this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
1127 points (91.5% liked)
Technology
59593 readers
3396 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
ELI5 federation on Lemmy
It uses a slightly different configuration than Mastodon but otherwise it behaves exactly the same. You can read and reply to Lemmy posts from Mastodon.
In the same way, you can block requests from certain servers (this is called defederating) so their users can't reply, follow or spam you.
So, I'm connected to a fancy computer called a server, and so are you, but we're connected to different servers. The reason we can still talk is that despite being on different servers run by different people, those people have made it so that the servers can share what I say with you, and what you say with me.
Federation is simply a fancy term for an agreement to share something. In this case, it's our text posts.
There are other kinds of federation, but that's not important to Lemmy. Since you asked specifically about Lemmy, I'll leave it at that.
You are on Lemmy.world. I am on Lemmy.ca. These are distinct websites but they use the same underlying service. Federating means that the two websites share their info - this let's us talk despite being on different websites.
You're on lemmy.world and I'm on programming.dev, but we can still see each others posts and interact with each other because lemmy.world and programming.dev are federated.
Well, you're commenting on a Mastodon post...