Instance and server are interchangeable. Instances have multiple communities, as many as you want. Beehaw instance only has like 20 while Lemmy.world has hundreds. Starting a community on an existing server is filling out a form, basically signing up for a website. Starting an instance requires hardware, metal or cloud, some experience with server software and command line interfaces, and patience. Any Lemmy server can federate with all other servers so you can show up on my feed when I hit “all” instead of “local.” You can be defederated with for technically any reason by any server. It doesn’t happen often outside of beehaw and most of their defederation list is like Neo Nazi shit.
Instance and server are interchangeable. Instances have multiple communities, as many as you want. Beehaw instance only has like 20 while Lemmy.world has hundreds. Starting a community on an existing server is filling out a form, basically signing up for a website. Starting an instance requires hardware, metal or cloud, some experience with server software and command line interfaces, and patience. Any Lemmy server can federate with all other servers so you can show up on my feed when I hit “all” instead of “local.” You can be defederated with for technically any reason by any server. It doesn’t happen often outside of beehaw and most of their defederation list is like Neo Nazi shit.