This site is currently struggling to handle the amount of new users. I have already upgraded the server, but it will go down regardless if half of Reddit tries to join.
However Lemmy is federated software, meaning you can interact seamlessly with communities on other instances like beehaw.org or lemmy.one. The documentation explains in more detail how this works. Use the instance list to find one where you can register. Then use the Community Browser to find interesting communities. Paste the community url into the search field to follow it.
You can help other Reddit refugees by inviting them to the same Lemmy instance where you joined. This way we can spread the load across many different servers. And users with similar interests will end up together on the same instances. Others on the same instance can also automatically see posts from all the communities that you follow.
Edit: If you moderate a large subreddit, do not link your users directly to lemmy.ml in your announcements. That way the server will only go down sooner.
Because you want to rely on someone else's instance. The idiomatic solution would be for a community to host their own lemmy/activitypub instance and join the federation. Then the community has control over their own data. In every sense. If they want to delete something (for breaching law, protocol, or whatever), they are free to do so and don't have to ask anyone else.
Please no. I mean there is IPFS out there that somewhat works like that, but I don't really like that. First, the ever-growing amount of data means that every instance has to keep up with it. If they wouldn't replicate it, the deletion of a single instance would still eliminate the data, even if there were references in a block-chain.
Also: the ability to "forget" is important. Not everything needs to live on forever. That it currently does, can already be a big problem. Look how peoples lives got almost ruined because someone dug up tweets from 10 years ago that were stupid. Solving the issue of data ownership is IMO one of the bigger things we need to keep in mind when designing a better web. Federation with the ability to "just" bring your own instance along where you are the owner is one of these options.
This is how I am understanding it. Please correct me if I am wrong.
I'm going to use Reddit as an example, since we all understand that...
So the way I understand this is that backbone is now the whole of the internet instead of just reddit.com.
Each instance would be somewhat akin to a self-hosted subreddit. We can reach any sub from any other sub, since the backbone is now spread across the whole internet instead of just reddit.com.
These subs (instances) are also like old style BB forums in that there can be different categories (communities) hosted by that instance, but those are also still visible across other instances.
So basically people who are making communities here are making a sub in a sub (in Reddit terms).
Do I have that correct?
Mostly. I try to think of instance as not a subreddit but a loose collection of them, like a multireddit.
What is kind of nice, in my understanding, is that text content is replicated across federated instances when a user is using both. So if you're on beehaw and comment on lemmy.ml, both of these servers will have your comments. That's already providing slightly more redundancy than reddit.
Fair point, but my original point/issue still stands. The admin here is saying "lemmy.ml is overloaded, use other instances instead" and that advice isn't really helpful, at least in the present state of things. Right now, we have an influx of novice users coming in from Reddit, and other servers either not accepting applications at the moment, or they are tooniche/specific (or inflexible, like Beehaw); finally at the moment, majority of the content is on lemmy.ml. So the end result is that lemmy.ml is one of the main viable servers.
If people join some random server which doesn't have the content they're after, they'll either lose interest, OR they may continue to consume the content on emmy.ml via federation, but then that's not really going to solve the load issue since the content on lemmy.ml isn't distributed/replicated.
I understand your point of ever growing data and how it may be better if that data is transient and not there forever, but for a news aggregator and forum type social network like Reddit (and now Lemmy), data is everything. If that data isn't available, or not going to available in the future, or will not be visible to audiences due to it being on some random server, it's going to give content creators much incentive to create content, and no content == no users. This sort of model/thinking will be doomed to failure, or be forever relegated to niche/enthusiast status, where only niche communities will thrive on specific servers targeting that niche. Which I guess is the ultimate goal of federation where every topic/community has its own server? But to get there, you'll need interested users, and to get users to be interested you need a stable, singular place you can point them to, where they can post content knowing. And maybe, as that server grows, the admin could start splitting off the larger communities into their own individual instances?