I’ve read that it should be possible, but my experience seems to show that that is incorrect, that you need a login for every instance where you wish to make a post or comment. Could someone who knows clarify this?
If you need a login for every instance of Lemmy to participate in non-local communities, then that will, I think, be the #1 issue with Lemmy adoption, and the main reason folks bounce off.
Edit: I was trying to comment on a post on lemdro.id, but it said a login was required. If that is to be the case, most users out there won’t understand an ability to see content but not participate in that content, simply due to instance logins. That was my point. If that isn’t true, and I should be able to comment on other instance posts, then I’ve experienced a bug or something.
Edited Edit: I believe this was a result of using Liftoff, where I was able to view a community on another instance, and I was logged into the app via my own instance, but it treated my viewing the other community as if I were on that site, instead of viewing it through my instance. So this things are, I think, working as intended, and that Liftoff made the presentation of things ambiguous. Thanks for all the polite replies. Definitely makes me feel more confident that Lemmy can be a good replacement for Reddit.
My mind boggles as to why someone would downvote this question. Why not just help, ffs?
I run a self-hosted instance, so I have some experience with what you’re asking. You do not need to sign into every instance to post or comment. Basically, you need to first find the desired community using the search function in your own instance. Once you’ve found it, you can view, post, or comment through your own instance. This is what Federation enables.
For example, let’s say I want to view posts or comment in a community over at lemmy.ml using my own instance. Let’s say the community is called c/asklemmy. As long as federation is enabled on both instances (which is the responsibility of the instance administrators), you can use the search function, within your own instance, to find the community and interact with it at your leisure.
When searching for a community on another instance, remember to specify that the community is on another instance. So, for asklemmy over at lemmy.ml, you would search for !asklemmy@lemmy.ml. The format is !(community name)@(instance domain). You can even copy and paste the URL of the community’s page into the search bar, and it will work just fine.
There’s documentation available at https://join-lemmy.org/docs/administration/federation_getting_started.html that explains all of this in more detail. Anyway, I hope this has been helpful, and welcome to Lemmy! (It’s so much better than Reddit).
P.S. If you’re looking for an iOS client for Lemmy, Memmy is really good.
Thanks for this answer. I should have specified the prompt for me was that I wanted to comment on a post in another instance’s community, in the Liftoff Lemmy app, and I got a message that I am not logged into that instance. Is that supposed to be what happens?
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I think Memmy has hit it’s Test Flight limit. Should be approved on the App Store by tomorrow afternoon though
You do not need a separate account for every instance. It wouldn’t be federation if every server was a silo.
I am able to see other communities, but not comment on posts in them without a login for that instance, in my experience. Is that supposed to be the case?
You have to find the same community in your home instance, instead of going to that instance directly.
I agree this is confusing, especially if you come there from a link. There’s no easy “go to this community on my instance” link right now, though there are user scripts to make this easier.
What you can do is copy a link to a community or post and paste it in the search on your home instance. That’ll hopefully show that post and allow you to subscribe.
Try to use https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/469273-lemmy-universal-link-switcher
It would make it easier to just always go to your instance!
Weird. Can you not comment on, say, anything here?
I found an appropriate post, and commented using Firefox on PC, and it went through, so thank you for the test suggestion and site. I’m wondering if I encountered an app bug previously, although using the same app, I was able to comment on my comment there, so maybe it was an instance issue.
In any case, thanks for the help. I’ll experiment more to see what I can track down.
I’ve been able to post on multiple communities in multiple instances with a single account in one instance. I wonder if you’re running into the issue where some major instances have defederated from each other. Which instances have you tried to post to from your lemmy.ml account?
Your supposed to visit those communities from your home instance. By searching for communities. Then subscribe to them for easy acces. You should also be able to toggle the view to “all” on your home instance to see all posts on the fediverse and you should be free to interact with them.
If you google for another instance you will likely find it on their own domain/server. Which means your no longer on your home instance where you are logged in, thats prob why you cant interact.
My home instance is lemmy.one and I’m posting here on lemmy.ml right now
If on desktop, you need to interact with content from inside your own instance. For example for you, your own instance is lemmy.ml you visit this website and then subscribe to communities either on your server or another server(important: without leaving the tab of your instance in the browser! Otherwise it will say you need to log in). You find communities either on the All tab or in the communities search at the top of the website.
In the future all this will become easier like it did for Mastodon but for now we have these growing pains.
no, you need to access the content from your own instance. if it hasnt fetched the content yet, you can paste the url into its search bar to grab the content.
No, you should use search bar then go to remote comm from there. No need to login.
Nope, I’m posting here, to lemmy.ml, from a different, selfhosted instance right now.
Now if lemmy.ml decides they don’t like me or my users, they can defederate from my instance and essentially prevent me from seeing any new posts or comments and prevent you and all the other instances see posts and comments I make to lemmy.ml.
However, I think you can only create a community on your home instance. So I couldn’t create a community on lemmy.ml without making an account there. But like I said, I can still post, comment, and even mod communities on Lemmy.ml.
You only need one account that is how it is designed to be used. And it works like this awesomely
But. If you’re new to the concept of lemmy/kbin/mastodon etc (Fediverse) then it’s important to note that each server has the ability to block other servers completely. This is probably where the confusion comes in.
Example beehaw.org a popular lemmy server is currently blocking lemmy.world the biggest lemmy server. This means if you join beehaw you cant see lemmy.world content and vice versa. (Hopefully temporary pending new tools in the system) Most popular servers connect to each other.
To find out what servers block what there is an instances link at the bottom of each site, but it lists everything connected and blocked so no easy way so see which lemmy instances connect where at this stage…
