How does lemmy differ from reddit?

BothsidesistFraud@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 86 points –

Here are some specific questions.

  • Are the upvotes and downvotes I make, private? If I report a comment, is my report private?

  • Can someone follow me across lemmy instances based on my username?

  • If I want to make a community, is there a reason I would choose one lemmy over another?

  • Are the powers of moderators similar to reddit's?

  • Where can I find a list of most active lemmy instances?

  • Any other differences from reddit I should know about?

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Good to know! Are there other Fediverse sites with different moderation practices? Like what's an example of one with a VERY strict policy, and what's an example of one with a very loose policy?

For example, beehaw.org is known for more strict moderation. It's a very positive place in my opinion, but there's a trade off that not as many different voices are tolerated. There are also some like lemmyNSFW.com that let users post/say whatever they want as long as it's legal.

Cool. Can I ask you one more question? Can I comment on Beehaw (or lemmyNSFW, but I'm at work so not going there right now) using this account I have at lemmy.world? The reason I ask is, I see that I can comment on other lemmies (e.g. lemmy.ml) using this account, but only if I find them through lemmy.world's communities|All tab. But I don't see Beehaw there.

Or more basically, in general for another instance running Lemmy, how do I access it using this account at lemmy.world?

Thanks so much...

You cannot comment on Beehaw communities as they defederated from Lemmy.world. You can see that here: https://beehaw.org/instances

The fact that they are defederated means that no traffic is being sent between lemmy.world and beehaw: Users of one website are invisible to those on the other.

Beehaw defederated from lemmy.world as they struggled to keep up with the high number of users, not all of them good actors. As creating a friendly space is the top priority of Beehaw, they chose to prioritize friendliness over activity.

Yes. Any instances that are linked with your current instance basically become one—all communities, posts, and comments become intertwined into one big social network and you can interact freely. Behawshould be included so you probably haven’t come across a community hosted there yet. You can always see what instances are linked by going to the homepage of any Lemmy instance, scrolling to the bottom and clicking Instances

Is also worth noting that it's not just the moderation practices of your instance that affects your experience, it's also how other instances perceive your instance. Hexbear, for example, is an instance filled with "tankies" and a lot of other fediverse instances don't agree with them or their values and choose to defederate from them. So a Hexbear user, while they might personally like their own instance's moderation and values, will not see any content from instances that have defederated with Hexbear, which could impact their experience enough that they'd rather move instance.

(Personally, I don't think I've ever seen a comment from a Hexbear user that I've loved. And I've definitely personally blocked several of their communities from showing in my feed.)

In the past, I know some instances defederated from lemmy.world because it was seen as kind of spammy. Some of them re-federated after lemmy.world tightened up its moderation, but I don't know of all of them did. (I'm not a lemmy user so it doesn't affect me personally and therefore I don't keep too much track of it.)

Inter-instance politics aren't necessarily a thing you need to be hyper-aware of, but they can definitely shape your experience.