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Questions about Lemmy (self.lemmyworld)

submitted 1 year ago by flenzil to c/lemmyworld

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Not sure if this is the right place for this, still getting used to lemmy! I'm a bit confused on some things and I'm hoping people can answer for me.

What happens to the communities/comments/accounts if a lemmy instance goes down? Do they just disappear?
Can people on other instances use your username? Could others tell which is which in comments/posts?
How can people afford to host an instance? Aren't there costs to hosting a server?
Is there anything stopping corporate interests hosting a lemmy? I fear that these corporate instances will be the only ones that can handle large traffic and we're just back to Reddit.
Can an instance go from fully federated to partially without telling it's users? How would they know?

Thank you for your answers!

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[–] flenzil 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for answering.

With the username thing. I've not yet seen any @ after anyone's name so far? It's just their username.
I guess the intention is to have like 1000 different instances each hosting a small number of users and being federated with each other?
I think centralisation is kind of human nature though. If there's a big walled garden that has all the content then people will keep joining. And what about an instance that's initially run well then later becomes walled. All the content could just be lost to those on other instances? That doesn't fill me with confidence about the longevity of a community.
It's pretty confusing that it's said to not worry too much about which instance to make your home instance but it actually seems to matter a lot since you could be accidentally part of a walled garden or a small server that is likely to disappear.

[–] rawrspace 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

you're right, the username isn't showing the domain for me. I have to click on the profile to see the full username. Maybe it was the web UI where I was seeing the extension. That would be an improvement.
yea I think the idea is to have a bunch of hosts
I agree, if this is going to work the popular communities need to spread out between many different instances.
I have seen that advice but I think it is somewhat important for the reasons you said.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Each account has a username and an optional display name. If the account has a display name, that's what you see. If the account doesn't have a display name, you see their username. If they are on the same instance as you, the instance is omitted from the username (in the UI, anyway).