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

Thanks for the informative comment!

I apologize, I wasn't entirely clear in my first two questions. They adhere to background checks for work. I'll obviously have to spell out my whole username with @lemmy.world. But if someone who isn't as well versed would find multiple durd_s and many have posted or commented something that wouldn't be in good taste, this isn't good for me.
I'm not sure if I'd be allowed to explain what the fediverse is and how it works.

Registering my username on other instances is possible, but not very feasible as there are quite a few instances already, and I venture that more are created by the hour.

[–] Spzi@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

Oh, I see. I guess, similar to email, you have to trust that people can tell the difference between durd_@yourmail.com and durd_@othermail.scam.

You could also make it clear at work what your Lemmy account is, and that other accounts with possibly similar names aren't yours. I guess that's not feasible or wanted.

Or you could choose to use a completely different name on Lemmy.