While I understand the concept of federation I’m unclear as to what it actually entails at a technical level. When lemm.ee eventually shuts down, will all of that user content (posts, comments, votes, etc) cease to exist? Is it mirrored on other instances?
They will still be visible to federated instances as they have a local copy. But any new posts or comments will not federate.
And any new instance will not have a copy.
Ah that makes sense. So federation implies copying essentially, and not merely linking. Thanks!
Well, there won’t be any new posts, so that’s not all that much of a problem in the end.
You can actually make a new post on an instance that has closed, you can also reply to posts on a closed instance
https://lemmy.world/c/moviesandtv@lemmy.film
Nothing I was ever subscribed to, and why not post a direct link to the community?
I just made a post and a comment on a community on a closed instance. Both went through okay, but will never federate.
That instance went down a while back, so posting a link to the community wouldn’t work.
LW users can still make posts there, but they would indeed not federate.
I was just providing an example so that people could see what it would look like