I don’t understand how Lemmy.world developers managed to surpass both Lemmy.ml and Beehaw.org instances in user activity.
Rif sent me to lemmy.world to make an account. Didnt know the deal here and still kinda iffy but im getting the idea.
Just think of each separate site (AKA ‘instances’, like lemmy.world, sh.it.just.works) as different competing versions of Reddit. All with their own different subreddits.
The key difference though is that these instances are all partnered together (‘federated’) because they are running on the same technology so you can see posts from the other instances.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around this. If I understand correctly, it functionally shouldn’t matter which instance you use, because the experience is supposed to be the same across them all?
Does it matter that I’m on world? Is there a reason I might prefer a different instance? Something I’m missing?
aside from moderation stuff, smaller instances tend to be faster and, ironically, more reliable in the shorter term, as they’re not constantly getting hugged to death
and in the long term while they may be more vulnerable to running out of cash and shutting down, they’re less costly to maintain overall, so as long as people chip in that’s not as big of a concern
As the other person mentioned, it matters to an extent because the admins of your instance have the ability to cut ties with other instances (defederation). They also have the ability to make instance wide actions like banning a community belonging to that instance (in the same way Reddit admins can ban a subreddit).
Some instances will naturally be stricter about what types of communities are allowed and what types of instances they will federate with. For that reason, it’s important the instance you join aligns with your values, e.g. you probably don’t want to join an instance that tolerates alt right communities.
A site admin can “defederate” from any other instance, effectively cutting the users of that instance off. Example: beehaw.org defederated from Lemmy.world, and now they’re both completely isolated communities.
So that could be the reason you’d want to create accounts on other instances.
Do you also see the same comments across all instances or are those local only?
I’m also very new to lemmy so forgive me if I’m a bit mistaken here, but I saw a decent analogy on the dbzero instance. An Instance is like a street and the communities are like businesses in that street. You can go to multiple streets (instances like lemmy.world, lemmy.ca, etc) and find a macdonalds (/c/technology) on each one. You can walk into each and expect to find the same-ish fries (content) but the people will be different, and if you talk to someone at macdonalds on 1st (technology@lemmy.world) you won’t hear a response from someon at the macdonalds on 2nd (technology@lemmy.ml).
EDIT: But of course importantly, those streets are adjacent to eachother (federated) so you (your account) can walk freely between them even though you live on 1st street (lemmy.world)
That’s how I’m trying to make sense of it anyway
