I will answer this question in the negative way: Do not only join the most popular ones, there are some hidden gems buried under the popularity rankings.
this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
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Asklemmy
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Like what?
Scroll through !communitypromo@lemmy.ca and similar comms (dedicated to user to user promotion of communities) and find communities organically instead of using the ranking
Subscribed! ty
Ok but I also want word of mouth. What are some of yours?
A personal favourite of mine is !pocketknife@lemmy.world, and I’m not even really into knives. It’s not the busiest community but the posts are consistently entertaining, informative, and well written so highly recommend
I see someone already listed a bunch of hexbear comms, maybe as a half joke, but seriously some of them are the most active and fun if you're a lefty. But a couple non-hexbear comms worth suggesting are
!piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
&
!privacy@lemmy.ml
Perhaps also
!memes@lemmy.ml if you want not just leftist memes but also the drama of indignant, sometimes enraged libs (even an occassional frothing chud) coming into the comments and usually proving the accuracy of the meme they're upset about. It's one of the best 
comms for that reason.
If you want great news analysis I would also suggest not just a news comm, but more specifically the newsmega thread at hexbear. It will change url every week since its a single post thread, not a comm. But it stands on its own so well I think its worth mentioning along with entire comms or instances. Hexbear has a certain reputation, some of it deserved (much of it not), but the bulletins and international news thread (aka newsmega) is, regardless of what you may think of the rest of the instance, one of the best places on the internet to get serious leftist/anti-imperialist analysis of current news and events as far as short form "reddit-like" (I hate to phrase it that way but you know what I mean) commentary and discussion.
If I missed any it was a mistake. That’s supposed to be a full list - even locked ones. For anyone subscribing from a different instance I’d skip the locked ones, but highly recommend the rest. 
My survival horror community.
c/AskLemmy
That's a good joke, thanks for the laughs stranger
Is there a reason you only advertise hexbear communities? Is lemdroid.io even federated with them?
Hexbear is the Bestbear
lemdroid.io users are not de-federated to you? Must be the case, otherwise you would be unable to comment on my comment under this post. 🤔
I guess so. Not many instances are federated with hexbear, which is a shame because they miss out on the best instance
best instance with the best emojis 
de-federated
Other way around. They’re federated. This post wouldn’t be visible from hexbear and couldn’t be commented on if they weren’t federated.
You can also confirm this relatively easily by clicking the colorful “network” icon on the OP, which will load this post from lemdroid. You’ll be able to see her comment.
I don’t have another full list of comms handy, let me see if I can dig one up.
I poked around at a couple other instances and didn’t find any. Unfortunately, I’m not willing to spend the time right now to go through the comms lists and create them myself.
I believe hexbear has defederated with everyone.
your instance has about 3x long block list actually lmao
I wasn't criticizing. I apparently mixed up some old posts and assumed they actually defederated.
Happy to see I was wrong.
Nah as lemy.lol user I can see their posts I guess. And .ml can also visit their comms. It is not like you are missing on out much besides tankie circle-jerking Maduro supporters.