Today is my three-week weekaversary from leaving Reddit. I've mainly had the same personality I've used on Reddit and so far no power hungry, Stalin-wannabe, unwashed genital moderator has banned me from participating. So either I'm doing something right or Reddit is a complete and utter shithole.
I got permanently banned for saying child molesters deserved to die. There's similar comments about all kinds of other people on that site but for some reason they want to protect child molesters from people saying mean things about them. I wonder why that could be...
This. I've had a Lemmy account for a while but reddit suspended me yesterday for calling someone stupid - after they made disparaging remarks about someone else. Their account was untouched. I know because I saw posts dated after my suspension.
I don't know if Lemmy will work out or not, but Reddit has proven they're not fit to moderate any significant portion of the web's content and I can't be bothered to consume and contribute in that environment any longer. I submitted an account deletion request with an extra slice of my mind on the matter.
Fuck extra careful, for me that was part of leaving Reddit way too much overzealousness when it came to moderation, plus Spez is a piece of shit
Think of Lemmy as Reddit the site that you browse, when you sign up to an instance it’s like you are on their personal website that just shows you the webpage so lemmy.world shows you the same Lemmy website that lemmy.ca shows you the only differences are you go by their rules/moderation on that instance, there is more to it but I’m just giving a basic picture of it when it comes to moderation and rules
You set up an account on lemmy.world read the sidebar, if the rules aren’t to your liking try another instance I like sh.itjust.works cuz they aren’t tight asses
Imagine you're at a convention or something similar. A huge building with lots of rooms, inside those rooms lots of tables, and at those tables, lots of people. You enter a room: At table A they are playing a board game, at table B they're discussing a rulebook, at table C they're in a heated argument about spaceships. You like it here, so you dump your backpack and jacket at one of the tables - this is your seat now.
But you're not confined to that room - you're free to wander the entire convention scene, regardless of which room you use as your "base", and other people are free to do the same. You can join discussions at any table in any room for as long as you like, and people who dumped their stuff into other rooms are free to visit yours.
The tables are communities ("subreddits"), the rooms are instances, and the building is the Federation. It doesn't matter much which "room"/instance you want to take as your base, since you'll have access to the same content in the entire building anyway.
The room / instance mostly doesn't matter for the site content, but might matter when something doesn't work as intended - if lemmy.world is down for maintenance for example, people are temporarily unable to access that instance, but can still browse the rest of the Federation. For the convention example, it's like someone dropped a bottle in the room and everyone has to stay outside for a while until the janitor has mopped it all up. You can still visit all tables in other rooms in the meantime, since a temporarily inaccessible room is no reason to shut down the entire convention.
Plus, if you're unhappy with your room for any reason, noone is stopping you from taking your backpack to a different room and find a new chair to leave it on. There is no limit on how often you can create new accounts on different instances if you like their site layout better (content is still the same tho) or something similar.
To compare it all to reddit: Reddit is a convention held inside a gym. Still a building full of tables, but they're technically all in the same room, so if something goes wrong inside that room, EVERYONE has to stay outside of the building, no matter where your seat is.
...at least that's how I understand it ;) I've been here for 2 months now, also ex-redditor. And yes, I've been super confused about it all for the first two weeks or so as well, but it gets better on its own the more you interact with the site. Support is super helpful and friendly, too.
So, you signed up on lemmy.world, I signed up on sh.itjust.works
But we're communicating with each other right now. That's the gist. Each instance is like its own mini reddit but they're all connected (for the most part).
I still don't really get it, but it doesn't really seem to affect me. I downloaded the Connect for Lemmy app, and started subscribing to groups and content appears on my screen.
I'm no power user, I just like to read stuff during smoke breaks and down time.
No, think of an instance like some guy is hosting the visual part of the website on his computer named lemmy.world another guy hosts the same website but it’s on his computer named lemmy.ca their computers their rules, if they shut down their computer or you don’t like how they moderate then you sign up to someone else’s computer to view the website
The subreddit would be on that guys individual computer you could make a subreddit called technology on lemmy.world but even though the guy with the lemmy.ca computer didn’t set up that subreddit you can still view it, it’s basically a portal to view everyone else’s Reddit
If you use an app they have ways of viewing all of Lemmy, All shows you all the “subreddits across everyone’s computers, local would just be the subreddits created on that computer that you signed up to, then subscribed would be subreddits you subscribed to.. technology on lemmy.world and just making one up but worldnews on lemmy.ca
Every instance is a different server with its own Lemmy, its own Communities("subreddits), and your Account is only on one Instance. But different Instances are federated to each other, so you can see all the content from these other federated instances, can interact with their communities, their users, can post and comment there and vice versa
I put that in the !vans@lemmy.world community I made, but to be honest that was from the r/vans subreddit from SamTheKing (mod). Always loved that rule. Simple and clear.
Right now don't worry too much about how things work behind the scenes. Just know that if you end up not liking how lemmy.world is run (for example, if you want piracy communities in your feed) you can go somewhere else and still access communities made on lemmy.world
Sometimes, but not always. Lemmy is forum software and each website that hosts it is an "instance" of the lemmy software. Some are general focus such as lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works. Others are more themed like lemdro.id and lemmy.studio
Ones with a a focus are just more likely to have communities (subreddits) based around that theme but you can still subscribe to !musicproduction@lemmy.studio from your account for example.
No, each instance is like its own reddit website with its own subreddits (aka communities). But because of how federation works, instances are interconnected so you can also browse content from other instances on the instance you signed up with.
No. Instance is like the full Reddit website, subreddits are communities here that are hosted in those instances. Check this comment, is very illustrative.
Admins have a lot of power, they're running the software and often paying for upfront server costs. The good thing is they only have power over their slice of the broader lemmy.
If you don't like how your admins run the instance you can just make an account on another. Account transferring isn't a thing yet but there are tools to transfer your subscriptions and blocks.