We are happy to see that many of you are exploring Lemmy after Reddit announced changes to its API policy. I maintain this project alongside @dessalines@lemmy.ml.
Lemmy is similar to Reddit in many ways, but there is also a major difference: Its not only a single website, but consists of many different websites which are interconnected through federation. This is achieved with the ActivityPub protocol which is also used by Mastodon. It means that you can sign up on any Lemmy instance to interact with users and communities on other instances. The project website has a list of instances which all have their own rules and administrators. We recommend that you sign up on one of them, to avoid overt centralization on lemmy.ml.
Another difference compared to Reddit is that Lemmy is open source, and not funded by any company. For this reason it relies on volunteer work to make the project better, whether it's programming, design, documentation, translating, reporting issues or others. See the contributing guide to get started. You can also donate to support development.
We also recommend that you read the documentation. It explains how Lemmy works and how to setup your own Lemmy instance. Running an instance gives you full control over the rules and moderation, and prevents us developers from having any influence. Especially large communities that want to use Lemmy should host their own instance, because existing Lemmy instances would easily be overwhelmed by a large number of new users.
Enjoy your time here! If you have any questions, feel free to ask below or in the Matrix chat.
How do communities work across instances? Among other things, can a community have a moderator on another server? Would the top mod need to be on the same server?
Basically, a user on any lemmy instance can subscribe to a group on any lemmy instance (as long as the instance admin hasn't blocked the other instance). So then they see activity on that group on their home instance.
Moderators are appointed by the sub creator, and they can come from any instance. But of course, an instance admin can block/ban/delete content from their own instance, even if they aren't a moderator. The difference is, the moderators moderation action will federate to other instances, but the instance admins will not.
Unless the admin and community are on the same instance, then admin actions will federate. Not so easy to explain...
Does a log of it federate, or does the action itself federate?
That is to say, if a user on my instance makes a post, and it federates to lemmy.ml, and a lemmy.ml instance admin deletes it, does the original get deleted from my instance?
That depends entirely on the community where the post was made. If the community is on lemmy.ml, then the deletion federates to all other instances (including yours I think). Otherwise, if a lemmy.ml admin deletes a post in a remote community, that action isnt federated at all. At least thats how it should work, might be worth testing to confirm.
Awesome. That's how it feels like it should work to me as an instance admin
No, that wouldn't happen.
Mods can be on any server. A community is on a server, i.e. community a !a@server1.tld and !a@server2.tld are two different communities. You could follow one, none or both.
From the user perspective, communities work pretty seamlessly. Hi from szmer.info for example!
Among other things, can a community have a moderator on another server?
Would the top mod need to be on the same server?
Yes
No