This site is currently struggling to handle the amount of new users. I have already upgraded the server, but it will go down regardless if half of Reddit tries to join.
However Lemmy is federated software, meaning you can interact seamlessly with communities on other instances like beehaw.org or lemmy.one. The documentation explains in more detail how this works. Use the instance list to find one where you can register. Then use the Community Browser to find interesting communities. Paste the community url into the search field to follow it.
You can help other Reddit refugees by inviting them to the same Lemmy instance where you joined. This way we can spread the load across many different servers. And users with similar interests will end up together on the same instances. Others on the same instance can also automatically see posts from all the communities that you follow.
Edit: If you moderate a large subreddit, do not link your users directly to lemmy.ml in your announcements. That way the server will only go down sooner.
These are some issues I’ve been thinking about as well.
What’s to stop someone from impersonating another user on a different instance? Maybe there should be a distributed user index amongst instances to prevent duplicate usernames?
I think making the federalized infrastructure incumbent upon users to understand and select is not something the average user is going to bother with. This is complicated problem, I don’t know the answer might be off the top of my head.
And what happens when an instance goes down? Does every user and their history get torched? Is there a migration process or at least a decommissioning policy in place?