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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[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You're an argumentative fellow! I'm still not sure exactly what it is you're disagreeing with. My proposal is pretty boring and inoffensive. Everything's in the post. But if you disagree, that's fine.

Servers are communities.

No they're not. Communities have "c/" in front of their name. I'm sure you know that already.

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 days ago

You're confusing my use of the word community in its literal meaning, with its meaning as a term in the context of lemmy as a piece of software.

I do not think that sorting people online by where they are from would help.

In fact I think sorting people online by where they are from could even be harmful, and potentially dangerous.

That the change you would make is small, does not change my opinion that it would be for the worse, nor that your reasoning for wanting to make it, as I understand it, seems faulty.