Lurker refugee from reddit here. Being a network engineer, I'm somewhat tech-savvy. But I'm having a hard time getting to grips with lemmy, or I should say the fediverse. I understand that it's a bunch of servers/instances that connect/federate with each other. I also just learned or understood why I can't login with my user account from lemmy.world on lemm.ee. It's like email providers :)

But I've got a few questions that maybe someone who knows more about lemmy and the fediverse can answer.

What happens to accounts, communities and posts when its instance decides it's been a fun few months and decides to shut down?
Can someone register with my username on other instances, or is my username "taken" across the fediverse?
If so, how are spoofing and/or scams using my username but on a different instance handled?

I'm starting to understand that it's not my data that is federated, but only links to the data in other instances. Would that be a good understanding on how the federation technically works?
All my account data is located on my "home" instance, but in turn my posts are stored on the instance where I posted or commented and linked to all other federated instances.

I could try my 2nd question myself, but I don't like creating more accounts than what I need.

Thanks!

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[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Your data is federated as well, not only links, but your home instance is the only true copy and instructs other servers what they should do with your data. Which leads me to believe your posts and comments might not be gone when an instance shuts down. But your ability to login with your account is definitely gone.

[–] durd_@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Heh, conflicting information now from what @minnix@lemux.minnix.dev said :)
If my data is federated as well, why not also my login information? Allowing me to login on any instance I want with my regular user. Assuming that my home instance has instructed other instances (and they allow it?) to do so.

This would make me, and I'm sure more users, at ease with using closer, smaller, less popular and probably faster instances.

[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 1 points 1 year ago

Because your login information is not content, the ActivityPub protocol that's used for federation synchronizes content. If federation of login information would be possible, I could just create an instance, let it synchronize, and have everyone's login data (with hashed passwords, but it's much easier to crack locally stored passwords than on an online service). Also your pictures aren't federated, that's (probably) not to overwhelm other instances with huge amounts of data.