disclaimer: i am not a web developer or a programmer, so if the language use is semantically incorrect, i apologize—I am merely trying to provide a layman’s explanation.
it’s just a bunch of little “reddits” (general discussion forum websites) that are independently hosted, but have the ability to cross post with one-another (so long as they are “federated”).
lemmy is the underlying technology that lets that happen, not the top level entity (like how reddit is the name of the website that is the forum host). so what you have is a bunch of different independent websites running lemmy that users individually create accounts on, and a lot of those individual websites communicate with each-other to create cohesive “fediverse.”
on the front end, whatever lemmy website someone signs up on, they are able to see all the content created and posted across all the separate websites that have federated together with the initial website the user signed up with.
so in short, you may have signed up with Lemmy Server 1 that has 800 individual forum topics (communities/ or subreddits) but you can also post in and interact with Lemmy Server 2, which is separately hosted and a very specific forum that only allows forum topics about bunny tossing so there are two topics: /BunnyTossing and /BunnyTossingMemes. So long as lemmy servers 1 and 2 are federated you’ll see content from Lemmy Server 1 (your home server) and Lemmy Server 2 (rad tips on bunny tossing).
if in the future your home server defederates with another server, you will no longer see content from that server or be able to interact with it as your user profile from that home server (in this instance Lemmy Server 1). in this situation however there is nothing stopping you from creating a user account on Lemmy Server 2 and continuing to see rad tips on bunny tossing by logging into lemmy server 2 directly.
disclaimer: i am not a web developer or a programmer, so if the language use is semantically incorrect, i apologize—I am merely trying to provide a layman’s explanation.
it’s just a bunch of little “reddits” (general discussion forum websites) that are independently hosted, but have the ability to cross post with one-another (so long as they are “federated”).
lemmy is the underlying technology that lets that happen, not the top level entity (like how reddit is the name of the website that is the forum host). so what you have is a bunch of different independent websites running lemmy that users individually create accounts on, and a lot of those individual websites communicate with each-other to create cohesive “fediverse.”
on the front end, whatever lemmy website someone signs up on, they are able to see all the content created and posted across all the separate websites that have federated together with the initial website the user signed up with.
so in short, you may have signed up with Lemmy Server 1 that has 800 individual forum topics (communities/ or subreddits) but you can also post in and interact with Lemmy Server 2, which is separately hosted and a very specific forum that only allows forum topics about bunny tossing so there are two topics: /BunnyTossing and /BunnyTossingMemes. So long as lemmy servers 1 and 2 are federated you’ll see content from Lemmy Server 1 (your home server) and Lemmy Server 2 (rad tips on bunny tossing).
if in the future your home server defederates with another server, you will no longer see content from that server or be able to interact with it as your user profile from that home server (in this instance Lemmy Server 1). in this situation however there is nothing stopping you from creating a user account on Lemmy Server 2 and continuing to see rad tips on bunny tossing by logging into lemmy server 2 directly.