I think /r/Denver might be more open to it, I know @SpezCanLigmaBalls got permission to post there about the Denver community on lemmy.world.
I still think instances should be largely region based, which is why I started one for Colorado. As far as sharing it I'm not really sure either other than spamming it everywhere (which I also don't want to do). Instance discovery kind of sucks, you can't even search on the main join Lemmy page.
Looks like my instance got hit with a bot. I had email verification enabled but had missed turning on captcha (captcha enable should be up with enabling email verification settings). The bot used fake emails so none of the accounts are verified, but still goes towards account numbers. Is there really any good way to clean this up? Need a way to purge unverified accounts or something.
For a basic personal server you really don't need much. I mess around with one on Azure using a Standard_B1s VM (1vCPU/1GB RAM) and it ran fine. Cost like $7.28 a month.
I messaged the mods of /r/colorado and unfortunately, they declined, citing privacy and security concerns with the fediverse.
Assuming you don't want to expose these services directly to the internet (I don't recommend it) then you want to set up a VPN to connect back to your home network. Wireguard or OpenVPN are the most commonly used. As far as guides that will depend where/how you want to run it.
I agree. The more familiar I get with Lemmy under the hood it's apparent they weren't ready for this level of users, and there's a lot of rough edges. I also don't plan on quitting Reddit cold turkey, so definitely see Lemmy as something that can coexist as an alternative until is gets polished.
Reading through the r/Denver threads about the blackout it's clear vast majority of users are annoyed by it and don't give a shit about the API stuff, so probably best to avoid that topic altogether. The angle should be the general direction reddit is heading and giving power back to the users and their communities.
@freeskier
@centennialstate.social