Here are some specific questions.

  • Are the upvotes and downvotes I make, private? If I report a comment, is my report private?

  • Can someone follow me across lemmy instances based on my username?

  • If I want to make a community, is there a reason I would choose one lemmy over another?

  • Are the powers of moderators similar to reddit’s?

  • Where can I find a list of most active lemmy instances?

  • Any other differences from reddit I should know about?

  • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
    0·
    4 months ago

    Are the upvotes and downvotes I make, private?

    no

    If I report a comment, is my report private?

    yes

    Can someone follow me across lemmy instances based on my username?

    yes

    If I want to make a community, is there a reason I would choose one lemmy over another?

    no

    Are the powers of moderators similar to reddit’s?

    somewhat, lemmy is still kind of new. mod abilities are being expanded.

    Where can I find a list of most active lemmy instances?

    https://fedidb.org/

    Any other differences from reddit I should know about?

    lemmy cannot use the ‘microblog’ part of the fediverse (tweeting, communicating to Mastodon)

    i use mbin for this reason. it can do both. https://moist.catsweat.com

    • Rooki@lemmy.worldM
      0·
      4 months ago

      If I report a comment, is my report private?

      No, this is because of already many abuses, the local admins / mods and the “origin” instance admins / mods can see your name.

      Are the powers of moderators similar to reddit’s?

      Much less but soon with sublinks aw lemmy compatible backend / ui it will become a lot better.

      Any other differences from reddit I should know about?

      Everything here is PUBLIC, because of federation many things gets federated everywhere even without you noticing sometimes.
      Everyone here is unpaid, so mods and admins are here equal instead of reddit admins beeing paid millions for beeing *ssholes.

      Here, if you dont like the admin of an instance you can somewhat easily swap to a different instance ( sh.itjust.works, lemmy.today … ), but be aware if you just went out with a “Bang”, like you trolled a lot and got permabanned you wont be welcome in the other instance because the admins are most of the time in good contact to each other, and warn for trolls or harassment.

      .world has some other types of software too, https://mastodon.world/ and https://sharkey.world/

    • cabbage@piefed.socialEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Nice overview but I’m not sure I completely agree with you on everything.

      If I want to make a community, is there a reason I would choose one lemmy over another?

      There’s absolutely good reason to choose instances wisely when making a community. Some instances defederate from others, and you want to make your community somewhere where you agree with the moderation policy. Also, it might be easier to immediately reach people on a larger instance.

      If you create your community on lemmy.ml, you might not reach everyone because some people and instances have blocked .ml due to different philosophies. If you make it on Beehaw, you’ll reach fewer people as they have a higher moderation standard than most, which could of course also be good for your community. Lemmy.world is more neutral in their moderation policy, but I’m sure there are pros and cons there as well.

      I like it when there are specific instances for specific niches, as it gives the community control over who to federate with. But of course, that’s not always possible.

      If I report a comment, is my report private?

      They’re not public at least. Few things on the Internet are truly private.