One thing I’m not clear about is the impact my home instance has on me. I joined lemmy.world and am currently using the connect for lemmy app. I know when I sort by Local it will only show me posts from lemmy.world, but beyond that are there any things to keep in mind?
I have read that lemmy.world has been hit by DDoS attacks but I’ve never had any problem using connect for Lemmy during those times as far as I know.
I appreciate the explanation, and I understand exactly what you’re saying. My confusion though is that it doesn’t match what I’m seeing. I’m using the Voyager web app if that makes a difference.
An example: I can see posts and comments at gaming@beehaw.org from lemmy.world. So I don’t see a wasteland. I just see a smaller number of and different posts, compared to looking at the same sub from beehaw.org. It’s the same place, looking at the sidebar. Just that different content appears to be available depending on the home location gaming viewed from.
Could it be that what I’m seeing from lemmy.world are just the crossposts (if such a thing exists here)? And perhaps comments from non-beehaw.org users? That’s why it’s not total empty, just reduced?
Also: when an instance defederates, is that from everywhere or just selected instances? For example, what you’re saying is that beehaw is blocking lemmy.world but not other smaller instances. And so I should sign up at a smaller non-blocked instance which will then see everything …?
those comments and votes and are all from lemmy.world users though, what you are seeing is like lemmy.world users posting to that community and talking in their own little bubble that will never get seen outside of lemmy.world because it never will reach beehaw and distribute to other beehaw subscribers outside of the beehaw
Got it. Thanks for explaining!
To kind of answer one of my own questions after rereading all the comments here, defederation seems to be per-instance, not from everywhere.
So picking a smaller, well run, non-controversial instance for you account can be an advantage, as you should be connected to everywhere.
The risk seems to be that smaller instances have a higher risk of shutting down unexpectedly and/or not being as well maintained (updates, security etc).