[fluidcruft]

It took me a while to understand Lemmy/Kbin but this is how I now think of it. ActivityPub is basically a tool for people to start clones. It's as if someone can just download the code and start running "reddit" on their own server. Their server then has it's own users and "subreddits".

This is where the ActivityPub comes in. It lets the server graft in foreign "subreddits" from other servers and work with foreign users. This is where the federation/defederating comes in.

Basically you want to join a server that has a server local community you like and that also has a good reputation amongst other servers in the fediverse.

Ultimately, the fediverse seems to be little more than not having to create a new account on every server. So picking your "home" server seems to be a little more important than the "pick a server, any server" hype.

Beyond that the main difference in servers is whether you prefer the lemmy or kbin user interface. (You can use kbin communities on lemmy and vice-versa)

I ended up signing up at programming.dev, and I have subscribed to a few communities on beehaw.org (much more established communities) and kbin.social. But so far it seems to all be tech related.