I’m still wrapping my head around things so someone please correct me if I’ve got the wrong idea. But here’s how i see it:
It’s kinda similar to the “United States” being a large group of individual self contained entities (states/servers) with their own rules and resources while all being interconnected. You can live in New York (join lemmy.ml) and be fully part of the US (lemmy as a whole) and are totally free to travel to California (lemmy.world) in a car/airplane (whatever frontend/app you prefer) and hang out and participate there.
Instances can also decide to exclude themselves/other instances if they don’t agree with the rest of the group (Texas wanting to secede, the US wanting to chop off Florida into the gulf of mexico… sorry FL, only kidding, we love you)
If you feel like New York is too crowded, too much traffic on the roads, you can choose to live in Maine (a smaller less populated instance) instead and still be part of the group.
You can even dump a bunch of soil into the ocean and create your own state (hosting your own server) that can participate with the others, or choose to isolate yourself from the world and only allow participation on your island (North Korea?)
Apologies for the america-centric reply but it’s where i live and what I’m familiar with.
I’m still wrapping my head around things so someone please correct me if I’ve got the wrong idea. But here’s how i see it:
It’s kinda similar to the “United States” being a large group of individual self contained entities (states/servers) with their own rules and resources while all being interconnected. You can live in New York (join lemmy.ml) and be fully part of the US (lemmy as a whole) and are totally free to travel to California (lemmy.world) in a car/airplane (whatever frontend/app you prefer) and hang out and participate there.
Instances can also decide to exclude themselves/other instances if they don’t agree with the rest of the group (Texas wanting to secede, the US wanting to chop off Florida into the gulf of mexico… sorry FL, only kidding, we love you)
If you feel like New York is too crowded, too much traffic on the roads, you can choose to live in Maine (a smaller less populated instance) instead and still be part of the group.
You can even dump a bunch of soil into the ocean and create your own state (hosting your own server) that can participate with the others, or choose to isolate yourself from the world and only allow participation on your island (North Korea?)
Apologies for the america-centric reply but it’s where i live and what I’m familiar with.