I know it’s been asked a million times already but would I need to create different accounts for different instances? Please feel free to shout at me, call me dumb or whatever if that gets your rocks off, but I just wanna know how it works 😅

  • WatDabney@sopuli.xyz
    11·
    2 days ago

    Imagine that all of the instances existed first - before federation even existed.

    So imagine dozens of little, independent message boards - this person created one at this address, and this other person created this other one at this other address and so on.

    Okay - then imagine that federation came along, so then all of those individual bosrds started sharing content with all the other boards.

    So you were on this one board called lemmy.world. You never moved - you still have the same account at the same board. But now you also see, for instance, content from some other board called lemmy.ml.

    Now here’s the important bit - you aren’t actually looking at lemmy.ml. You’re looking at a mirror of it - literally, you’re looking at lemmy.ml@lemmy.world. So like this community we’re on right now - neither one of us is actually on AskLemmy@lemmy.ml. You’re on AskLemmy@lemmy.ml@lemmy.world and I’m on AskLemmy@lemmy.ml@sopuli.xyz. But every few seconds, all three of those actually separate communities sync up with each other, so it acts as if it’s just one community.

    Does that help?

    • Dis32@lemmy.worldOP
      21·
      2 days ago

      So for instance (no pun intended) there’ll be different instances for each page (?), I follow like 5 different meme pages but they’re from different instances, so I’m guessing you will and/or won’t get the same memes as you would if you only followed one meme server? And I’m guessing it’s better to have an additional account if you wished?

      Sorry in advance if that’s not the reply you’re looking for, I’m still trying to work this Lemmy out and don’t wanna feel like I’m missing out on different things I don’t know about, I do appreciate your help 😊