There are many lemmy instances in the world, but currently most people are using lemmy.world. This is why everything has gotten so slow.
You don’t have to delete your lemmy.world account, but check out https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/map it’s a geo-based map of lemmy instances – explore stuff nearest you, pick one, sign up, search , subscribe and begin interacting with your favorite communities. It’s easy, free and it will be faster. Try it!
So can I just start running my only instance on my home server and just let only a few friends use it, then federate with the rest?
absolutely, talk to !selfhosted@lemmy.world
The only “downside” from running your own instance is the all page is generated from all the communities that someone in your instance has visited. So with a smaller instance the all page is less diverse.
There’s a toggle to swap the all page to include all federated instances, truly all
Please enlighten me
Yup, if you’re lazy you can use this to set it up: https://github.com/ubergeek77/Lemmy-Easy-Deploy
Absolutely