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.
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Is each instance like another person with a server?
Yeah. I would assume that most, if not all, open instances are going through a 3rd party hosting service, but nothing stopping them from being hosted on hardware in somebodies home.
Could that person just shut it down whenever they wanted to?
Yup. Anytime and for any reason. It might cause a moment of disruption, but the beauty of federation is that you can always setup an account on a new instance or create your own.
Are there any companies that have invested in hosting Lemmy/ other fediverse servers?
Yes. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Facebook federating their Threads services. I’m sure that there are others.
Thanks, helps a lot!
If an instance is closed, would everyone’s accounts and posts on there be lost?
Accounts, yes. Posts, not necessarily. I joined during the great Reddexodus, when the influx caused several instances to go down temporarily. What I recall happening was the communities that were mirrored to other instances still had accessible posts and comments, but they were essentially frozen? Like you couldn’t contribute any more to them without the host instance coming back online.
I think the way it works is if you are the first to subscribe to a community from a non-local instance, its content gets synced to yours, which adds some resilience in case that the remote instance goes down. At least that’s my impression of how it works.
Is frustrating on a new instance though when you have to wait for the content to appear though, lol
Not lost, but inactive / isolated. As I understand it, when a user on insurance A subscribes to a community, votes, or comments on a community on instance B, that content is copied to insurance A and the two instances will sync their changes together. If instance B shuts down or the two instances defederate, then the content on instance A stays intact, but it no longer syncs with the source of truth.
Okay, so does that mean you could potentially protect your own account from an instance being shutdown by making sure to subscribe to communities in other instances?
Yes, but they would be separate accounts (comments, subscribed y communities, messages, etc). I have an account on lemm.ee and lemmy.world which I actively use. It can get a bit annoying making sure that I stay subscribed to the same communities on both, but it’s also nice to get different feeds.
Another option would be to stand up your own closed instance, so your account is the only one. That way storage and bandwidth should be minimal enough that you can host at home and also have full control over settings on your instance.
So I could set up a private instance on, say, a pi and then never be at risk of losing my account? (Particularly interested in things like subscribed communities and saved posts)
In theory, yes. In practice, probably not? I don’t run an instance so I don’t know what resources you need but I suspect a pi isn’t going to be powerful enough. You’d definitely have to hook up some extra storage space at least.
You’d also still be at risk of losing your account if your hardware fails, you’d need a backup solution there too.
A pi is definitely powerful enough, the Lemmy software is super lightweight, but you’d definitely need the extra storage.
I think this is a little too glib about instances shutting down. If this happened it would lose not only my subscription list but also many of my favorite communities. It would take quite a bit of work to reconstruct what was lost.
You can export the list of subscribed communities in 0.19.
If you do that every now and then a shutdown would still hurt. As all the communities hosted on it would be lost but at least you can import your subscription list on another server.
Oh I should do that, thanks for the tip. That said, I think the loss of communities is the bigger issue.
Hopefully major instances if and when they shut down would communicate this well in advance to allow for an orderly migration.
Is each instance like another person with a server?
I just wanted to add, any computer with an internet connection can host a web page! A desktop, a laptop, anything. That’s how the internet all started, as a collection on interconnected computers sharing data. I think many people nowadays forget this or even never knew about it (including me), since we live in a world where people spend all their time at like only a dozen websites. (Google, Instagram, Wikipedia…)
I have a public “webserver” in my basement. It’s just some random computer hosting some photos for family members. And it’s all completely free, I don’t pay anything to do it. I could easily pop an instance of Lemmy on it too.
The biggest hurdles in setting up a server from home are needing some technical knowledge, and a free domain name / URL usually looks a little silly (unless you pay for one), and getting hacked is a very real threat unless you pay close attention to security.
What about static IP address?
I don’t have a static IP address. I use a free dynamic DNS service.
Many ways around that these days. Dynamic DNS, CloudFlare tunnels, tailscale funnel, reverse SSH tunnels, etc
My setup uses a reverse proxy hosted on a free Oracle VPS that feeds through tailscale VPN, so it doesn’t really matter where the devices are connected, as long as they are connected to the tailscale VPN, the reverse proxy on the vps can serve the stuff
I run Plex and about 30 other things including my own website through it all without any issues
Dynamic DNS is what you need if you don’t have a static IP.
Family home server gang represent
If you created a Lemmy server, then you would be the owner of that particular instance, and yet another node in the fediverse. It’s not owned by anyone, really. The entire point of activitypub is that it’s entirely agnostic.
Of course the servers are ownes by someone, what are you talking about? The thing is just that not all servers belong to one entity. So lemmy couldn’t be turned off because one person decides so.
I think you misunderstood the person above you. The servers are owned by someone, but the Fediverse as a whole isn’t. You’re both saying the same thing ☺️
Ahh I see. Guess I was too hung up on OP’s question. Thanks for clearing that up
Is each instance like another person with a server?
Individual person, group of people, nonprofit, company, governments, political parties, whatever. Anything goes.
Could that person just shut it down whenever they wanted to?
Yes. That’s why it’s advisable to join one with a dedicated group of committed individuals, or run your own. Joining super small servers might sound nice, but the owners might just ditch it.
Are there any companies that have invested in hosting Lemmy/ other fediverse servers?
There are some run by companies, yes, for example social.bbc which is run by the British Broadcasting Corporation. gruene.social is run by the Greens (political party) in Germany, and social.overheid.nl is operated by the Dutch government.
There will probably be some company-run instances that don’t allow user signup, since all they do is feredate with everyone and exfiltrate data. It’s what people do…
What do you mean by the company-run instances? Like for internal communication?
No, I mean companies that have only one objective - gather user data. Advertisers, marketing agencies, AI language models, corporates. If they federate with other instances, they essentially copy all posts and messages (including private messages!) over to their own server, and can then run it through data analytics software for whatever use case they have, try to match your user profile to other advertiser profiles they already have on you, etc.
And there’s nothing you can do about it, that’s simply how a decentralized network works. Every node in the system can see all the data and use it as they see fit.
And there’s nothing you can do about it, that’s simply how a decentralized network works.
It’s also how the internet works, and you wouldn’t need to set up an instance to scrape the data from lemmy.
True, what I mean is that federation removes the need for scraping since the data is delivered to you in its purest form.
Yeah API access is more efficient for the host than delivering the human-viewable content. Hence why Twitter and others always used to have their API open, so they could minimise the load from scraping.
I’m of the impression that only the origin and destination servers see any given private message, but I haven’t verified this. Anyway, don’t expect them to be really private. I’d worry more about reddit since pm exchanges there can be intensely private, there is a single evil corporation saving them all, and the user population is mostly oblivious to that.
When I’ve had something private to discuss with a reddit user, I’ve asked them to switch to email. They are sometimes willing but not always.
Signal messenger allows you to set up user handles since the latest beta, and they can be discarded and changed at any time, that’s great for privacy.
I’m of the impression that only the origin and destination servers see any given private message, but I haven’t verified this.
It’s a bit more than that, when a client connects to lemmy they connect to all instances with displayed media. This includes thumbnails. Even inside a post, you’ll connect to every user’s instance to get their profile thumbnail. This could be quite exploitable, as the federated instance is always the user’s instance, not the instance of the community they post in - it would be possible for someone to fish for IP’s by setting up their own instance and posting on a popular community.
/u/[email protected] is making a new UI that apparently handles all these calls a different way, without connecting everywhere. It’s still a work in progress (you can’t comment there yet) but it looks promising.
Thanks. Lemmy’s privacy story is actually kind of bad. Like if you read a post, the instance retains that fact, to support features like “show unread posts”. But that means not only is your posting history public, but your reading history can potentially be exposed.
That’s the main reason I sometimes think of running my own instance. It would receive all the posts from every community without revealing which of them I bothered looking at.
Could someone set up a private multi-user instance? I’m imagining like an instance with just a few friends, where you share content from other instances but noone can see what is shared there except the people invited in.
Yes, that should be fairly easy and I sometimes think of doing it.
Didn’t think about DMs. Can’t they keep a private key for you in your home instance and then encrypt all DMs to external users with their public key which the home instance makes available for that user?
I guess they might, but right now, they don’t.
Each instance is its own server/website but the servers talk to each other.
People and companies can both host their own instances though I am not aware of any servers owned by businesses.If someone shut down an instance all the posts that have already been federated will still be on the other servers that instance has connected to but there will be no new posts.
The Fediverse in general does have instances owned by companies like how Mozzilla has its own Mastodon server.
I also think the Owners of wordpress also showed interest in the fediverse though I am not sure if they went anywhere with that.This comment is an example of federation since I am from kbin.social but you are from lemmy.world yet I can see your post and comment on it.
Meta are also starting their own ActivityPub platform, Threads.
The strength of the fediverse is that it’s a whole network of individually owned servers. The weakness of the fediverse is that it’s a whole network of individually ownwed servers.
it’s a strength because you don’t rely on large companies and are closer from the internet as it was designed with a decentralized network of equal importances server rather than a few big one. Which limits the power of the people owning the server and let having diverse moderation policies (e.g. I am all in letting a space for far righter mocking left-winter on Lemmygrad, but I am glad my instance doesn’t federate with them)
It’s a weakness, because the person running the instance may-close it tomorrow, many instance relies on someone spare ressources in time/infrastructure/money, some would accept donations,some are run by larger non profit (which also rely on donation, but have a legal structure to take them). It also means that they don’t have the legal ressource to know the exact limit between legal and illegal leading to critic about their moderation closing community about topic like piracy Thread
the cool thing is that even if an instance closes, migration is fairly easy, so the impact is limited. It can be frustrating, I remember the closing of a large forum where I was involved in the large 00’s which was quite frustrating for contributors (It was like a server crash followed by a corrupted backup, shit happens)
Note also that proprietary social media do close too, remember when google closed plus or wave ? or when yahoo close yahoogroups ? it’s not like being owned by a large company means it’ll be open forever (look at US trying to ban tik tok)
Ah Plus… I liked Plus.
If only Google had made it available to more people sooner rather than having that dumb invite system.
I genuinely think they could have wiped FB out. Whether Google are any better is another question of course.
Google could have also made a competent messaging service to compete with iMessage but just… Didn’t until like 2019
I actually used google’s chat to talk with my family for a while, like 2010s I think. Everyone thought it was weird though, I only used it because my parents did 😂
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With the fediverse, Don’t forget the government’s that have started up their own mastodon instances, and larger news orgs like bbc
More than the developers of Lemmy, you’re putting your trust in the instance owner/admin. Even if the site says “v0.19.3” at the bottom, there could be any code put in there by the server admin. This can be for better or worse, for example in lemm.ee the admin has frequently included code improvements that have made this instance more resilient than others. I’m not aware of any instance including malicious exploits, but in theory this would be possible. If one was caught doing this it would likely be defederated by others.
Is each instance like another person with a server?
Yes. However the instance admin and server admin might be different people. The server admin is probably also an instance admin, but some people might only be instance admin.
Could that person just shut it down whenever they wanted to?
Yes, the server admin has complete control. Instance admin have control within the instance, they can remove just about everything but they can’t quite flip a switch and turn it off.
Are there any companies that have invested in hosting Lemmy/ other fediverse servers?
Facebook/Meta came in with Threads, but most instances refused to federate with them. I think the BBC also set up a Mastadon instance, they ran a trial which has either been extended or made permanent. There may be others, but the whole point of federation is that anyone can make an instance, be they private individuals or corporations. The big downside is that any instance then becomes another place to remove your content from - but really this is true of any website, which might be scraped by a 3rd party.
Is each instance like another person with a server?
Yes.
Could that person just shut it down whenever they wanted to?
Yes.
Are there any companies that have invested in hosting Lemmy/ other fediverse servers?
Idk, they’d be very niche.
Sorry I’m sure I messed up some of the terminology, I hope my questions make sense!
Nah, you pretty much nailed it.
Lemmy, and a lot of the fediverse, functions very similarly to email. Gmail can send emails to Proton even though they’re hosted by two completely separate companies. A post/comment/vote/interaction is like an email in that a copy of every interaction is sent to every federated instance, like emails sent to recipients. This creates a lot of redundancy and traffic between instances, which has its pros and cons.
The email comparison helps a lot. I imagine the redundancy would help potentially safeguard the system when one instance goes down, but maybe is ecologically more wasteful?
Why you do!
https://elest.io/open-source/lemmy
Or rather, we all do.
I hosted an instance during the rexxodus when I thought more people would come over and I used elest to host it. When it didn’t catch on I moved over to world.
Some people also host a ‘single person’ instance so that they are in control of who they are federated with.
Single person instance hoster here! I love that I know what service I’m interacting with, I control what that instance does and chooses who to federated with, and I’m unlikely to get defederated due to some other idiots bad comments or brigading.
Users are like coffee drinkers and servers are like decentralized coffee shops that talk to each other (“federate”). Anyone can open a coffee shop and many do. It’s harder and more expensive than simply drinking coffee, but not that bad in the scheme of things, and within reach of average hobbyists with time on their hands and a few bucks to spend.
If the instance stays small, it’s cheap to run. If it gets popular, you can ask users for donations and volunteer help. Lemmy.world is the current biggest, and stays afloat that way.
Right now there’s not much corporate presence, but that may change soon, unfortunately.
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.
like recently the piracy community was removed due to concern over possible legal hassles
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/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.comhttps://lemmy.world/c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.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]
Could that person just shut it down whenever they wanted to?
it would mean shutting down that one particular instance only, all of the other instances would still be trucking along – whereas if the service-formerly-known-as-Twitter shuts down, everything on there is completely gone
in the case of Mastodon instances, if you get a heads-up that something is happening, you can migrate your account (and posts) to another instance – AFAIK that’s still in the works for Lemmy
Pretty sure account migration is now in Lemmy also.
It would depend on the instance.
There’s a lot of self-hosting enthusiasts here so I would assume at least some are owned by the instance admins themselves. But I would also guess some others use a 3rd party service and technically do not own the server they rent.
If I was to host my own instance, I would end up renting something because I don’t have the UP speed to really run a webserver on my home internet. Nor the capacity on my one computer to handle any storage for people to do anything.
each domain is hosted by individual groups. lemmy.world lemmy.ml sh.itjust.works individually managed and ran.
In simple terms, each individual server sends and receives content from all of the others and displays it to you. You can interact with lemmy.ml via lemmy.world, for example.
Any individual server could shutdown however content has been shared (federated) to other servers (instances) and stored so depending on content retention, it’s still available.
You can also run a server yourself.
Usually, servers are referred to as instances.
There are types in the fediverse, such as mastodon. Content is shared between them but displayed differently
In terms of commercial interest, facebook wants to eventually federate with their threads app.
Everything else is opensource and community funded, I believe
So cool! Thanks for clarifying some of the terminology for me as well.
