I used to browse Reddit 90+% of the time from my phone through the RiF app, so after June 30th, here is what I did and what I recommend as a starter pack for others in the same situation:
- Create account on lemmy.world, so the browser part is covered
- Search for the information on which app provides the closest to the RiF (Apollo, etc.) experience
- Instal Liftoff and be happy - it is just like RiF :-) (for Apollo and others, it could be different - find your own favorite!)
- Dial back dramatically on using Reddit at all. I only load 4 subs in my phone’s browser, because I did not find the Lemmy / Fediverse alternatives yet
- Constantly look for the communities to replace the subreddits you are still visiting
- OPTIONAL - once or twice a week, look at /r/pics and /r/videos and laugh at the creativity of the still ongoing protest :-)
So that is where I am right now, posting this via the web browser on the lemmy.world site, by pressing “create a post”. Seems easy enough for now, but I find it a bit confusing that other people can post from Mastodon and other Lemmy instances… Do they see the same communities I do? Do I see all Lemmy communities if I use lemmy.world…? So many questions, but it’s exciting to explore this brand new structure.
Even after reading the Fediverse and ActivityPub articles on Wikipedia my head is spinning, and I don’t really understand how everything fits / works together, but here I am! An ex(-ish) Redditor after the APIcalypse, looking for cool new communities, and excited about the future that the Fediverse can bring!
(I’m willing to learn! Someone please link me a FAQ where I can find the answers to my questions :-) )
This already is a thing, see StarTrek.website, Lemmy.film and LemmyNSFW.com for just a few examples.
The admin paranoia is tough because it goes both ways. Yes, big instances mean huge losses if they get abandoned, defederated or the admin loses his mind. At the same time, smaller instances are often run by regular people who can’t or aren’t interested in running an instance long term, or don’t have the ability to have 99%+ uptime.
At the moment momentum is important to reach critical mass of users and it’s just not feasible to tell most Reddit refugees “Okay so go to look up the handful of instances closest to your geographical location. Research their uptime, the reliability of their admins, their funding, their rules and whether they’re defederated from any major instances. Just pick the one that best suits your needs! Oh, also remember to use [email protected] (don’t forget the exclamation point!) when searching for communities because many small instances haven’t connected yet to everyone. This also means these subs will appear empty at first because old content doesn’t get propagated but don’t worry about it. Oh and also sorting topics by Hot is bugged on small instances currently.”