Not sure if this is the right place for this, still getting used to lemmy! I’m a bit confused on some things and I’m hoping people can answer for me.

  • What happens to the communities/comments/accounts if a lemmy instance goes down? Do they just disappear?

  • Can people on other instances use your username? Could others tell which is which in comments/posts?

  • How can people afford to host an instance? Aren’t there costs to hosting a server?

  • Is there anything stopping corporate interests hosting a lemmy? I fear that these corporate instances will be the only ones that can handle large traffic and we’re just back to Reddit.

  • Can an instance go from fully federated to partially without telling it’s users? How would they know?

Thank you for your answers!

  • heeplr@feddit.de
    5·
    2 years ago

    I fear that these corporate instances will be the only ones that can handle large traffic and we’re just back to Reddit.

    you can imagine lemmy federation like e-mail. While there is GoogleMail or other large providers that serve a gazillion users, they don’t own the whole e-mail infrastructure.

    Changing your e-mail provider (and thus the address) is always a hassle, more or less. But it’s perfectly doable.