The US has a federal government (federated states), which means that it has a group of states with a common government, but each state can otherwise run itself independently.
Likewise, a federated online platform is one that has a common protocol or database architecture, but runs on independent servers. Lemmy is like that. Your account is on kbin.social, mine is on lemmy.world, but we can both talk on a community that might be on yet a different instance. Our respective admins can decide a number of things about their instances, including which other instances are allowed/blocked, whether NSFW content is allowed, whether downvotes are shown, etc.
A federation is a group of states that have a central government but are mostly independent/autonomous in internal affairs, like the US.
Transfering this concept to the fediverse, each instance is independent of any other, anyone can create one and determine its oen rules. They all use a common framework though, like Lemmy, that allows them to share content.
2 Comments
AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 3y
The US has a federal government (federated states), which means that it has a group of states with a common government, but each state can otherwise run itself independently.
Likewise, a federated online platform is one that has a common protocol or database architecture, but runs on independent servers. Lemmy is like that. Your account is on kbin.social, mine is on lemmy.world, but we can both talk on a community that might be on yet a different instance. Our respective admins can decide a number of things about their instances, including which other instances are allowed/blocked, whether NSFW content is allowed, whether downvotes are shown, etc.
Lemvi@lemmy.sdf.org · 1 pts · 3y
A federation is a group of states that have a central government but are mostly independent/autonomous in internal affairs, like the US.
Transfering this concept to the fediverse, each instance is independent of any other, anyone can create one and determine its oen rules. They all use a common framework though, like Lemmy, that allows them to share content.