I must be an idiot, I keep clicking this thing!

manitcor@lemmy.intai.tech to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 15 points –
14

What's that? I see it on all posts

It opens a link to a post in its own instance. So for example

this is how your comments looks for me with this button. As you can see I'm not logged in, because it's a different instance compared to what I use. This is what things look like when I click the chain icon to the left of it:

Here I'm logged in, because it's your comment opened through my instance.

Thank you for finally explaining this, I've tried explaining it to people 3 times now and failed every time. Will link this next time someone asks. :)

I get it, it's such a nice and shiny icon it gotta do something good!

This thing isnt on jeroba so I forgot it's a thing lol.

I still don't understand what it is or why is there...

It points to the lemmy instance the post has been published on. It is useful if you want to share a generic link to a post with someone and maybe don't want to share the information on what instance you created your account on, because the other permalink button always references to the instance of your account.

Ohhh! So, if I'm understanding correctly, I can share that link to another... Instance? And it cuts me, the middleman, out of the link chain, kind of?

Also very useful for checking the sync on a post for people selfhosting. I made a thread about it earlier today because my instance is missing a number of comments, and it seems like it's happening to quite a few of us. Ironically, my instance is missing 6 comments from my own post compared to the lemmy.world copy.