With mastodon I just log in with my mastodon account and enter my unique username to follow or comment on something, if it’s on another instance.

But how does it work on Lemmy? If I am on another instance and I try to log in to comment, my account can not be found.

At the post above someone from lemmy.ml commented the post and I am just trying to figure out how this works?

What is the workflow if I find another interesting instance to comment or like, because it looks like leaving lemmy.ml isn’t a good idea.

  • Cold Hotman@nrsk.no
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    2 years ago

    Lemmy is a bit more complicated than Mastodon since you’re not subscribing to a single person but a federated group.

    Imagine it as two identical Mastodon servers that federate. Their home timelines are identical because everything gets sent back and forth, right?

    What happens if the admins on server A doesn’t accept the posts from user X on server B? They get blocked and their post is never sent to server A. If you look at both the home timelines again, you’ll see they’re practically identical… But server A is missing all of user X’s posts!

    Now imagine that again, but it’s user Y on server A that gets blocked by server B, so now both home timelines are somewhat identical, but both servers are missing the posts from a user on “the other side”.

    When you subscribe to a community from Mastodon - Is it Server A who’s missing the posts from user X? Or Server B who’s missing the posts from user Y?

      • Cold Hotman@nrsk.no
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        2 years ago

        Almost. They’re blocked on the lemmy server the group/community you’re subscribed to lives at. Have a look at the main images in this post, maybe it’s easier to see.

        https://lemmy.ml/post/443745

        Notice how the group (originally created at beehaw) is labeled “Chat” at beehaw, while the federated copy at lemmy.ml is labeled “Chat@beehaw.org”? The @beehaw.org is to show the community is from a different instance and they got the federated version, a copy in a sense. They’re two different groups.

        If you subscribe to the community in question from a different server, you’ll probably see other posts. The drawbacks of federation and blocking being left up to the server admins. On the other hand, forced federation without possibility to block wouldn’t work at all.

        • maxmoon@lemmy.mlOP
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          2 years ago

          My original post is on lemmy.ml (https://lemmy.ml/post/439617) and not beehaw. I really don’t understand how beehaw is involved in this. Is it only because I added the link to this post? But this link was meant to show an example and not to overtake the filters of the server.

          I am confused…

          • Cold Hotman@nrsk.no
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            2 years ago

            It’s an example, but I don’t think I have the linguistic skills to help you. I hope someone else is able to, good luck. 👍