The only way they won't is if the admins decided users shouldn't see anything without first subscribing to something, which is a terrible way to ease people in to the service. There needs to be a default feed so normies can use it too!

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Unless an instance enrolls in Lemmy-federate, the default behavior is that a user, even on the /all view, will only see local communities, and outside communities that another local user has sought out and subscribed to.

If a newbie joins a small instance and doesn't know how to seek out communities that interest them with lemmyverse.net, they would likely have a very small range of content in their feed.

Lemmy-federate helps by auto subscribing an instance to participating communities, seeding a wide range of content immediately.

A large instance would offer a good experience either way, but would encourage centralization without Lemmy-federate existing.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Why on Earth would a newbie join a small instance? How would they even find out about one?

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Assuming they search Lemmy, and one of top results is the join-lemmy page (second result for me, below Lemmy.world), the server recommendation tool can suggest small instances with only a couple hundred members. For instance, if one selects Art as the topic and English as the language.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Oof.