I checked this site out since Reddit is getting worse and the original 196 subreddit banned me without reason. What exactly is this website?
The official goal is for there to be 196 196s one glorious day.
Then some madman will demand 196 sets of 196 196’s. When will it end!?
That would just require one more.
There was some drama with the moderators of the original, which got locked then moved to lemmy.world, and then people made their onw here. There’s also a few alt 196 communities, there’s one on the tankie instance, and there’s a furry one too.
A furry one you say?
The original !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone mods started power tripping, so people made their own, with blackjack and hookers.
It’s like r/games and r/gaming, you know? Different communities, different moderators, same topic. Or rather, same rule.
Ah, okay! I think the biggest hurdle for me is what seems to be multiple domains? I’ve tried reading about the “fediverse,” but I can’t really wrap my head around it
Most people use the email analogy; the sub-lemmys are on different servers owned and moderated by different people, they just happen to use the same communication protocol. Similar to how you can email a hotmail, yahoo, or icloud account from a gmail account. And because they’re different servers people might have the same name, just differentiated by the server name. So you might see a MarySmith@gmail.com and a MarySmith@hotmail.com who aren’t the same person, they just happen to share a name.
It’s just like email (or Usenet on the chance you’re old) - you have an account on lemmy.world, you can only log in on lemmy.world, but you can read and reply to users and posts on fedia.io, mander.xyz, feddit.org, etc., et al
Ah, the domains / instances are simple:
Imagine that they’re houses. Your home is lemmy.world, my home is mander.xyz. We’re both visiting lemmy.blahaj.zone, and chatting together.
And just like your house can have a kitchen that’s completely separated from my house’s kitchen, two instances can have two separated versions of the same community.
Don’t think too hard about it. Join the ones that seem active, ignore the ones that seem dead. That’s really all there is to it.
With instances (domains) the content stays there until a user from another instance looks in on it, at that point the content is federated over on to their instance and it starts to spread…
At least that’s how I understand it, but I don’t really know all the technicalities to be honest
Anyone can run a copy (instance) of the software on a server and effectively create their own platform. These would be too small so the software allows sharing content with others (federating) if both consent.
It’s like lots of reddits, each can have the same subs. You can even spin up your own clone!
So, you’re on lemmy.world and I’m on lemmy.blahaj.zone. My login for Blahaj won’t work on lemmy.world, and yours for lemmy.world won’t work on Blahaj, because they’re two separate instances. An instance is a when someone has taken the freely available Lemmy software and hosts a site for others to join.
We can talk to each other because we’re both using Lemmy. We can also talk to people on Mastodon and few other sites that use the same method of sharing posts with each other (ActivityPub).
Different instances usually have different rules. What gets you banned on one instance may be fine on another; don’t worry too much about it and just choose a place you vibe with.
