Think of it like this: imagine if there were 2 reddit websites and users from each website could post, comment, and vote on each others website through their own website. For example, your instance(website) is Lemmy.world. mine is sh.itjust.works. I’m not commenting on lemmy.world, I’m commenting on your comment on a lemmy.world community(subreddit) using my instance(sh.itjust.works) in the same way that if you have a gmail address and I have yahoo we can still send emails to each other. Instances can block other instances as well, which is called defederating, but by default they all cross communicate with one another to deliver a (mostly) shared experience. So if you made an account on another instance, as long as it’s not defederated with the ones hosting the communities you subscribe to, you are effectively changing which servers you are using without changing the content you get.
I might have been confused by the initial amount of duplicate posts across instances. I’m guessing that could be compared to cross posts across subreddits.
Now if I can engage with different instances from my own instance, why do I need a different user for each instance? Is that in case of instances blocking each other?
Lets say you want to access !memes@lemmy.ml using your .world account. Do not go to lemmy.ml. Stay on lemmy.world, go to the search bar, filter by communities, and type: !memes@lemmy.ml
Why? You can’t log in to a lemmy.world account from lemmy.ml or any other instance besides .world. You can only access things from other instances using the method described above (although you can subscribe to !memes@lemmy.ml from a .world account and have its content appear on your home feed)
Do keep in mind that Lemmy is still in its early stages, and there will be many new features in the future.
Think of it like this: imagine if there were 2 reddit websites and users from each website could post, comment, and vote on each others website through their own website. For example, your instance(website) is Lemmy.world. mine is sh.itjust.works. I’m not commenting on lemmy.world, I’m commenting on your comment on a lemmy.world community(subreddit) using my instance(sh.itjust.works) in the same way that if you have a gmail address and I have yahoo we can still send emails to each other. Instances can block other instances as well, which is called defederating, but by default they all cross communicate with one another to deliver a (mostly) shared experience. So if you made an account on another instance, as long as it’s not defederated with the ones hosting the communities you subscribe to, you are effectively changing which servers you are using without changing the content you get.
I think this one made it click for me! Thanks.
I might have been confused by the initial amount of duplicate posts across instances. I’m guessing that could be compared to cross posts across subreddits.
Now if I can engage with different instances from my own instance, why do I need a different user for each instance? Is that in case of instances blocking each other?
You don’t need a different user for each instance unless the two instances you want to comment between are defederated.
Lets say you want to access !memes@lemmy.ml using your .world account. Do not go to lemmy.ml. Stay on lemmy.world, go to the search bar, filter by communities, and type: !memes@lemmy.ml
Why? You can’t log in to a lemmy.world account from lemmy.ml or any other instance besides .world. You can only access things from other instances using the method described above (although you can subscribe to !memes@lemmy.ml from a .world account and have its content appear on your home feed)
Do keep in mind that Lemmy is still in its early stages, and there will be many new features in the future.
Thank you! The fact that I can only search for other instances somehow didn’t connect with me. It makes a bit more sense now.
I guess this also opens up the Top/Active filtering option to be more explorative than circle-jerky compared to that of Reddit. Maybe I’m wrong.