A few questions about a single user instance - eviltoast

I first used lemmy on lemmy.world but due to its size I had several issues of things just not loading and needing a full page refresh. So I tried to set up my own instance and it works mostly but the federation aspect is leaving me with a few questions.

Will remote communities only sync new posts from when I subscribed or will past posts show up eventually?

Is having a single user instance realistic or should I try find another small instance?

    • HorseFD@lemmy.buzzEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      You can’t, but you can provide a list of instances and then tell it to subscribe to the top X communities in TopDay, Hot, Active, etc.

      • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        But if everyone does that it will creates a positive feedback cycle where the most popular get more exposure get more popular while the rest gets ignored.

        • HorseFD@lemmy.buzzEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          I have it set up so that a bot user is subscribing, not my user. That way the communities are populated with comments and appear in All if I’m interested in the future, but otherwise I wouldn’t see them. It makes my instance feel much more alive.

          Also, it’s worth noting that you can provide a list of the Lemmy instances in the config. You can be as obscure as you like here.

          I think the job of seeking out smaller, more niche communities has to be a manual one.