If an account is created on any specific server, like !Lemmy.world does that mean if the server does shut down, the account data is lost?
Also for username availability, could we create an account in a different server where the name is not used yet?
Yes and yes.
Your user “exists” on the instance you registered on. Think of it as creating a user on gmail, and a user on yahoo mail. Two separate users tied to each mail service. If yahoo mail were to shut down, all your messages in yahoo mail would be gone. Any messages you sent to gmail would still exist in gmail though. So, any posts or comments you had made outside your instance (on other instances) would still exist. You just wouldn’t be able to log in as that user anymore.
If the account user name you want is taken on lemmy.ml, you can sign up on lemmy.world or beehaw.org or some other instance, then browse from there. Keep in mind, that even if your “account profile” name is taken, you can still set your display name in settings to what you wanted.
I feel like it makes it easier for someone to mimic/impersonate another user. How do you know if that user is the actual user? I know you can open their profile but it’d be inconvenient especially in an active conversation.
This could lead to misunderstanding and even security risks.
You know what? You are absolutely right! Nothing is stopping someone from using the exact same display name, and posting a response as if they were the original poster. Hmm… 🤔
Don’t worry guys I checked it out it’s the same slashzero 😉
The one and only!
Thank you for a great response. +1 Lemmeducation
You are welcome! Glad I could help!
These are great questions. I have the same about communities: if I create “Funny” on this Lemmy.world, does that prevent someone from creating a “Funny” community on another Lemmy server? If it does not, will there be millions of “Funny” communities?
I asked this yesterday and the answer is that yes, there will eventually be the same communities onany servers and you would have to seek each one out and join it.
Yikes. How would any community get any real consolidation or aggregation? I don’t want to have to know where to find the popular community of “Funny” lives ya know?
Agreed. Lemmy needs “multireddits.” Currently it’s design is both a blessing and a curse - if one community goes toxic, it’s easy to find and join a rival community in another instance - that’s the blessing. But the segregation between similar communities is also the curse that you’ve described. Plus, if a popular instance goes dark, there goes that community. Multis would help alleviate both issues.
I didn’t realize that if a server goes dark so does it’s data. We will need archival tools for this. If the content can’t be counted on, the platform will not become viable.
My understanding on this is yes there will be multiples in some cases. But you could subscribe to all of them. (I personally don’t think there will ever be a million funny’s as it a pretty broad title.) If you want this community you should make it! I’ll join!
One case I see this being a good thing could be regional stuff. Like say a community based on a local eSports league, you wouldn’t have to worry about all the other leagues taking the good names. You just name it eSports and people from your city join your eSports community if they wish.
It really is small(ish) community focused, instead of Reddit’s massive communities.
I understand that those may be beneficial, but I struggle to see any “aggregation” happening when every server can have every duplicate of every community. Think of how much disinformation will exist from bots creating duplicate communities from large lemmy servers on small lemmy servers then posting what’s NOT the community creators desired content. It’s difficult enough to moderate a community without having to explain that lemmy.world’s “funny” community is different and doesn’t contain the same content as “funny” on a different server. This is not aggregation.
Does seem easy to add tho right? A setting that says, any community with the same name get added together, kind of like multi-reddits. Instead of multi-reddit (science+art) It could be (Funny+Epicfunny+…)
Also going back to regional stuff, users could have language or regional specifics:
Funny+EpicFunny+GermanFunny Funny+EpicFunny+CanadianFunny Maybe us Canadians have different humor that doesn’t translate. Lemmy can be more focused.
Good point about abuse from bots, but that’s where running your own community comes in
Again though, you’re leaving the aggregation up to the user. They would have to know of the existence of those other communities to even add them via multi style. To my knowledge we weren’t looking for more focused, we were looking for an aggregation platform like Reddit without the monetization of our content and moderation efforts.
How could you know how the feature will come out, if it even does? We are early days here. The multis could be created by mods or other users who enjoy that type of stuff.
I think we got to try to be optimistic and help create what we want here.
What do you think I’m trying to do by discussing it? If the core of the platform is not that of an aggregator, then it’s not designed to be a replacement to Reddit. That is fine of course, but it’s not what I’m looking for and lemmy shouldn’t say it’s a replacement Reddit when it’s a billion tiny scaled down versions of Reddit where you don’t have any concentration of the users.
True. I’m not sure anyone said it’s a replacement. The furthest i’d go is saying it has the potential to be as good. Down the road from here.
If we have good posters and good communities. It will at the very least be something cool 🙂
Similar, but different question, all these Lemmys different? For example is there one primary Lemmy or all they all different with possibility duplicate communities?
Duplicate communities. Nothing is the primary. Everyone can run their own server.
Every Lemmy instance I’ve seen has a technology community for example.
Commenting as I have been wondering the same
If a server shuts down suddenly, all access to the accounts on that server is lost. The caches of user profiles, posts and comments on federated instances may remain.
Hey @ruud@lemmy.world, do you have any input on this? (Thank you for lemmy.world btw 🙃)
Hi! If a server shuts down, all accounts are gone. Same as with any Fediverse server.
For lemmy.world (as for mastodon.world) I make sure I have
- backups in a remote datacenter
- more than 1 admin
- people with access to stuff like domain name/dns/hosting etc. just in case… > this last is to be arranged but am working on it.
- my promise that if I ever get tired of running the servers, I will look for good replacement admins.
Fantastic, thank you for taking the time to put our minds at ease!
