Here are some specific questions.
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Are the upvotes and downvotes I make, private? If I report a comment, is my report private?
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Can someone follow me across lemmy instances based on my username?
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If I want to make a community, is there a reason I would choose one lemmy over another?
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Are the powers of moderators similar to reddit’s?
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Where can I find a list of most active lemmy instances?
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Any other differences from reddit I should know about?
Are the upvotes and downvotes I make, private?
no
If I report a comment, is my report private?
yes
Can someone follow me across lemmy instances based on my username?
yes
If I want to make a community, is there a reason I would choose one lemmy over another?
no
Are the powers of moderators similar to reddit’s?
somewhat, lemmy is still kind of new. mod abilities are being expanded.
Where can I find a list of most active lemmy instances?
Any other differences from reddit I should know about?
lemmy cannot use the ‘microblog’ part of the fediverse (tweeting, communicating to Mastodon)
i use mbin for this reason. it can do both. https://moist.catsweat.com
Nice overview but I’m not sure I completely agree with you on everything.
If I want to make a community, is there a reason I would choose one lemmy over another?
There’s absolutely good reason to choose instances wisely when making a community. Some instances defederate from others, and you want to make your community somewhere where you agree with the moderation policy. Also, it might be easier to immediately reach people on a larger instance.
If you create your community on lemmy.ml, you might not reach everyone because some people and instances have blocked .ml due to different philosophies. If you make it on Beehaw, you’ll reach fewer people as they have a higher moderation standard than most, which could of course also be good for your community. Lemmy.world is more neutral in their moderation policy, but I’m sure there are pros and cons there as well.
I like it when there are specific instances for specific niches, as it gives the community control over who to federate with. But of course, that’s not always possible.
If I report a comment, is my report private?
They’re not public at least. Few things on the Internet are truly private.
Some instances defederate from others, and you want to make your community somewhere where you agree with the moderation policy.
Is there a way to easily see which instances are defederated from others (or conversely which instances are connected)?
What does defederation imply? Feeds aren’t aggregated, or users are not allowed from the other instance?
Also one other major question. I thought lemmy was its own thing, but I guess it’s part of the Fediverse? The Fediverse is just a set of protocols? What is lemmy then?
What does defederation imply? Feeds aren’t aggregated, or users are not allowed from the other instance?
Iirc no activity from one instance is available on the other. No posts in their communities, no posts/comments from their users.
Also one other major question. I thought lemmy was its own thing, but I guess it’s part of the Fediverse? The Fediverse is just a set of protocols? What is lemmy then?
The fediverse is a group of social media platforms that use the active pub protocol to pass along user interactions between instances (servers run by different people).
Lemmy is the reddit of the fediverse, meaning posts in communities and comment in a trees structure.
Kbin is also the reddit of the fediverse, but with some less features (manly on the moderation side). Because they both use active pub in a reddit style they can easily interoperate.
Mastodon is the twitter of the fediverse meaning their content (mircoblogging) doesn’t fit the lemmy format but you will only sometimes see some posts like ‘If you can read this I have managed to post from mastodon to lemmy’.
Is there a way to easily see which instances are defederated from others (or conversely which instances are connected)?
To add to what others are saying, there is a list that may be helpful. Let me explain it a bit though.
The list below shows various Lemmy instances in a table. An instance can block another instances (this is what they control). The instance can be blocked by someone else (which they can’t control). Either way, a block is in place so the two cannot communicate.
The column header BL specifies how many instances they are blocking. The column header BB says how many instances are blocking them.
If they have a high BL, they likely do not want to federate with many other instances which can be a drawback. If they have a high BB, that instance is likely acting in such a poor manner that nobody wants to interact with them. Basically, you may want to reconsider instances which have an excessively high BL or BB.
Note that there are pretty bad places out there so having a BL of 0 can be an issue as well. A BB of 0 may indicate that an instance is very new so nobody really knows about them yet.
The list is sorted by how many users are at an instance. If the instance has a high amount of users, the service is likely a higher quality service that can grow over time. Small services aren’t bad per say but they may eventually disappear or overload if too many people join them.
Like most things, this is just more information to help guide you in your decision making. The best decision is one that you make on your own after you do your own research.
Anyway, the list is below.
https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances/blob/main/README.md#all-lemmy-instances
As an example, instances linked/blocked by feddit.uk:
If I report a comment, is my report private?
No, this is because of already many abuses, the local admins / mods and the “origin” instance admins / mods can see your name.
Are the powers of moderators similar to reddit’s?
Much less but soon with sublinks aw lemmy compatible backend / ui it will become a lot better.
Any other differences from reddit I should know about?
Everything here is PUBLIC, because of federation many things gets federated everywhere even without you noticing sometimes.
Everyone here is unpaid, so mods and admins are here equal instead of reddit admins beeing paid millions for beeing *ssholes.Here, if you dont like the admin of an instance you can somewhat easily swap to a different instance ( sh.itjust.works, lemmy.today … ), but be aware if you just went out with a “Bang”, like you trolled a lot and got permabanned you wont be welcome in the other instance because the admins are most of the time in good contact to each other, and warn for trolls or harassment.
.world has some other types of software too, https://mastodon.world/ and https://sharkey.world/
In an oversimplified way: when it comes to moderation, Lemmy is mostly like Reddit. The big difference is in the administration - each group of admins controls its own instance, with no group controlling the whole.
Where can I find a list of most active lemmy instances?
Here’s one. I’m linking this one because it allows you to look for communities (“subreddits”) too, not just instances, so it’s comfy to use.
If I want to make a community, is there a reason I would choose one lemmy over another?
Yes. For most of the time, it’s probably better to create the community in an instance focused on that topic, as people who like it will probably gather around that instance. So for example:
- programming stuff - programming.dev
- weaboo stuff - ani.social
- science stuff - mander.xyz
- furry stuff - pawb.social
Votes are semi-public. Not every instance makes them public, but anyone who is on an instance that does can see them.
Your comments and posts are public, I think your subscriptions as well, so if you need to protect yourself from harassment the remedy is just like reddit: have accounts that don’t overlap, one for politics, one for anime, one for whatever.
You should definitely only create a community on an instance where it fits. For example, a muni about fashion doesn’t belong on the the solarpunk instance, and a muni about ocean life doesn’t belong on midwest.social. Many instances are “general” instances, though.
Moderation here lacks the robust toolset of reddit, so it’s hard to compare them. But you can have posts and comment threads removed (lemmy removes whole threads, not just the parent comment); you can be banned from a muni or even a whole instance; but no one can ban you from all of lemmy. Unlike reddit, your home instance can be defederated, which is basically shadowbanning your entire server. Defederations and mod actions are public; other admin actions can be done stealthily by directly editing the database.
You don’t need an active “home” instance if you have a robust subscription list, honestly, because you can subscribe to munis on other instances.
Thanks. Is lemmy.world the best instance for general discussion?
In my opinion, the major difference between instances is moderation practices. There may also be technical aspects such as down time or frequency of updates that may affect your experience.
I find that lemmy.world has well balanced moderation. They don’t allow spam or abuse, and they’re not pushing an agenda.
It’s a good place to start.
We try to do our best in that. We try to keep us out of community matter. We know its YOUR community. Of course sometimes, it requires admin intervention but only if we see urgent matter, otherwise we want to talk to the mods first for their point of view.
We have a discord server for better communication too. https://discord.gg/TnqAFsdgy4 and a matrix space too: https://matrix.to/#/#space:lemmy.world
Good to know! Are there other Fediverse sites with different moderation practices? Like what’s an example of one with a VERY strict policy, and what’s an example of one with a very loose policy?
For example, beehaw.org is known for more strict moderation. It’s a very positive place in my opinion, but there’s a trade off that not as many different voices are tolerated. There are also some like lemmyNSFW.com that let users post/say whatever they want as long as it’s legal.
Cool. Can I ask you one more question? Can I comment on Beehaw (or lemmyNSFW, but I’m at work so not going there right now) using this account I have at lemmy.world? The reason I ask is, I see that I can comment on other lemmies (e.g. lemmy.ml) using this account, but only if I find them through lemmy.world’s communities|All tab. But I don’t see Beehaw there.
Or more basically, in general for another instance running Lemmy, how do I access it using this account at lemmy.world?
Thanks so much…
You cannot comment on Beehaw communities as they defederated from Lemmy.world. You can see that here: https://beehaw.org/instances
The fact that they are defederated means that no traffic is being sent between lemmy.world and beehaw: Users of one website are invisible to those on the other.
Beehaw defederated from lemmy.world as they struggled to keep up with the high number of users, not all of them good actors. As creating a friendly space is the top priority of Beehaw, they chose to prioritize friendliness over activity.
Yes. Any instances that are linked with your current instance basically become one—all communities, posts, and comments become intertwined into one big social network and you can interact freely. Behawshould be included so you probably haven’t come across a community hosted there yet. You can always see what instances are linked by going to the homepage of any Lemmy instance, scrolling to the bottom and clicking Instances
Can I comment on Beehaw (or lemmyNSFW, but I’m at work so not going there right now) using this account I have at lemmy.world?
Beehaw, no. They defederated from Lemmy.world. More information is at https://lemmy.world/post/145337 (iffy formatting) and https://beehaw.org/post/567170 (easier to read). A bit more information is also at https://lemmy.world/post/149743
LemmyNSFW, yes. The answer is yes for most instances.
Is also worth noting that it’s not just the moderation practices of your instance that affects your experience, it’s also how other instances perceive your instance. Hexbear, for example, is an instance filled with “tankies” and a lot of other fediverse instances don’t agree with them or their values and choose to defederate from them. So a Hexbear user, while they might personally like their own instance’s moderation and values, will not see any content from instances that have defederated with Hexbear, which could impact their experience enough that they’d rather move instance.
(Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a comment from a Hexbear user that I’ve loved. And I’ve definitely personally blocked several of their communities from showing in my feed.)
In the past, I know some instances defederated from lemmy.world because it was seen as kind of spammy. Some of them re-federated after lemmy.world tightened up its moderation, but I don’t know of all of them did. (I’m not a lemmy user so it doesn’t affect me personally and therefore I don’t keep too much track of it.)
Inter-instance politics aren’t necessarily a thing you need to be hyper-aware of, but they can definitely shape your experience.
Depends on what you’re looking for. Each instance has a general vibe of user, so while .world may be good for someone, .ml may be good for another, and beehaw.org may be good for another, and so forth! .world is generally a generalist instance, but ironically because people with more specific interests are already on more specified instances, .world is more likely to house people that don’t fit well into other servers, paradoxically creating a type and it’s own unique vibe.
Best is very subjective.
.world is a good general purpose instance for just about anything. I think it has the biggest population at the moment, so communities there are likely to get at least some engagement.
For “general discussion” it doesn’t really matter. The instances are federated so you’ll likely get general discussion in comments from lots of people from lots of instances anyway, wherever your community is based.
Some people get almost nationalistic about their chosen instances or have grudges against people from certain other instances. There’s sometimes inter-instance politics with some servers defederating with others or threatening to for various reasons. It’s kinda fun to watch in a popcorn drama kind of way. For the most part, the instance doesn’t matter.
No, probably mander.xyz. .world is plagued by bots and trolls and a lot of uses block it outright.
Votes are semi-public. Not every instance makes them public, but anyone who is on an instance that does can see them.
I thought it was the other way? If your home instance makes them public they can be seen by anyone otherwise only the home instance admins can
Others have already answered, so I’ll just add to it: the decentralized nature and lack of a profit motive help keep it from going downhill like Reddit did, but at the same time this nature attracts a lot of leftists and tech enthusiasts, so Lemmy overall definitely leans in that direction more than Reddit does.
No CEO that runs the show, but same biased moderators, so if you report a comment in a community where the mods agree with said comment- they’ll threaten to ban you if you don’t stop.
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moderators come under admins and that wasn’t a thing on reddit.
That is exactly how it was on reddit.
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But it was. It’s literally the exact same hierarchy of roles. So no, I don’t know what you mean.
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Every server is under the total control of it’s admin while moderators are self-assigned to communities by the users that created them. It’s literally the exact same structure as on reddit.
The only difference is that there only is a single reddit server with a single set of admins, while lemmy has many instances.
So yes, everything you mentioned is basically the same on both platforms. The only difference on lemmy being that when you piss off the admins and get banned you can go to another instance.
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Lemmy admins create rule structures for the same reason Reddit admins do, they are doing high level curation of the communities they want.
You’re right in that there isn’t the firewall between moderators and admins on Lemmy that there was on Reddit, but that was a choice that Reddit admins made, not a design difference between the two services.
A lot of people left reddit because of the way admins were inserting themselves into communities. There is a different dynamic here.
