I've been on Lemmy for some time now and it's time for me to finally understand how Federation works. I have general idea and I have accounts on three federated instances, but I need some details.

Let Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta be four federated instances. I have an account on Alpha and create a post in a community on Beta. A persoson from Gamma comments on it and a person from Delta upvotes the post and the comment.

The question: On which instances are the post, the comment and the upvotes stored?

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[–] sse450@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (7 children)

So, data is not normalized. Isn't it a waste of storage? Same data on all instances.

[–] maniacal_gaff@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

It isn't a waste if it provides redundancy and prevents one server from being in control of all data.

What do you mean by "normalized?"

[–] sse450@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I see your point.

I used the term "normalized" in the context of databases. One piece of data should exists only once. But, this contradicts your points of redundancy and control.

[–] bjornp_@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

That isn't what normalized means in the context of databases.

Also databases store the same data many times over often. For redundancy and load-balancing purposes. Really, federation just takes care of replication somewhat.

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