Ask Lemmy

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A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

6) No US Politics.

Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online

7) No Hit-and-Run questions.

Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

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How does this platform work? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by bluedeepeye@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

49 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm new to this platform. Fed up with reddit and its moderators.

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[–] mrmaplebar@fedia.io 9 points 2 months ago

Similar to Reddit:

Navigate to a website (for example, "lemmy.world") and register an account.
Search for communities to follow based on your specific interests.
Check back later and watch posts appear in your home feed from the communities you follow.
Bonus points for posting and commenting!

Different from Reddit:

It's not a single website. You're on "lemmy.world", I'm on "fedia.io". Each site houses its own users and content, but cross-site communication happens almost seamlessly. (For example, even though I'm logged into a different site, I can easily read and comment on your post.)
It's not a single software. You're looking at Lemmy, I'm looking at Mbin, and other people might be looking at Piefed or something else. Moreover, I understand there are also custom UIs and apps to create even more options. This doesn't matter too much, but over time you might explore the different options and form a preference for the way some software works.
Under the hood, all of this happens thanks to a protocol called "ActivityPub", which allows all of these servers and software to communicate with each other. You don't need to care about this.
A good analogy for all this is email... If you have a gmail account and your friend has a protonmail account, your accounts and data will be stored on different servers, and your email inboxes will look different and have different features. BUT, because all email services use a shared communication protocol, you can still email your friend! This works exactly like that.

Bottom Line...

It can take a while to wrap your mind around this stuff, but the bottom line is that this is essentially infinite-reddit.

Don't like the moderators of a certain community? Make a new community on whatever server you want!

Don't like the admins of a certain server? Fire up a whole new server!

Don't like the way Lemmy works or looks? Use an alternative GUI or give a server running Mbin or Piefed a try!

This is part of the "fediverse", and it represents a new form of social media that puts the community in control, instead of corporations or billionaires.