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this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
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I still haven’t got a clue what this means. Goddamn it.
Lemmy is not one big application like reddit. Instead everyone can download Lemmy and host their own >instance<. Each instance can have their own users, their own communities/subs and admins.
Since Lemmy is part of the >fediverse<, it means that each Lemmy instance can interact with each other, and can even interact with other applications of the fediverse (like mastodon, which is more similar to twitter).
Because everyone can make their own Lemmy instance, it is also possible for bad faith actors to make one. They could create many accounts on their own instance, and try to mess with the other Lemmy instances by either posting a lot of comments, reporting a lot of content, or a number of other things. To prevent that from being an actual issue, each instance has the option to >defederate< other instances. (I am not 100% sure on the following so please correct me if I'm wrong) Defederating means that users of instance A cannot interact with the content or users of instance B, if instance A defederated instance B.
Since the performance of website is dependent on the instance you use, you can try to find another instance with less users and a more stable server. As long as it is not defederated by many other servers it will be effectively be the same experience as being on another instance.
Could I think of the federation as like nations giving each others' citizens a visa, or is that too off the mark to use as a metaphor?
I think it kinda works, but it misses the mark in that you don't need to 'travel' to another server to see the communities and posts from that server.
It's more like every instance is a post office, and when you make a post or comment at your local post office, they also send it out to a bunch of other post offices. So when you rock up to your local post office (instance), you can see all the activity at that post office, but also all the activity that has come in from federated post offices.
I think it's too far off. It's more like countries joining European Union - they are still individual countries, but they share stuff with all other countries that are part of the union/federation.
I think the original analogy works better.
If an EU country goes rogue, other EU nations can't just isolate it and bar it's citizens from entry. There is no expulsion from the EU AFAIK. But Lemmy instances can block another instance fairly easily and unilaterally - like how nations can refuse visa to citizens of a rogue nation. And Lemmy instanced are expected to federate with most other instances, just like countries are expected to grant visas to most other countries - unlike joining the EU, which is a whole big process and all EU members have to agree (there are no vetoes in Lemmy federation).
But most importantly, the EU members are required to act as one in many circumstances - most laws apply across all EU members, EU negotiates trade deals as a block, etc. That is not true for Lemmy instances. Each is completely independent and makes its own laws - and must only comply with some very loose principles (which boil down to "don't be a total jerk") to not be isolated from other instances. This is much closer to the kind of independence countries have, than EU members.
They need to find a way to make this easier to understand. I almost didn’t sign up because it was so confusing. I use to go on reddit for one subreddit and they are not even considering lemmy to host a second community. There’s a different alternative they think has potential. Its a pretty big sub too.
I think it's not helped by the fact that most early adopters are "techies" who enjoy talking about the underlying tech.
The average user doesn't really need to understand this whole fediverse thing to sign up and use Lemmy. We could just have a website with a big sign up button that randomly (to load balance) selects an instance from a whitelist and signs the user up there to get them started. But instead we have GitHub docs with detailed comparisons of various instances, and long discussions about underlying protocols and what the federation means and how that's different from centralized platforms.
Yeah, I agree with you completely. I ended up with wold because I googled something on lemmy, saw the url had world in it, and just used that. The front sign up page was just confusing to me.
I only managed to sign up because Memmy held my hand through the process. NEVER underestimate a good sign up flow.
If you’re out there browsing this, unaware of how to sign up - get Memmy. It’s somewhat explained in that sign up flow, and at least you’ll get in here where you can get direct feedback from users.
Is that an app? An instance? Something else?
App for the instances. Like wefwef. I think. I’m still learning this.
Lemmy is just the software this website uses. You could download lemmy, install it on your own server, and have your own community -- AKA instance. It would be your website, but running the standardized "lemmy" code/interface.
This instance (website) is federated with the one I made an account on. I can browse communities, read posts, and comment on this lemmy website (lemmy.world) through "my" lemmy website (midwest.social), and vice versa.
"Federated" means two sites running lemmy have that agreement. "Defederated" means they don't allow their users to interact -- you'd have to make an account on each site.
Community is not the same thing as an instance.
Think of it like this: imagine if there were 2 reddit websites and users from each website could post, comment, and vote on each others website through their own website. For example, your instance(website) is Lemmy.world. mine is sh.itjust.works. I'm not commenting on lemmy.world, I'm commenting on your comment on a lemmy.world community(subreddit) using my instance(sh.itjust.works) in the same way that if you have a gmail address and I have yahoo we can still send emails to each other. Instances can block other instances as well, which is called defederating, but by default they all cross communicate with one another to deliver a (mostly) shared experience. So if you made an account on another instance, as long as it's not defederated with the ones hosting the communities you subscribe to, you are effectively changing which servers you are using without changing the content you get.
I think this one made it click for me! Thanks.
I might have been confused by the initial amount of duplicate posts across instances. I’m guessing that could be compared to cross posts across subreddits.
Now if I can engage with different instances from my own instance, why do I need a different user for each instance? Is that in case of instances blocking each other?
Lets say you want to access !memes@lemmy.ml using your .world account. Do not go to lemmy.ml. Stay on lemmy.world, go to the search bar, filter by communities, and type: !memes@lemmy.ml
Why? You can’t log in to a lemmy.world account from lemmy.ml or any other instance besides .world. You can only access things from other instances using the method described above (although you can subscribe to !memes@lemmy.ml from a .world account and have its content appear on your home feed)
Do keep in mind that Lemmy is still in its early stages, and there will be many new features in the future.
Thank you! The fact that I can only search for other instances somehow didn’t connect with me. It makes a bit more sense now.
I guess this also opens up the Top/Active filtering option to be more explorative than circle-jerky compared to that of Reddit. Maybe I’m wrong.