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this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2026
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New to Lemmy
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Did you just join Lemmy? This community is for you!
Do you want to help new users around? Then this community is for also you!
Thank you all for being here, it makes a big difference
FAQ
- You don't have to post here, but it's fun!
- You don't have to post right away, come back later if you want
- You can post as many times as you want
I don't know what to post
- Share what you're looking for, or what you want to do. We'll help you find it
- Ask questions! The Fediverse is new to most people. If you're unsure about something, others are unsure as well.
- Just smile and wave, maybe someone will wave back ๐
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I'm sorta new here myself so I might not get all this right, but decentralized is what it sounds like; Lemmy as a whole is not hosted by one central person/company. Instead, each Lemmy server (instance?) is hosted by a different person or group, so if lemmy.world ever gets shut down you'll still be able to use all the other servers like Lemmy.zip or Lemmy.ml.
The fediverse, short for federated universe, encompasses all software that uses the ActivityPub protocol (I think) so Lemmy is only part of the fediverse. Mastodon is also part of the fediverse, although it is more similar to Twitter rather than Reddit, and since both Lemmy and Mastodon are part of the fediverse they can view and post content to each other. I don't understand the cross communication aspect well so if someone else knows I would be happy to hear.
Thanks
Sorry I wasn't being clear!
It's a bit like email. If Lemmy is Yahoo Mail, Piefed might be mailbox.com or whatever. They can talk to each other, but they're not the same platform. So unlike Redditors who are all on the site, the people you'll talk to here are scattered all over a bunch of different websites.
That's why the user names look like emails - mine being @cabbage@piefed.social because I use PieFed.
It doesn't really matter much in practice as a user so I didn't want to get technical about it, but it's part of the reason why you won't see the phrase "lemmings" as much as "redditors". :)