Lemmy as a whole is not a central service like Reddit is, it’s an open protocol and standard with open source servers and clients that anyone can set up.

In that regard it’s a lot like email or http. Like those protocols, no one can own it or control it. If you leave your email provider you are not locked out of email, you can switch to another provider and still communicate with any email address from any server. Same with http. You can leave your host registrar and you can still connect to other servers and provide a website over DNS. You cannot be locked out, it’s just an agreement on how to communicate between distributed entities.

Lemmy is that but for forums. At the end of the day, Reddit was just a streamlined url sharing focused forum that reached critical mass at scale. Forums have always existed in the internet but they’ve typically started small because they were siloed communities. On Lemmy each instance is like a forum, but unlike standard forums, each instance can communicate and aggregate content (federate) with other instances.

So unlike Reddit, you don’t just join one centralized monopolist service, you choose a home instance to create an account on. This is less user friendly because before you can participate you need to make a choice of which instance to join, but as the recent drama has made crystal clear, centralized monopolies lead to corruption. Yes you have to decide, but, you GET to device, and that choice is power so no one instance can take over. You can always switch to another one.

Instances provide 3 primary functions. Accounts, communities, and aggregation. Accounts are like email. You aren’t just username like on a centralized service, you’re username@server like in email, so you have your choice of server. Like email, accounts can communicate anywhere, the instance provides authentication for users under their namespace and posts can go to any other instance.

Communities are like forums or subreddits, but they exist under the namespace and tutalage of an instance. This does mean you can have the same name and topic under multiple instances, but it also means no community can have a monopoly on that name which on Reddit has lead to abuses of power.

Aggregation is like the front page or feed or for you pages of various social networks and instances has control of what other instances they federate with. This is essentially how moderation can work cross instance. Instances are responsible for providing a safe and pleasant feed to their users and can choose to only aggregate content from other instances that have good moderation policies.

The centralization on Reddit allowed it to be streamlined and that streamlining was a big part of its success, but it was also what enabled the abuses of power, not just by the admins but by certain mods as well. Lemmy is not as streamlined, but I think Reddit’s actions illustrate not only why it’s necessary, but also why it’s worth it.

It’s still very early days with Lemmy so it’s still kinda a wild west. It’s very much like the early days of email where there were tons of random and sketchy email providers and it wasn’t clear which providers were best. But unlike email there’s very little lock in. Switching emails is a big pain. You need to change your accounts, update contacts, and set up forwarding. Personally, I don’t have a big attachment to my account, if I need to switch instances it’s not a big deal to me. It’s also unclear on how communities distinguish themselves and build reputation. But all these issues will be worked out over time and I think having a social network that is decentralized and open, that belongs to all of us, is worth it.