Welcome to the fediverse!
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.
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I still haven't quite figured out how this works but here is a comment from a completely unrelated instance!
It works like email. All instances talk in the background between each other.
Okay so expanding this analogy, I can email anyone including myself (posting to my own instance), and everyone can reply all at any time? Or am I slightly off?
No that's correct. Slight deviation from email is that email is unicast - you send email to one person (and if you have multiple recepients it gets copied that many times). On lemmy the code on instances does something more like a optimized broadcast when you post to your own instance when someone is subscribed to a community on your instance.
@sting here's me trying to figure out how activity pub works. https://beehaw.org/comment/188913.
The entire thread that follows is very useful for understanding how this works, in a simple way.
Edit: markdown wasn't working.
I joined just a few hours ago so I might be somewhat off, but the way I think about it is: every instance is a server with its own set of communities and moderation rules. You can create an account on any instance but can interact with communities in that and in other instances. That is why you will see communities such as gaming in more than one instance. Is this close enough?
Hello from The Outpost! 👋
You good, fam.
Hey! 👋
Oh that’s cool, I knew I could read from remote communities but didn’t know I can make new posts on them too
It's all combined. Different instances have their own rules and communities, but you can interact with all of them.