this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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General Discussion

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Welcome to Lemmy.World General!

This is a community for general discussion where you can get your bearings in the fediverse. Discuss topics & ask questions that don't seem to fit in any other community, or don't have an active community yet.


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Remember, Lemmy World rules also apply here.0. See: Rules for Users.

  1. No bigotry: including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
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[–] ramplay@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago

Whereas you signed up on lemmy.world, I signed up on lemmy.ca.

Our accounts live on these different instances of the same platform.

Someone else may have an account on sh.itjust.works.

Each of these instances can have communities (subreddit equivalent). Through federation (essentially agreement to talk with eachother). We (account holders on different instances) can interact, post and comment anywhere on these and other federated instances.

In a weird way, these instances are an adhoc load balancer since I am using resources primarily from lemmy.ca and you are using resources from lemmy.world. This last piece is most relevant to the potential issue stated. A good load balancer, balances the load efficiently and effectively. If everyone made an account on lemmy.world it would get an uneven share of the load and struggle to keep its infrastructure alive or scaled well. Additionally, it goes against the decentralized nature of federated instances.

Now please take this all with a grain of salt, I have been here since july 1 and so am taking the rough concept I've learned and tried to explain it. Likely missing critical technical details and the analogies may be imperfect. :)