This is a major roadblock to it’s widespread adoption. But to answer the question it’s not. It seems so but all instances are sort of talking to each other. Think of it like p2p social networking.
So that one entity doesn’t control the entire platform, mostly. With different instances, it’s difficult or impossible for a rich jerk or corporate ownership to make unilateral decisions that make the platform unusable. That could happen to any instance, sure, but there’s a lot less friction migrating to a different Lemmy instance than finding a new app entirely.
It also allows different people to join instances with policies that match their preferences. If I want porn I can go to a porn-friendly instance that won’t ban NSFW content; if I want piracy I can go to an instance that allows that; but neither of those would threaten a different instance who wants none of those things, and can freely defederate from the porn and piracy instance.
Try the Lemmynsfw.com instance. Seems to be where most of the porn is going
Why is the federated fediverse so… fragmented.
I’ve only been using it for a like a day but it seems to me that it’s basically a recreation of the old News Groups idea.
This is a major roadblock to it’s widespread adoption. But to answer the question it’s not. It seems so but all instances are sort of talking to each other. Think of it like p2p social networking.
Why do we need separate instances
So that one entity doesn’t control the entire platform, mostly. With different instances, it’s difficult or impossible for a rich jerk or corporate ownership to make unilateral decisions that make the platform unusable. That could happen to any instance, sure, but there’s a lot less friction migrating to a different Lemmy instance than finding a new app entirely.
It also allows different people to join instances with policies that match their preferences. If I want porn I can go to a porn-friendly instance that won’t ban NSFW content; if I want piracy I can go to an instance that allows that; but neither of those would threaten a different instance who wants none of those things, and can freely defederate from the porn and piracy instance.