For starters, Lemmy – which uses open source ActivityPub protocols – is decentralized and comprised of thousands of independently-run servers, so it’s theoretically impossible to take down Lemmy completely. If lemmy.world goes down today and never comes back, the “Lemmy” network will still be online because of the other servers like lemmy.zip and sh.itjust.works that use Lemmy server software (which is currently at version .19 or around there).
Worth nothing: Lemmy is part of the Fediverse, which is an umbrella term to describe all ActivityPub software types. Yes, other software packages also use ActivityPub protocols to communicate… for example, Kbin (the “main” site is kbin.social, it’s sorta like their lemmy.world) is a news aggregator like Lemmy and interacts with Lemmy almost seamlessly. There’s also Mastodon, a Twitter-like service that currently Kbin users can interact with (but not Lemmy).
In short: it’s kinda complex at the moment, and many parts of the Fediverse (which Lemmy belongs to) don’t interact with each other directly because they provide different services, but it’s important to note that it’s really hard to take it down completely because the Fediverse is independently owned and run by different people in different parts of the world. Contrast with Reddit, a service that does have many servers but is owned and run by a single company in America.
Edit: I was wrong, Mastodon users can post on Lemmy instances, but Lemmy users can’t post on Mastodon instances. Thanks Baku@aussie.zone for the info!
There’s also Mastodon, a Twitter-like service that currently Kbin users can interact with (but not Lemmy).
They can interact with us though, and then we can interact back. We can’t really “post” there, but if a mastodonian makes a post in a Lemmy community, us lemmings can see it, and then we can reply to them. But we can’t do twitter style posts on their forum
The biggest telltale sign you’re talking to a mastodonian rather than a lemming is that you’ll see them @ everybody in the entire thread in every single reply, since that’s how replies start on twitter and mastodon. I’ve never actually received a notification for the @'s, I think it’s functionally closer to just linking to your user profile than an actual mention, but once you get deep in a thread you’ll see every comment starting with 60 different @'s.
It might actually be an idea to treat your own profile like a community, isn’t that something that reddit had too? Like you could post to r/importantcommunity or to u/goodusername
Yeah, my last post on Reddit was actually to my profile redirecting people here. Don’t think we have that here yet, although it could be useful.
I never really saw it used for anything useful though, it was primarily used for spam in my experience. But it would probably improve compatibility between us and mastodonians
For starters, Lemmy – which uses open source ActivityPub protocols – is decentralized and comprised of thousands of independently-run servers, so it’s theoretically impossible to take down Lemmy completely. If lemmy.world goes down today and never comes back, the “Lemmy” network will still be online because of the other servers like lemmy.zip and sh.itjust.works that use Lemmy server software (which is currently at version .19 or around there).
Worth nothing: Lemmy is part of the Fediverse, which is an umbrella term to describe all ActivityPub software types. Yes, other software packages also use ActivityPub protocols to communicate… for example, Kbin (the “main” site is kbin.social, it’s sorta like their lemmy.world) is a news aggregator like Lemmy and interacts with Lemmy almost seamlessly. There’s also Mastodon, a Twitter-like service that currently Kbin users can interact with (but not Lemmy).
In short: it’s kinda complex at the moment, and many parts of the Fediverse (which Lemmy belongs to) don’t interact with each other directly because they provide different services, but it’s important to note that it’s really hard to take it down completely because the Fediverse is independently owned and run by different people in different parts of the world. Contrast with Reddit, a service that does have many servers but is owned and run by a single company in America.
Edit: I was wrong, Mastodon users can post on Lemmy instances, but Lemmy users can’t post on Mastodon instances. Thanks Baku@aussie.zone for the info!
They can interact with us though, and then we can interact back. We can’t really “post” there, but if a mastodonian makes a post in a Lemmy community, us lemmings can see it, and then we can reply to them. But we can’t do twitter style posts on their forum
The biggest telltale sign you’re talking to a mastodonian rather than a lemming is that you’ll see them @ everybody in the entire thread in every single reply, since that’s how replies start on twitter and mastodon. I’ve never actually received a notification for the @'s, I think it’s functionally closer to just linking to your user profile than an actual mention, but once you get deep in a thread you’ll see every comment starting with 60 different @'s.
It might actually be an idea to treat your own profile like a community, isn’t that something that reddit had too? Like you could post to r/importantcommunity or to u/goodusername
Yeah, my last post on Reddit was actually to my profile redirecting people here. Don’t think we have that here yet, although it could be useful.
I never really saw it used for anything useful though, it was primarily used for spam in my experience. But it would probably improve compatibility between us and mastodonians
Ah ok, I didn’t know they could post here, that’s really cool. Thanks for the correction!
No worries! Here’s an example of a post by a mastodon user on a Lemmy community (another telltale sign is that virtually no lemmings use hashtags):
https://aussie.zone/post/7464977
And one of those deep mention comment threads (though I’ve seen deeper):
https://aussie.zone/comment/4629969
There isn’t a Lemmy network, there’s just ActivityPub or more colloquially the Fediverse :)