Not sure if this is the right place for this, still getting used to lemmy! I’m a bit confused on some things and I’m hoping people can answer for me.

  • What happens to the communities/comments/accounts if a lemmy instance goes down? Do they just disappear?

  • Can people on other instances use your username? Could others tell which is which in comments/posts?

  • How can people afford to host an instance? Aren’t there costs to hosting a server?

  • Is there anything stopping corporate interests hosting a lemmy? I fear that these corporate instances will be the only ones that can handle large traffic and we’re just back to Reddit.

  • Can an instance go from fully federated to partially without telling it’s users? How would they know?

Thank you for your answers!

  • rawrspace
    13•1 year ago

    I know a few of these and can speculate a bit on the others to try to give an answer before someone else replies.

    1. I believe that they just disappear so you want to be sure to choose a home instance you expect to stick around. In the long term if Lemmy develops a way to “link” communities between instances then it would be a way to prevent communities from disappearing in those cases.

    2. Yes they can have the same username but for your home instance you see the name like “gamer_guy123” without the @lemmy.world but on another instance they would be “[email protected]”. Just like how email works they can have the same username but the domain is different.

    3. An instance will limit the number of registrations to keep the bandwidth costs down. A lot of these people hosting are hobbyists but believe strongly that Lemmy is the future and are covering the costs which with limited registrations would not be massively expensive. I do wonder how much storage is required though.

    4. A corporate could spin up a Lemmy instance which would likely be a more stable home instance. Since Lemmy is federated though all the activity can be synced between instances and each instance would be able to control their API so the corporate could lock down the API potentially but other instances would still be able to use their APIs. The concern I would have here is that a single Lemmy instance becomes a walled garden and doesn’t federate. That would give them the same control as Reddit. It’s up to users to make sure not to centralize under one instance.

    5. Your home server can block instances if desired. It’s important to have a home instance with a policy you agree with. For lemmy.world you can see the list here: https://lemmy.world/instances right now there is only 1 blocked instance.

    Hope this helps!

    • FlenzilOP
      1•1 year ago

      Thanks for answering.

      • With the username thing. I’ve not yet seen any @ after anyone’s name so far? It’s just their username.

      • I guess the intention is to have like 1000 different instances each hosting a small number of users and being federated with each other?

      • I think centralisation is kind of human nature though. If there’s a big walled garden that has all the content then people will keep joining. And what about an instance that’s initially run well then later becomes walled. All the content could just be lost to those on other instances? That doesn’t fill me with confidence about the longevity of a community.

      • It’s pretty confusing that it’s said to not worry too much about which instance to make your home instance but it actually seems to matter a lot since you could be accidentally part of a walled garden or a small server that is likely to disappear.

      • rawrspace
        1•1 year ago
        • you’re right, the username isn’t showing the domain for me. I have to click on the profile to see the full username. Maybe it was the web UI where I was seeing the extension. That would be an improvement.
        • yea I think the idea is to have a bunch of hosts
        • I agree, if this is going to work the popular communities need to spread out between many different instances.
        • I have seen that advice but I think it is somewhat important for the reasons you said.
        • 4•1 year ago

          Each account has a username and an optional display name. If the account has a display name, that’s what you see. If the account doesn’t have a display name, you see their username. If they are on the same instance as you, the instance is omitted from the username (in the UI, anyway).