this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2025
971 points (99.4% liked)

Fediverse memes

1888 readers
452 users here now

Memes about the Fediverse.

Rules

General
Specific

Elsewhere in the Fediverse

Other relevant communities:

founded 11 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 13 points 1 day ago (11 children)

I still don't fully understand what Fediverse and instance means.

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 16 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Fediverse = universe of federated instances.

Federation = many entities connected together and interoperating, etc

Instance: every individual Lemmy site with its own domain name runs an instance (a running copy of the software) on its server.

Those servers are talking to each other so users on one can talk to users on another server. That's federation.

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 8 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Cool, kinda makes sense. Still don't understand what the federated / defederated stuff that was all the talk yesterday. But I got a slightly more nuanced understanding. Thanks homie

[–] staph@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

An instance is literally just someone's computer with the software running. All your stuff lives on someone's computer. Different computers can talk to one another to allow people who put their stuff on those computers to see each other's stuff (federate) or they decide not to, like cutting off a computer with a lot of batshit insane people (defederate). They're running the same software so the language is the same. Like your stuff lives on lemmy.today, I don't know where and who owns that computer, while my stuff lives on sopuli.xyz, which is a computer that is owned by some random Finn, but those computers talk to one another, so we get to talk to one another.

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

You mean like a server? I hope it's not just Joe blows laptop with a cracked screen and bulging battery.

So federated is basically "you're allowed to post shit" within this list of other server?

If that's it then thank you, it makes a lot more sense now.

[–] Tuuktuuk@sopuli.xyz 2 points 23 hours ago

Yes, "instance" is the word used on Lemmy for what is usually called "server" elsewhere.

[–] staph@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 day ago

A server isn't necessarily all that meaningfully different from Joe's laptop, it's just that Joe's laptop isn't exactly practical for running big things. My website runs on a real server, but it doesn't really act much different from a computer I have in my living room when I remotely log into it, I can access all the same files, run all the same software if I wanted to.

Federated is just jargon for "the posts and comments from here will display over there too because my computer knows yours exists and runs the same software and the software does the legwork of meshing all of that shit together with mine"

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (7 replies)