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ELI5 Reddit to Lemmy (sh.itjust.works)

What is an instance? what is a federation? what is a server? can someone please describe in simple terms how this all runs and how we as users navigate it?

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ActivityPub is used for more than just Reddit-likes. Mastodon has a similar micro-blogging format to Twitter, and PeerTube is similar in function to Youtube. There are alternatives to Facebook and I believe Snapchat as well.

You can kind of think of it like email--there is no central email.inc that all emails go through; gmail and protonmail and icloud and compuserve and hotmail and whatnot are all different servers that are capable of using the internet to find each other and send messages back and forth.

How all this runs.

You sign up for an account on an instance, say lemmy.world. This is your local instance; your local instance will handle all of the data going to and from you. If you create a community, it will be stored on your local instance. You may notice that instance addresses look a little like email addresses, ie !nostupidquestions@lemmy.world. That notes which instance that particular community is on. If you don't see an instance name appended, it's on your local instance.

When viewing lists of posts or communities, you are given an option to search for Subscribed, Local, and All. Subscribed will show you only communities you have subscribed to, it's like your Reddit home feed. Local will show you only posts or communities made to your local instance. All will show you posts or communities from across the Fediverse. You can subscribe to, post and comment on communities from other instances, like I am doing now (my local instance is sh.itjust.works, I am posting to lemmy.world). It looks and works just like posting to my home instance.

A major difference users of Lemmy/the Fediverse should keep in mind: Reddit had platform-wide rules of conduct, which individual subreddits were allowed to expand upon. Lemmy does not have central admins or owners like u/spez to enforce platform-wide policy; those general rules come from the admins of each individual instance, which community moderators may add to. So rules and norms can vary between each instance, and when posting on an instance that isn't your own, it's a good idea to read the sidebar of that instance's homepage to review them.

[-] Lui@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thank you so much for the breakdown. I’m gonna reference back to this a lot while i try to wrap my head around this new space. I’m grateful for everyone’s informative replies and your guys’ good-spirited attitude towards reddit transplants like myself.

I was a long time reddit lurker but I feel compelled to post and it’s responses like yours that made me feel comfortable doing so.

TLDR: Thank you so much to everyone who broke it down for me. I’m having lots of fun in this space because of y’all and I am so excited to continue contributing to it.

[-] Kangaru@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Great explanation, thanks!

[-] wildcelt@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Thank you for your thorough explanation, I get it now!

[-] moisttoast34@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

That does clear it up some ty

[-] Nighed@sffa.community 3 points 1 year ago

When you visit other instances through your home instance there is a delay/difference though as I assume your home instance has to get info from the remote instance before it can show it to you?

Or is that just because my account is on a tiny instance and I'm the first one visiting a lot of the communities?

[-] T156@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

When you visit other instances through your home instance there is a delay/difference though as I assume your home instance has to get info from the remote instance before it can show it to you?

Yes, but it helps if someone else on your home instance has subscribed before, since it would already have that information.

Or is that just because my account is on a tiny instance and I'm the first one visiting a lot of the communities?

Also probably this.

[-] trouser_mouse@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

This is awesome!

this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
192 points (97.1% liked)

No Stupid Questions

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No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



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Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



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Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



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That's it.



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Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



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Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



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