WontonSoup

I guess maybe the way to think about it is that each instance is like a "mini reddit" with its own content, admins, mods, userbase etc.

You still have access through your instance to any others that exist and can participate in those others as well. But, your home base is where you registered. At least thats my understanding so far

They are gone, just like normal forums, except for copies stored in instances federated to yours.

So once an instance is federated by another, those posts also live in the 2nd instance as sort of a backup?

Part of what I enjoyed about reddit was that I could find things that are 10 years old with a quick google search and still expect them to be there 10 years from now. If all this can go away at any moment, it sort of just feels like a chat room or something. Im not saying that is a bad thing, it just makes it difficult to build long term communities and a strong user base long term if its possible.

Do most people browse within their "local" or "all?" When browsing "all" I see some duplicate content from communities in other instances which I guess is to be expected. Again, not a bad thing - but if I have to search 15 other "news" to see discussion on something I am interested in, isnt that kind of cumbersome?

Enjoying the site so far, dont take my comments as criticism. Just doing my best to learn how to use this type of site and get the most out of it I can. Appreciate the replies from you all.

Appreciate the post. A fellow refugee with some questions..

So I have chosen Lemmy.world. I know I can browse cross instance and post wherever but I have some confusion with this too.

Each instance will have its own let’s say “news.” Some will be more popular than others of course but will likely have similar content. I then sub to “news” on whatever instance. But there’s still hundreds of other “news” out there with potentially different, but likely similar content. Isn’t this fragmentation bad for community?

Also, let’s say I am in instance xyz and that’s where I’ve registered my account. All of a sudden the admins no longer want to run things and shut it down. All those communities are gone? What happens to my user account?

I think federated content is great, but this is my first interaction with a service using it. Please help me understand what this ultimately looks like long term.

Edit: sorry this triple posted. I kept getting errors so I hit submit again… and then again. Deleted the duplicates