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!

  • pistachio
    1·
    1 year ago

    1. mostl yes. Other instances will cache copies of content from other instances that their users request, but afaik it’s a temporary copy. And you still won’t be able to migrate your account to another instance (at the moment; migration is a planned feature tho).

    2. yes, just like you can have username@outlook.com and username@gmail.com

    If a user posts in a lemmy.world community and they created their account in the lemmy.world instance, then you will only see their username, otherwise you will see username + “@lemmy.ml” for example (or whatever instance their account comes from).

    1. own money or donations

    2. no. This risk exists, but i think it’s minimal.

    3. idk