1: is lemmy good for macro blogging? Like how you’d use something like Tumblr or the like.
No. You’re looking for Mastodon/Sharkey/Misskey/Friendica or kbin for that! Lemmy is more the federated equivalent of a site like reddit.
2: when you create a community for yourself and post in it, does it reach other people or is it only if they actively search for it? Is it common here to create a community just for yourself to post blogs and the like? Can you even do that?
There is no such thing as a community for yourself. Every community is either visible to everyone, or you can lock it down to just people on the same instance as you. But you can’t ever make it just for you. You can make it so that no one else can post to it, but you can’t stop them reading it.
3: how does the federation thing work exactly? I’m from an instance that has downvotes disabled, so what happens when someone tries to downvote me?
Basically, the instance just ignores downvotes that it receives. Other instances don’t. So that means that the timeline you see will be different to the timeline someone on a different instance sees, because their timeline will factor in downvotes and yours won’t.
4: is lemmy safe from AI scrapping or nah?
Nothing that is publicly visible or searchable is safe from AI scraping.
Is this platform good for artists compared to something like mastodon, twitter, or bluesky?
Different things.
Lemmy is “reddit like”. Mastodon and Bluesky are “twitter like”. On lemmy, you subscribe to and follow communities. On mastodon, you subscribe to and follow users.
So it really depends on what you’re looking for.
5: is there search engine crawling on lemmy? Are all posts on here possible to show up in search engines or nah? How do things work on that front?
Yep, it can and is crawled. If you don’t want that, lemmy isn’t going to be great, as it’s impossible to avoid.
You do have more control over that on mastodon, as you can lock posts down to be more private, but even then, it’s imperfect.
6: how’s development? Is lemmy going to continue to build and improve or are things gonna stay as they are for the foreseeable future?
Active and ongoing, with a couple of competing alternatives that are also actively developed
7: how privacy friendly and secure is lemmy really? I’m guessing a lot better then reddit, but just curious.
Admins have full access to the database, and in theory, can pull out pretty much anything. Which is just the same as reddit. Your best bet for privacy is anonymity
8: are there normal people or communities here? From what I’m seeing all of lemmy seems primarily focused on politics and tech, am not seeing much beyond that.
Lots of meme communities too! It’s a size thing. Not as many lemmy users as there are reddit users, and the ones that are here tend to be more tech oriented.
No. You’re looking for Mastodon/Sharkey/Misskey/Friendica or kbin for that! Lemmy is more the federated equivalent of a site like reddit.
There is no such thing as a community for yourself. Every community is either visible to everyone, or you can lock it down to just people on the same instance as you. But you can’t ever make it just for you. You can make it so that no one else can post to it, but you can’t stop them reading it.
Basically, the instance just ignores downvotes that it receives. Other instances don’t. So that means that the timeline you see will be different to the timeline someone on a different instance sees, because their timeline will factor in downvotes and yours won’t.
Nothing that is publicly visible or searchable is safe from AI scraping.
Different things.
Lemmy is “reddit like”. Mastodon and Bluesky are “twitter like”. On lemmy, you subscribe to and follow communities. On mastodon, you subscribe to and follow users.
So it really depends on what you’re looking for.
Yep, it can and is crawled. If you don’t want that, lemmy isn’t going to be great, as it’s impossible to avoid.
You do have more control over that on mastodon, as you can lock posts down to be more private, but even then, it’s imperfect.
Active and ongoing, with a couple of competing alternatives that are also actively developed
Admins have full access to the database, and in theory, can pull out pretty much anything. Which is just the same as reddit. Your best bet for privacy is anonymity
Lots of meme communities too! It’s a size thing. Not as many lemmy users as there are reddit users, and the ones that are here tend to be more tech oriented.
Lots of queer communities our instance!
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