There is perennial discussion about what fediverse servers (Lemmy or otherwise) to recommend to new users. I have a proposal, perhaps not very original but I haven't seen it made often.

Let's just recommend that newbies pick an instance that is located close to them geographically. That's to say: their country, their region, or (ideally) their town.

Some context. Personally, I am not totally sold on social media, federated or otherwise. The evidence is now pretty clear that it causes major social harms. One way it does this is by fuelling polarization around hot-button national and international debates, at the expense of local issues. Reviving democracy is going to mean boosting communities at a local level. This could be a small way to do that.

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[–] M1ch431@slrpnk.net 53 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

As a US-based person, just no. It is not desirable to host anything here or to trust any US-based service for a number of reasons.

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 3 points 2 days ago

I think ICE is the scariest thing the US has done in decades. The online world is not even important compared to the evil stuff they are doing.

It just shows a mentality in Trump that is similar to Hitler. Also that he murders people on Venezuelas boats without any trial or legal actions. Just murders them.

So yeah. I will actually move my stuff away from aws even. I dont want any US in my life.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 13 points 3 days ago (2 children)

This need not concern the physical location of the servers, just their purpose and audience.

[–] M1ch431@slrpnk.net 13 points 3 days ago

Gotcha, I suppose I was reading into this a bit too much:

pick an instance that is located close to them geographically

Definitely agree with your idea in this case.

[–] TheRealKuni@piefed.social 5 points 2 days ago

Right. Midwest.social is not hosted in the US, but it’s for the Midwest region of the US.

[–] julian@activitypub.space 12 points 3 days ago

Now this is a good reason to move a community to a different region.