I’ve signed up to lemmy.world don’t know what an instance is or why it might be important to sign up to something different. Want to help as much as possible.
Please educate me!
Here is my simple understanding of things: (please correct me if I’m wrong)
lemmy.world is an instance of lemmy and it is connected to most other instances of lemmy.
Instances that are connected can see post and comments of each other.
However the host of a niche instance can adjust the connection, e.g. make the instance read-only for other instances. General purpose instances (like lemmy.world) usually don’t do that.
tldr: A lemmy instance is like a reddit. So there are many “reddits” now and most of them talk to each other creating one super reddit a.k.a. lemmy.
The best analogy I’ve seen is “think of your lemmy instance as your email provider”. Your account “lives” in your home instance, but no matter which instance you are you can see content and interact with all instances that are connected.
Since the instance you are doesn’t matter much, people recommend spreading simply to avoid overloading one instance with too many users.
Email analogy is good to explain the systems architecture, but it still doesn’t communicate ethics of proper use (decentralization). Just look how many people have gmail or outlook as their mail account.
I’ve signed up to lemmy.world don’t know what an instance is or why it might be important to sign up to something different. Want to help as much as possible. Please educate me!
Here is my simple understanding of things: (please correct me if I’m wrong)
lemmy.world is an instance of lemmy and it is connected to most other instances of lemmy.
Instances that are connected can see post and comments of each other.
However the host of a niche instance can adjust the connection, e.g. make the instance read-only for other instances. General purpose instances (like lemmy.world) usually don’t do that.
tldr: A lemmy instance is like a reddit. So there are many “reddits” now and most of them talk to each other creating one super reddit a.k.a. lemmy.
The best analogy I’ve seen is “think of your lemmy instance as your email provider”. Your account “lives” in your home instance, but no matter which instance you are you can see content and interact with all instances that are connected.
Since the instance you are doesn’t matter much, people recommend spreading simply to avoid overloading one instance with too many users.
Email analogy is good to explain the systems architecture, but it still doesn’t communicate ethics of proper use (decentralization). Just look how many people have gmail or outlook as their mail account.