this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy

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multiple accounts (beehaw.org)
submitted 1 year ago by Mandy@beehaw.org to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
34 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I found the lemmyverse super confusing for the longest time, especially how so wildly different looking sites would interact.

I see every so often people talking about more than one account on different instances.

Why should i, or why shouldnt use more than one?

What benefits would I, a very average user gain from it?

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[–] Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's useful to have an alt because some instances block other instance you might be interested in.

Also, performance and availability reasons. If lemmy.world or lemmy.ml or in your case beehaw.org goes down, you can just use your account on another instance as if nothing happened.

There's also been situations like vlemmy.net which the admins seems to have decided to pull the plug with no warning and disappeared, then there's lemmy.fmhy.ml whose domain just got cancelled among many other free ml domains and is/was down for an extended period of time.

[–] Mandy@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sure but how would I go a out syncing all these accounts in terms of content I have seen, communities or similar? It seems to be an awful lot of effort

And I even noticed some difference in content on the same community on different instances so thats also a little weird

[–] Elephant0991@lemmy.bleh.au 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You can use this tool to help. https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim When you unsubscribe, you have to unsubscribe from each account manually, though.

[–] CMahaff@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Thanks for spreading the word about LASIM!

Just letting you know that today I finished an update that adds upload options, including an option you can turn on to "sync removals", which kindof achieves this.

It may not be the right tool for every scenario though - turning it on basically means that whatever account you upload too will end up identical to the one you downloaded by following/unfollowing and blocking/unblocking as needed. But if you've got new follows, blocks, etc. spread across several accounts you wouldn't want to turn it on or you'd lose all the changes on the accounts except for whichever one you downloaded.

The option works better in scenarios where you're mostly using a Main account, and just trying to keep the Alt accounts in sync with whatever the Main account does.

[–] Elephant0991@lemmy.bleh.au 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the work. You are a life saver. I coincidentally ended up in the scenario you described: using an account (big instance) to subscribe to everything. Syncing unsubscription from a main account would work well for me.

[–] Bebo@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How to use lasim? I downloaded lasim_windows.zip from github which contains an exe file. Is this the file I need to use? I want to create a back up account. How to find out which instances are supported? Also, how does this work? Will the backup account automatically get subscribed to all communities?

[–] CMahaff@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Yep, if you are on Windows just extract that .exe somewhere and then run it.

The README is displayed underneath the screenshots on the link to LASIM above. It tells you how to run it. See "How it Works".

https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim#how-it-works

The latest version supports any Lemmy 0.18.3 instance. You can see which version a Lemmy instance is at the bottom of site. For example, your instance, reddthat.com, is 0.18.3. Most instances should have upgraded to 0.18.3 already - choose one of those. Any instance running 0.18.3 should work, big or small.

The account you "download" with won't be touched at all. The account you "upload to" will receive all the subscriptions and blocks of the downloaded account.

[–] Bebo@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I got an error log: Unexpected Error Occurred: "called Option::unwrap() on a None value"

[–] CMahaff@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Could be some kind of new bug, but I've also seen this happen when an instance is under heavy load or otherwise glitching out - it's starts sending back invalid items on the API and LASIM chokes on them.

For what it's worth I made an account on reddthat.com and was able to download and upload to it fine.

Maybe try again? Or is this some other instance? (I'm making assumptions based on your account)

[–] Bebo@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I will try this again tomorrow and see. Also, when I hit download, the window below that showed logging in successful (don't remember exact words) after that the whole application window vanished. I tried this twice with same result. Later I found that error file. Maybe something in my os might be blocking it? Later when I have time I try it on my old laptop which is on windows 10 and see what happens.

[–] CMahaff@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sounds good. Let me know how it goes. Hopefully it's just instance instability.

[–] Bebo@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So I tried again. I deleted the application folder then downloaded it again and executed it. Got the same error message. Then did the same on my old laptop on windows 10. This time the application didn't execute giving me a message that some dll file is missing. Looks like this is not going to work for me for whatever reason.

[–] CMahaff@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's so odd. No idea what would be causing that on Windows 10.

For the windows 11 issue I can only think short downtimes of the instance you are trying to use, or your account has something unique about it that I've never encountered before.

[–] Bebo@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah seems something weird. I guess I will manually subscribe to communities on another instance when I have free time.

[–] Bebo@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago

Hey after entering my instance login details and hitting download, the application window is disappearing. What's going wrong?

[–] Bebo@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago

Great! Thanks for the info. I will check it out.

[–] Mandy@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

I might keep an eye out for this, thanks

[–] infamousbelgian@waste-of.space 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Besides what max_p explained, my reasoning was/is this:

I am a Reddit refugee. I did not want to have one corporation β€œin charge” of my account anymore on a platform. That is why I like the idea of the fediverse. Multiple instances make it more β€œresilient” towards β€œstrange” decisions or decisions that don’t align with my ideas.

However, on one instance, the admin is the sole responsible (who does not even have to explain the decisions to a board or something). So making sure you are active on multiple instances counters their β€œpower”.

I even went so far as to running my own instance. Because then I can be the crazy dictator if I want to.

[–] Venicon@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Crazy dictator eh? I can get behind that. What’s your instance?

[–] silver@lemmy.brendan.ie 5 points 1 year ago

Their instance seems to be a waste of space (/s)

[–] infamousbelgian@waste-of.space 2 points 1 year ago

Waste-of.space :)

[–] mojo@lemm.ee 14 points 1 year ago

Yeah, one main and one porn.

[–] hsl@wayfarershaven.eu 9 points 1 year ago

This could be considered a support question but it's less of a "how do I?" and more of a "why should I?" so leaving it up.

[–] UnfortunateBlaster69@feddit.de 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I find it super convenient. Got 2 lemmy accounts - 1 on feddit.de and one on lemmy nsfw for... you know, reasons

[–] Mandy@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Be horny on main you coward

[–] jackie_jormp_jomp@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I need to know what you weirdos jerk off to

[–] Mandy@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I do not jerk for I do not posess a sausage And I also don't use Lemmy for porn, its like wanting to use r34 sites for high quality writing

[–] Teknikal@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm newish to the whole fediverse thing myself. I've made 3 lemmy accounts on different instances mainly due to lemmy.world being a bit unstable and Lasim making it easy to migrate communitya.

Also made a kbin, mastodon and because I read a lot a bookwyrm account.

[–] Mandy@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Couldnt you do that with one account since its all the fediverse?

[–] Teknikal@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nope I don't think so but the 3 lemmy accounts might be overkill I'll maybe delete my original lemmy.world one. I think 2 are needed in case an instance has issues.

[–] Mandy@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

I see, thank you

[–] Levsgetso@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Having more than one account is really convenient. You could still browse the fediverse if your instance goes down or something else happens to it. Also you might want a new account because you instance federates(or doesn’t) some other instances. But this can also get out of control. I have 5 Lemmy accounts, 2 kbin accounts, on kbin.social and artemis.camp, so I can use artemis, and 1 account on mastodon

[–] minthenry@lemmy.one 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But you can't sync your subscriptions between your account, right? If using the second account as backup you'd have to subscribe to your communities twice.

[–] Levsgetso@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 year ago

I think someone shared an extension to sync them in this thread