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this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
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Lemmy is not one big application like reddit. Instead everyone can download Lemmy and host their own >instance<. Each instance can have their own users, their own communities/subs and admins.
Since Lemmy is part of the >fediverse<, it means that each Lemmy instance can interact with each other, and can even interact with other applications of the fediverse (like mastodon, which is more similar to twitter).
Because everyone can make their own Lemmy instance, it is also possible for bad faith actors to make one. They could create many accounts on their own instance, and try to mess with the other Lemmy instances by either posting a lot of comments, reporting a lot of content, or a number of other things. To prevent that from being an actual issue, each instance has the option to >defederate< other instances. (I am not 100% sure on the following so please correct me if I'm wrong) Defederating means that users of instance A cannot interact with the content or users of instance B, if instance A defederated instance B.
Since the performance of website is dependent on the instance you use, you can try to find another instance with less users and a more stable server. As long as it is not defederated by many other servers it will be effectively be the same experience as being on another instance.
Could I think of the federation as like nations giving each others' citizens a visa, or is that too off the mark to use as a metaphor?
I think it's too far off. It's more like countries joining European Union - they are still individual countries, but they share stuff with all other countries that are part of the union/federation.
I think the original analogy works better.
If an EU country goes rogue, other EU nations can't just isolate it and bar it's citizens from entry. There is no expulsion from the EU AFAIK. But Lemmy instances can block another instance fairly easily and unilaterally - like how nations can refuse visa to citizens of a rogue nation. And Lemmy instanced are expected to federate with most other instances, just like countries are expected to grant visas to most other countries - unlike joining the EU, which is a whole big process and all EU members have to agree (there are no vetoes in Lemmy federation).
But most importantly, the EU members are required to act as one in many circumstances - most laws apply across all EU members, EU negotiates trade deals as a block, etc. That is not true for Lemmy instances. Each is completely independent and makes its own laws - and must only comply with some very loose principles (which boil down to "don't be a total jerk") to not be isolated from other instances. This is much closer to the kind of independence countries have, than EU members.