I’m new here. travelled all the way from reddit, I don’t get why i get browse remmy on different servers… do they all call the same api?

  • Talos@lemmy.world
    11·
    2 years ago

    Basically it works much like Reddit but there is no central server. It’s a collection of servers belonging to individuals. Your account lives on one of these individual servers, but you can view and post on other servers as well. This has the benefit of having no central authority to dictate what everyone should do, but the downside of being more fractured. For example, if you are into video games, server A might have a gaming community, and server B might have their own separate gaming community. Nothing is stopping you from subscribing to both, though.

    At the top you will have filters, Subscribed (the communities you are subbed to), Local (the communities on the server where your account is), and All (all communities across the servers that are federated with yours). I’ve been filtering by “All” and subscribing to the communities (subreddits) that I like, whether they are on my server or other servers. I’ve only been here since yesterday and I’ve joined ~25 communities so far.

    Traffic is light at the moment and I’ve often filtered by “New” to see the newer posts. I plan on doing some posting today to contribute. Time will tell if the Reddit blackout and people quitting Reddit will increase the traffic. I imagine they would all call the same API, but I’m not a coder.

    • scarrexxOP
      1·
      2 years ago

      so i guess basically a different server can have one feature that another doesn’t? Since they’re different client apps talking to different (or same) APIs?

      • sillypuddy
        3·
        2 years ago

        People tend to explain Lemmy using an email analogy.

        Lots of people can use email by signing up with different email hosts. You can send and receive email from anyone as long as both parties know each other’s email address. You can look at all of the email you receive by just logging into your account. When one person sends an email, the various email hosts route the email until it finally ends up in the receivers inbox.

        Lemmy is like that, except all of the Lemmy servers (instances) don’t communicate with an email protocol. They communicate with a special protocol that lets them talk about link aggregation stuff (posts submitted by users, comments, upvotes/downvotes , available communities, etc).

        It doesn’t matter which Lemmy instance you register on so long as all of the other Lemmy instances you’re interested in are connected and communicating (aka federated) with the Lemmy instance you’re registered with.

        Hope that helps!