I couldn’t sign into my account on a different instance, so maybe it’s not?
Thanks for answering (please stop answering)
Your Account on lemmy.world only works on lemmy world. Think about it like Email. You have an outlook.com address, so you can not sign in into google.com, but you can send mails to them and receive theirs 😋
Your account only works on Lemmy.world. But since servers communicate with each other, you can view posts/comments on communities located on other servers and reply/post on communities located on other servers.
Go to communities -> All to look for communities and join commjnjties. And welcome to the Fediverse!
I’m curious, what are different instances for If they can interact with each other anyway?
Unlike Reddit, which is a for-profit company. Lemmy servers are set up by individuals or groups of individuals for the benefit of the community at large, and donations pay for the server costs.
And I like to think of instances as countries. Each instance has its own rules and culture, and that affects how the communities are moderated. For example, the beehaw.org instance is heavily moderated compared to lemmy.world. Continuing with our example, the Technology community on beehaw.org will be moderated differently than the Technlology community on Lemmy.world.
So each instance has its own reason for existing. Another example will be https://lemmynsfw.com/ which is an 18+ instance. Basically, when you register in an instance, you become a citizen of that country.
Your account is only your account on one instance. You can have other accounts on other instances. However, you can access and post to all of the communities, content, and posts on all federated instances from your one account on one instance.
You don’t need to, you can access communities on other instances via the account you already have
Just append the instance name to the URL, w.g https://lemmy.world/c/news@lemmy.ml
Notice the “@lemmy.ml” part? That means I’m navigating to the news community on the lemmy.ml instance.
There are extensions that’ll make sure you’re always on your home instance
It’s been explained to me to think of it like email. Your gmail account won’t get you into your yahoo account and vice versa BUT the two can communicate with each other. I think I got that right anyway… :)
