Not much really, just that your admins are the admins of redd.that. They can block other instances and ban users if they choose to. You have a choice of different instances. Some will block porn, some will ban users who hold certain political views. But you have the choice at least of which to join.

As to why: it means nobody owns Lemmy. Nobody can ever just ruin the whole place like Spez did Reddit. That's what we mean by "decentralized".

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Also worth noting that you can sign up to multiple instances too. You aren't beholden to your admins in the same way that you are over a barrel at other social media websites with a single account. Your browser and all of the apps support multiple accounts out of the box.

It's honestly superior once you are used to it. I'm looking forward to the day we have federated ID to go along with it too without having to spin up a whole instance yourself.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This whole thing takes me right back to wild west internet days, or the first steps for Blockchain.

It's exciting to see what the community decides is best, and I'm looking forward to seeing if this takes off or at least becomes as natural to me (and others) as R*ddit was.

A lot of things I need to learn and un-learn.

Thanks for your insight - small comments like this are really helping me get my bearings here. 💚

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It is a lot like the origin of the www where much of the best content were personal web sites. The technology got so complex that running your own website wasn't very practical for most people anymore and so they moved to platforms like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. I think we are at a point where enough people are starting to realize that having all content controlled by a for-profit company ends up being very bad for users and the fediverse is about building tools that allow individuals and communities to take back control of their own content.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Well I'll definitely raise a glass to a new tomorrow! And here's hoping this is a first step in getting us out from under the thrall of for-profit organisations more broadly

[–] can 3 points 1 year ago

Apps also make it great. Lift off for example let's me sign in to both of my accounts and use them seemlessly. Like if a beehaw community appears in my feed I can comment from my acct there without switching anything.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

First of all, it has one big difference: What types of communities you see when you browse the "Local" communities (on most apps or web UIs it's gonna be a setting at the top). "Local" shows you threads posted in communities that are on your instance; "All" shows you the whole network, similar to /r/all on reddit; and "Subscribed" shows you only the communities you're interested in, similar to the main page on reddit. It makes sense to switch this setting to All for the time being, and to see what's going on everywhere else and which communities develop; to Local when you get confused, e.g. with lots of posts in languages you don't speak or lots of duplicate posts; and to Subscribed once things have settled down and once you have found your communities that you're interested in (and other stuff that you're not interested in becomes more and more on the All feed).

There's some eceptions when the "linked instances" structure does make a difference:

during heavy development (like in the early stages right now), federation might break here and there (for example right now between some servers using on older version of the Lemmy backend and those that already updated). also, there's probably gonna be multiple similar communities on various instances (nearly every instance has a "main" community and a "Lemmy discussion/reddit bashing" community). this will all settle down with time, federation in general will be more stable, and "main" communities will develop, with smaller alternative ones spread around that can take over if the main one is taken offline.
when instances decide to "defederate" from each other. this is a conscious decision by the admins (standard setting is to share everything with everybody else, but specific instances can be added to a blocklist). this means their content doesn't show up on your instance, and users from those instances can't interact with one another anymore. this happens at the moment with lots of NSFW instances and the more tame ones, but once moderation tools are improved, it will settle as well.

Quick tips: Don't be too stressed about "missing" content on other instances, right now it's still early days and a bit chaotic. And do consider making multiple accounts on other instances, and checking out what's different. the apps that are being developed right now make switching between multiple accounts easy, and one day will hopefully bring bookmarks and comments across multiple accounts together as well. Shop around for different instances and apps and see what's out there,, read people's recommendations, try and find instance and community lists. And in general, don't see your current account as the only way you'll interact with the Lemmy network (just as alt accounts were a thing on Reddit), and don't expect the network to serve you everything on a golden platter, you'll have to do some hunting around for the cool things, a bit like in the internet days before Web 2.0 happened – but that's half the fun!

[–] can 5 points 1 year ago

It's spez-proof

If I don't like how my instance is run I can jump ship to another, or even make my own, and still interact with the same communities.