 years ago, and every post I hear about how bad it is getting over there confirms this is the better place here.

Maybe the largest difference for me is how the federated nature changes the social dynamics. For instance, people from Instance X don’t like those from Instance Y, or may even ban them.

This was prevalent on Reddit, buuuut banning can be instance or node based compared to subreddit.

I likely have some opinions or takes I wouldn’t post on lemmy.ml because lemmy.ml has a particular bent. I agree with a lot of it, but I wouldn’t want to offend with what doesn’t align or would get me banned. The ban cascades further out, and how servers interact as wholes with one another in terms of federation is similar.

The social platform mechanics are also different. Upvote has a different impact compared to Reddit (I don’t fully remember the specifics). I think saving has its own relevancy or something?

It’s mostly the same though.

corporate koolaid frequently masquerades as ‘knowledge’, and is parroted rather than built up from first principles.

compared to reddit, an average lemmy user would tend more towards the latter than the former.

be on the lookout for the cognitive dissonance which can precede the realisation you’ve been parroting corporate propaganda. it’s ok, it happens to all of us, but the sooner we realise the better for everyone.

Take advice from Detective Frank Drebin

“Like a blindman at an orgy, I was going to have to feel my way through”

If you haven’t already then you need to switch to Linux

It’s smaller, but more personable. It’s full of neurodivergent, queer, and tech oriented people. It has its own inside jokes—you will want to read up on beans.

Overall, I have enjoyed the experience. Sometimes, I have been surprised when people can’t detect obvious jokes or sarcasm, but then I remember how many people here are neurodivergent and try to reply with something kind and straightforward so we’re on the same page.

People tend to be very leftist compared to the rest of the internet, so it’s good to remember that the opinions here are not always representative of the world at large.

A huge chunk of Lemmy is German, and that part of the community remains a total mystery to me because I don’t speak German. They seem cool from afar.

Which communities you are able to see depends pretty heavily on which instance is your home base—I’m with DB0, and we federate with pretty much everyone who isn’t doing something detestably illegal, but LemmyWorld is much more exclusive with who they federate with, so their users don’t see the same instances that I do. Pick a home instance that fits you best because it will matter a lot as you find communities.

You will see interactions between communists and anarchists. Try to remember that you don’t have to comment on everything you might disagree with.

Welcome to the Fediverse—we’re happy to have you.

Each Lemmy instance has its own rules, and each community as well. Please read them before posting, because rule #3 for this community is:

3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below

Don’t be a jerk and you will be fine.

We are all mostly human here. Just remember that. Hope you have a great time on the fediverse!

Because lemmy is much smaller, you tend to rub into the same users more often. So if someone comes off as abrasive, blocking them can have a notable impact on your experience.

Dogpiling is worse, and it can pay to know what instance the community you’re posting in is, as the games community on hexbear is going to be different than on world.

It’s much more “left” than reddit. Notably, while this instance, lemmy.ml, is the flagship instance run by the lead dev, the “ml” stands for marxist-leninist.