Well put! I’m still very confused about “instances,” and the way people talk about them makes it seem like you need to sign up for each one? But that can’t be right, that would be way too confusing! Right? Lol.
Lemmy.world also seems like the best place to ask questions. Everyone I’ve encountered has been very helpful, and I see a lot of people talking about how positive the community is. So I’m trying to just sit back and enjoy the ride!
Imagine phone companies. An instance is like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile or any other provider.
If you want to talk to your friends, it doesn’t really matter what instance they’re on.
A Verizon customer can still call a AT&T customer no problem. A Verizon customer doesn’t need to also sign up for AT&T to do that. It all just… works.
People talking about different instances is like people talking about different phone companies. “Verizon’s coverage is better” or “T-Mobile has better support” or that kinda thing.
All the analogies to mobile providers reminds me of the time when they’re was no interoperability for mms. Sms iirc worked but you better have the same company as a friend if you wanted to send that grainy vga photo you just took with your fancy new razr.
I signed up on lemmy.ca yet you signed up on lemmy.world. We can interact though.
This community we are interacting on is in lemmy.world’s instance but since our two instances are federated (work together like many others) we can interact in general and through any community in our instances or other instances that are federated with ours.
And are usernames unique across instances or can anyone copy anyone else’s username by signing up somewhere else with the same name or just making a new instance?
Well put! I’m still very confused about “instances,” and the way people talk about them makes it seem like you need to sign up for each one? But that can’t be right, that would be way too confusing! Right? Lol.
Lemmy.world also seems like the best place to ask questions. Everyone I’ve encountered has been very helpful, and I see a lot of people talking about how positive the community is. So I’m trying to just sit back and enjoy the ride!
Imagine phone companies. An instance is like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile or any other provider.
If you want to talk to your friends, it doesn’t really matter what instance they’re on.
A Verizon customer can still call a AT&T customer no problem. A Verizon customer doesn’t need to also sign up for AT&T to do that. It all just… works.
People talking about different instances is like people talking about different phone companies. “Verizon’s coverage is better” or “T-Mobile has better support” or that kinda thing.
All the analogies to mobile providers reminds me of the time when they’re was no interoperability for mms. Sms iirc worked but you better have the same company as a friend if you wanted to send that grainy vga photo you just took with your fancy new razr.
I signed up on lemmy.ca yet you signed up on lemmy.world. We can interact though.
This community we are interacting on is in lemmy.world’s instance but since our two instances are federated (work together like many others) we can interact in general and through any community in our instances or other instances that are federated with ours.
And are usernames unique across instances or can anyone copy anyone else’s username by signing up somewhere else with the same name or just making a new instance?
Yes! I have the same exact question.
Usernames are only unique within servers, just like with email addresses. there’s only one john@gmail.com but john@yahoo.com is a different person