I think it can continue even without the source server? Like, once I press the Reply button on this comment, it gets saved to my instance (lemmings.world) then it lets all the other instances know, including lemmy.world (where the community is hosted) and slrpnk.net where you are registered.
Now let’s say lemmy.world stops existing, my instance still would let all the other instances it federates with know, meaning you could read my reply on a community that basically no longer exists. Though I’m pretty sure there are downsides to that (like, what if all the mods were from lemmy.world? There’s no admin who can add a new mod).
At least that’s what I think it works like.
meaning you could read my reply on a community that basically no longer exists
oh really? does it actually work this way? if lemmy.world dies, can all its communities continue to live on as long as there are lemmy instances out there federated and subscribed?
No. You would only ever be interacting with a snapshot-at-the-time-of-death of the community on your local instance only. It is the home instance of the community that federates all events, not the instance of the originating post/comment/vote/whathaveyou.
Ah, ok. So if lemmy.world dies, but !somecommunity@lemmy.world was federated to 2 different other instances, those instances wouldn’t be able to “talk to each other”? They’d just have snapshots that they could locally interact with, but never see anything else? So is the fate of the Lemmyverse a graveyard of communities from dead instances?
