You are allowed to make accounts on other instances, you know

Ah, if you just want something other than the lemmy.world instance, but are okay with lemmy-the-server-software, you can get a list of other lemmy instances here:

https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list

And since I mentioned the other instance types above, for mbin:

https://mbin.fediverse.observer/list

Kbin:

https://kbin.fediverse.observer/list

Piefed:

https://piefed.fediverse.observer/list

A couple of recommendations, if you want another instance. I don’t know what “broadening horizons” here deals with.

You can see what instances a given lemmy instance has defederated with at /instances. So for lemmy.world:

https://lemmy.world/instances

I can’t link there directly, unfortunately, but click on “Blocked Instances” and you’ll see a list.

Note that defederation is not symmetric – that is, instance A can defederate from instance B, even if instance B doesn’t defederate from instance A, so knowing whether two instances can really interoperate really requires checking both of their defederation lists, if you’re looking for access to a particular instance.

• My own view is that lemmy.world is a pretty decent general-purpose instance.

• I use lemmy.today because they specifically have, as a policy, that they try not to defederate with other instances (which it sounds like is something that you care about), that they want to let the users choose want content to see. It’s on the West Coast, US, which may-or-may-not be near you. So if you’re on there, you can browse anything…but it doesn’t have a huge userbase, at least not yet, and an instance needs to have users that subscribe to new content before it shows up in an all feed. So you may want to hit https://lemmyverse.net/communities to find new communities to subscribe to, rather than just sitting in the “All” feed (which I don’t personally think is a great way to find new communities anyway, but…)

• beehaw.org is generally more restrictive than most instances, so it probably isn’t what you were after, but it defederated from lemmy.world some time back, so if you’re after their content, you might want an account there or an account on an instance that it has not defederated from. I’m not really enthusiastic about their moderation policy, but they do consistently have solid discussion, IMHO.

• lemmy.dbzer0.com is run by the ex- /r/piracy lead moderator on Reddit, and is aimed at piracy. Lemmy.world has not defederated, though I can imagine that some instances might, so if that’s what you’re after…

• lemmynsfw.com is, AFAIK, currently the main “mainstream pornography” instance. There is some content that isn’t permitted there, but I believe that mainstream pornography is going to be acceptable there. lemmy.world has not defederated from it, so you shouldn’t need to get another account elsewhere to access content on on it, but I’m pretty sure that some others have, so some other users might want to get another account if that’s what they’re looking for. Like, I remember that on my first few days over here, I ran into a policy discussion on aussie.zone, where the admin there decided that he didn’t want pornography to be accessible through his server, so I bet that it isn’t accessible there. checks Yeah, aussie.zone defederated from lemmynsfw.com.

There are various special-purpose instances, like https://pawb.social/ for furries or https://mander.xyz/ for science, but I don’t think that these are likely to have most general-purpose instances defederate from them. So you probably don’t need another account off lemmy.world if those are what you’re after and you’re wanting more content than is accessible from lemmy.world.

Looking at lemmy.world’s defederation list, from a quick skim, the stuff there tends to fall into a few categories:

• Far-right stuff that doesn’t get along with others, like https://skinheads.social/

• Far-left stuff that doesn’t get along with others, like https://hexbear.net/ or https://lemmygrad.ml/

• Underage anime porn, which is illegal in some locales, like https://burggit.moe/ or https://headpat.cafe/ (pleroma, not lemmy). Burggit.moe, as I recall, also deals with consentual-nonconsentual content.

So if you’re looking for anything there, you can probably just grab one of said instances and get an account there, as I doubt that they’d defederate from other instances that deal with similar content (though I dunno, not familiar with any drama there…lot of fractious far-left groups in the world who don’t like other far-left groups).

If what you want is just more communities than are currently available, then you don’t need to join a given instance to access content on it. As long as your instance is federated with it, you can post and read posts there and such. Note that content from a remote community will only show up on your instance if at least one user on your instance has subscribed to that community…but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get at that content. You just need to try to go to that community. Your instance will tell you that it’s not familiar with it. For example, to try to see the “foo” community on mander.xyz (which doesn’t really exist), you can just try to go there. For lemmy.world, that’d be:

https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]

It’ll ask you if you want to trigger a search for such a community. If you do so, wait a sec, and then you’ll have the option to view the community and subscribe to it; after you do so, your home instance will start receiving posts and comments for that community. Can also just plug in “!community@instance” into the search field for communities on your instance, and it’ll do the same.

If you want to find new communities not yet visible from your home instance, I recommend using lemmyverse.net, which uses a bot that builds an index of all communities out there:

https://lemmyverse.net/communities

Note that by default, that will filter out communities flagged as NSFW (i.e. pornography and such). You’ll need to check the box at the top to cycle through showing those as well (or showing only those).