If your current instance is down, you can still read and comment from another instance.

I just wish there was a way to sync subscriptions.

Not really. You can do pretty much everything with one account. You can even become a moderator of another community on a different instance.

Only thing you can’t do is create a new community on a different instance.

Unless you want to access a server that your current one blocks that another one doesn’t then there really isn’t any benefit.

I currently have 3 - one here, one on sh.itjust.works, and one on kbin.social. I did this for a number of reasons:

1. If something happens to one instance, especially during growing pains where user influx is indistinguishable from a DDOS, I’ve got a “backup” where I can still be active from.

2. These three (and beehaw, but I’m still waiting for approval over there) seem to be the larger (and/or fastest growing) instances - currently there’s an issue with Lemmy where if you “click-through” to a community on another instance, the authentication doesn’t carry - so you have to copy the link, return to your “home instance” and search for the link, then you can visit via your home instance and interact. Clumsy (but hopefully corrected eventually). By having an account already on these instances, clicking through isn’t a problem because I’ve got an account over there. (Note: I’m not talking about interacting with posts across instances, that works fine).

3. Kbin.social showed me that instances can have a different “look-and-feel” from each other. While Lemmy.ml, sh.itjust.works, and beehaw are all clones of each other, Kbin has a prettier UX. Until apps start showing up, the homepage of your chosen instance is how Lemmy will look for you across the fediverse.

4. Different instances have different home feeds, for some reason. I would expect that all settings being equal (view from all instead of local, or view subscribed and having the same subscriptions on each instance) they should all return a similar feed - but they don’t. Not sure why, if my understanding about how this all aggregates together works - I’m still testing.

5. Different instances have different philosophies and different rules - some allow porn (but most don’t, and even on the ones that do I haven’t seen any yet - and yes I have NSFW enabled). But I also don’t want to end up with a home-instance that’s another echo chamber of one certain point of view - and while communities from those instances can be filtered individually, it’d be nice to have a local instance that’s already not an echo chamber.

6. It’s still early enough that I’m not “married” to a particular instance yet, so now is the time to experiment and test. And since there’s no way (yet) to migrate an account, settings, subscriptions from one instance to another, now’s the time to explore and branch out and look around before I really get settled-in.

Edit: and apparently numbered points don’t work. Good to know.

Each instance has certain instances linked or blocked. This means you might never see content from a different instance if it’s not linked or if it’s blocked.

you can view what instance is allowed by clicking on your local “instances”

I recommend making a general account and an edgy account for when you want to talk about controversial topics

Yes, maybe you want one for general purpose and another on a server that allows porn ;)

Two main reasons…

• As a backup in case your home instance goes down.
• If there are instances your home instance is defederated from and the other instance is not.

That’s about it.