How does this federated forum / site work? - eviltoast

I migrated from reddit like a lot of folks. I’m using kbin.social, but it seems I can also see posts from people at places like lemmy.world. How many different instances are there? How does the federated model work? So far I like what I see, but I’m also just trying to understand how things are integrated here.

  • sauerkraus@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Instances are like subreddits where the mods are top level admins, and there is no central admin above them. Anyone who wants to create an instance can host their own server. Communities can be duplicated between instances so you could have dozens of c/gaming communities rather than a single community for a topic which stifles engagement a bit. The cost of hosting is paid by the admins of an instance or by donations. Sponsors and ads are not currently feasible.

    Unmoderated instances allow any new instance’s content to be displayed for their users.

    • 1chemistdown@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Instances are like Reddit, Twitter, instagram, etc. Each instance has certain rules that may vary from the parent they forked from (see beehaw vs Lemmy.ml). Those instances will then have a structure like subreddits, posts, comments, etc.

      Lemmy is similar to Reddit. Communities (c/*) are subreddits

      Mastodon is similar to twitter. Microblogs are tweets.

      Kbin combines Lemmy and Mastodon.