Trying to wrap my head around the fediverse. Is each instance like another person with a server? Could that person just shut it down whenever they wanted to?
Are there any companies that have invested in hosting Lemmy/ other fediverse servers?
Sorry I’m sure I messed up some of the terminology, I hope my questions make sense! I love the idea of the fediverse as I understand it, but I like to dig into these details.
Nice analogy, thanks. Good to know Lemmy.world is donation run. Are decisions about the instance made by a collective body?
Theoretically there is community input but at the end of the day, one guy owns it and can do stuff unilaterally. There is occasionally drama over that, like recently the piracy community was removed (from lemmy.world, not from the whole fediverse) due to concern over possible legal hassles. I’d say Lemmy world tries to be friendly and mainstream, while edgier stuff tends to live on other instances. So you can still find what you want.
Nothing stops you from using multiple instances of course. It’s no different from drinking at more than one café. But people tend to have a main one that they visit the most.
Edit: clarify about piracy community.
To be clear, lemmy.dbzer0.com wasn’t removed, it was defederated by lemmy.world. That only affects lemmy.world, it’s still federated with other instances.
So by defederated, that means since I have a lemmy.world account, I can’t subscribe to the piracy community? But if I made another account on a different instance I could?
Yes, exactly. For example, I can still see the main Piracy community at dbzer0 with https://lemm.ee/c/[email protected], however if you try to go to the lemmy.world version at https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected] it turns up an error.
Edit: apparently lemmy is altering my links lol when I click the lemmy.world url it takes me to lemm.ee anyway. Let’s try this: https://lemm.ee/c/[email protected] and https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]
Edit2: Nope, you might have to copy and paste the links
https://lemm.ee/c/[email protected]0.comhttps://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]0.comThat bot below is pretty redundant now lol
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]