i am still new to lemmy, so this won’t be so much a guide as just a quick update with some resources if you wish to make the jump away from reddit with me. it must be said though, the lack of claustrophobic censorship of populist politics is deeply refreshing. (as is the lack of ads) if you are a regular reader of this site who also uses reddit i expect you will not struggle to find a home on lemmy.
lemmy is federated, meaning it is secretly /so/ many independently operated servers in a trench-coat. you will need to pick your homeserver, but you will be able to see content from any other servers who are linked to your homeserver (which, for the major servers, will be most if not all of the other major servers). you will want to consider the rules of the server you choose (including if it allows nsfw content or not). for example, one of the largest servers is lemmy.world which doesn’t allow posting or commenting from behind a vpn. you can find a list of lemmy instances here or a different list here.
if you don’t have your own preferences and are 18 or older, i would recommend lemmy.zip as a homeserver.
lemmy.zip offers default, old reddit, and modern web versions and has what i consider a solid code of conduct.
if you are 18 or older, you can sign up for lemmy.zip here.
i have enjoyed using the voyager app which works on android and ios, but you can also just use lemmy as a webpage.