I’m in Lemmy.world, but I’ve seen there are others. Do I have to switch in between them (if so, how?) or is it fine the way I have it?
Thanks a lot.
Why are there multiple Lemmy websites lol. So confusing.
Same reason there are multiple phone companies. Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Google Fi, Cricket Wireless, Mint Mobile, etc.
They all allow you to communicate with your friends no matter what provider they use. But the companies are all slightly different. You might choose one due to better coverage, or customer support, or corporate ethics, or simply cause a friend recommended it.
Phones are redundant. So if Verizon fails, you can always sign up for another provider and still talk to your friends. Or if you have a bad experience, you’re not stuck using something you hate.
Plus, if one company ruled all of phones, it would be a bad thing. Monopolies aren’t good.
Lemmy isn’t the only thing out there with ‘multiple websites’ online. Email - there is more than just gmail, outlook, yahoo, proton, etc.
It’s not confusing to you that there are multiple email companies, that all work together, right? You don’t need a gmail account to send a message to a gmail user.
So don’t think it Lemmy like a website owned by one company. It’s not. Just like nobody owns “email”. Think of it like a protocol.
But I get it. Lemmy is an emerging technology. People are expecting it to be new Reddit. And it is on the front end. But it’s closer to new email.
Because Lemmy isn’t a website. It’s software that runs social content aggregation sites.
It’s like what WordPress is for blogs and other unidirectional content serving websites.
The fun thing is, though, that any website running Lemmy can share content posted to it with any other website running Lemmy.
It’s only confusing because corporate social media has taught us that “service = place”.
Copy/paste from a comment I happened to have submitted a few minutes ago.
From a functionality perspective there is no difference. I’m registered to a Dutch server with this account and can comment on all OPs that are visible to me.
The administrator of a server (domain or instance) can block other servers (domains or instances) however. So if Meta not only starts it’s own Twitter-like platform, but also it’s own Reddit-like platform, it could be that administrators block access to the Meta server.
The best example for Mastodon (which uses the same federation protocol as Lemmy) is the Truth Social platform on which former president Trump publishes his posts. The administrators of Truth Social blocked access to all other servers on the fediverse, so Truth Social doesn’t federate at all. And I presume administrators of many other servers block access to Truth Social.
So from that aspect, you might think through on what server you register. Might the administrator block access to certain servers? Do you want that or not? etc.
But you can also take location into consideration with regard to legal questions. I personally do not want to register on a server in certain countries if for example the GDPR is not enforceable.
You also have to keep in mind that openly federating forces instance admins to, on some level, moderate the content from other instances too. Lemmy.world was forced to block some instances because it was proving too hard to moderate the content from them. You should also consider this when choosing an instance.
If an administrator thinks it’s appropriate to block another instance, then who am I to complain if I use the instance free of charge except perhaps donations?
You’re completely right there can be such reasons for administrators to block other instances and that’s up to them.
Which, by the way, is also a great way to verify certain people. If a Lemmy account is registered on a server with a domain that is owned by a large broadcast company for example, it’s easy to check whether the user of that account is who that person claims to be.
The municipality of Amsterdam set up their own Mastodon server registered to amsterdam.nl, so it’s clear their Mastodon posts are genuinely from the municipality without any external verification schedule. If the mayor would want to post herself, she could simply get an account on that server and everybody knows it’s genuinely her.
I can see other instances but somehow I can’t subscribe or comment to a community from another instance beside .world? Idk.
If you’re using the web-ui, you can change the scope of your searches to include external results as well. You can subscribe to any community without leaving your home instance.
