ysk - your account doesn't exist on other instances and communities don't overlap

whoisearth@lemmy.ca to You Should Know@lemmy.world – 279 points –

User accounts are fragmented and just because you signed on at lemmy.world doesn't mean your account exists on lemmy.ca.

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1985

Communities are fragmented and /c/games on lemmy.world is completely different than the one on lemmy.ml with its own users, set of posts, etc.

Lemmy does not currently allow for instance or user migration.

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3057

Nor does it allow for shared communities (ie the aforementioned /c/games is unified across multiple instances)

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3100

We are in the early days. If you're eager feel free to join in the development on these any many other core issues. There's real potential here.

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BUT you can still upvote or comment on posts from different instances if you access them from within the instance your account is from!

So you don't need to create one account for each instance.

Edit: commented from a lemm.ee account

Yea the post is misleading. The community is games@lemmy.world not /c/games. That's reddit language creeping in.

Yes, saying c/gaming is meaningless. I pointed this out to one user yesterday and got the most unbelievable snark back.

It's just a jargon speed bump. It'll pass. Happens in any migration.

I think they’re equivalent: see the URL here - https://lemmy.world/c/games - that’s the same as saying !games@lemmy.world

I mean saying c/games without anything else is meaningless. You added @lemmy.world which is correct.

It's like saying c/worldnews. Do you mean worldnews at lemmy.ml, or worldnews at lemmy.world, or worldnews at shitjustworks, etc, etc, etc.

But the OP literally said “c/games on lemmy.world”, so the criticism is not valid.

Are you serious? I said I made a comment to someone yesterday. I'm not taking about op. And even then Op said "c/games on lemmy.world is completely different than the one on lemmy.ml". That's the whole point of this conversation. They are different, someone saying c/gaming on it's own is meaningless. Jfc follow the conversation.

This is a very important note, and I am afraid this post will confuse people. Yes, there are multiple c/games, but you can follow all of them from any of the accounts and comment, post and otherwise interact as long as your instances are federated.

It definitely confused me. I’m used to reddit so the idea that I would have to have multiple accounts was a huge downside. Thanks for clearing it up… At least a littl.

You don't need multiple accounts. While there are two separate communities on two separate servers, you can see them both from any server that is federated together.

That actually explains a lot. I was searching for an ADHD community and saw 2 of them. Both had similar community numbers but were different.

I followed them both

The post clearly mentions “c/games on lemmy.world”, not just “c/games”. Cut them some slack.

Exactly - as long as the instance isnt defederated, you should be able to post/comment/upvote/mod in communities that are outside of your home instance.

Do posts outside of Lemmy.World not show up in my feed?

They do. This post is a bit misleading. If anyone on your instance is subscribed to games@lemmy.world or games@lemmy.ml, which are two different communities, then those posts would show up on your instance.

For instance, of you're on lemmy.world, there are two communities:

https://lemmy.world/c/games and https://lemmy.world/c/games@lemmy.ml. Two different communities, synced across both instances. The reverse would be true of you were on lemmy.ml.

Wait, anyone on my instance? So does this mean that signing up for a larger instance, like lemmy.world will have a bigger chance of exposing me to more content, considering the larger chance of someone being subscribed cross-instances, in which case that content has a chance of showing up on my feed? Is that correctly understood?

In theory, yes. But in practice, any decent-sized instance is already exposed to all communities of the other decent-sized instances.

And you can always "introduce" your instance to communities that you find with external tools, like https://lemmyverse.net/communities

Keep in mind that joining a larger instance also has its cons, like more server load (lemmy.world is having issues with this), moderation, etc.

Wow, that is pretty neat! And thanks for introducing me to the lemmyverse explorer. This is honestly all pretty exciting.

Yes and no. Eventually smaller instances federate a ton of content, and it can happen very quickly. I wouldn't be too concerned about this.

If you're looking at subscribed or All they do, but the local feed is the default, and that only shows stuff on the local instance, in this case lemmy.world.

If you mean your profile, that will show all your activity on every instance.

You can browse by "all" instances, or "local" your instance. Some people say "all" has this complicated formula that it shows what your instances users subscribe to, not a true all. I have no idea.

You can choose to show “Subscribed” communities—only the ones you’ve chosen, “Local” communities—only the ones on Lemmy.World, or “All”—which will pull from all the communities federated with Lemmy.World.

So to answer the question, posts from outside your home instance will show up in your feed, should you choose for them to.

I swear upvote counts are isolated to individual instances too. I don't think they are supposed to be... But one post on Lemmy.world viewed from Lemmy.world shows hundreds of upvotes, but on another smaller instance it shows 5 upvotes.

I hope that's not the way Lemmy is intended to work.

It makes no sense at all

This can happen if federation breaks for a while, I think. For instance, if a lemmy instance goes down and can’t receive activity for a time, I don’t think there’s any mechanism to backfill that activity

I feel like the Reddit migration is really putting the protocol to the test. There's no load balancing so if your instance goes down you're kinda screwed

An individual instance can be load balanced pretty easily, but that's on the admin of that instance to implement.