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If you build it, they will come... (welcome thread)
(lemmy.world)
..maybe. Welcome, UK (and worldwide) people and reddit deserters.
I'm here still trying to figure out how instances and communities differ.
I signed up on lemmy.world, which is the hosting instance for my account, right? And then I'm posting this in a thread in the CasualUK community.
But is this community just on lemmy.world, or across all instances?
I'm here. Took a few days as I stood up my own friendica instance first off and it took me a while to realize it doesn't play that well with Lemmy. So I've started my own Lemmy instance now, which was 300% harder than it should have been as the devs aren't keeping the documentation up to date with the config files.
Now that I've used the fediverse it's not as weird as it sounds. But the learning curve is steep and I'm only here thanks to perseverance.
I'm working it out too.
Lemmy.world is an instance - a server that hosts your account and any data.
UKCasual is a community, essentially a subreddit. Its stored solely on the Lemmy.world server
Whilst this community is stored on lemmy.world, if you're logged into another instance you can still see and interact with the UKCasual community, but data remains on lemmy.world
I'm not sure if there's a sync delay between instances etc
Okay. So if lemmy.world goes down then presumably all the communities it hosts also go down? This seems to present a bit of a logistical problem for community longevity. For example, a small instance that creates a popular community across all of the fediverse then has to try and support a large amount of traffic with possibly little local income/support?
I think this is why lemmy.ml has been asking people to stop signing up there. Centralising everything goes against the point of the Fediverse but also ends up costing the people running the instance a lot of money. It's best for everyone if we all spread out a bit.
My other account is on Beehaw.org and they're pretty transparent about what it's costing them and how many donations they've had, it's definitely interesting https://beehaw.org/post/416496
Is it beneficial to have accounts across multiple instances?
Nah, I just have two because I've historically split my online presence up into these two usernames. Tbh I've just subbed this one to all of the same communities as the other one so it's largely pointless until things spread out a bit more, but if I'm posting about videogames I tend to do it under this name and if I'm posting about cross stitch I tend to do it on the other one. Eurovision goes on both :D
No actual practical benefit beyond it just seeming tidier to me lol.