Okay so expanding this analogy, I can email anyone including myself (posting to my own instance), and everyone can reply all at any time? Or am I slightly off?
No that’s correct. Slight deviation from email is that email is unicast - you send email to one person (and if you have multiple recepients it gets copied that many times). On lemmy the code on instances does something more like a optimized broadcast when you post to your own instance when someone is subscribed to a community on your instance.
I joined just a few hours ago so I might be somewhat off, but the way I think about it is: every instance is like a server with its own set of communities and moderation rules. You can create an account on any instance but can interact with communities in that and in other instances. That is why you will see communities such as gaming in more than one instance. Is this close enough?
I still haven’t quite figured out how this works but here is a comment from a completely unrelated instance!
Same lol. But I’m glad it send to be working. I’m getting used to this slowly but surely.
And it seems to be improving fast enough, and I’ll try to contribute soon, too, once I get used to how this all works.
It works like email. All instances talk in the background between each other.
Okay so expanding this analogy, I can email anyone including myself (posting to my own instance), and everyone can reply all at any time? Or am I slightly off?
No that’s correct. Slight deviation from email is that email is unicast - you send email to one person (and if you have multiple recepients it gets copied that many times). On lemmy the code on instances does something more like a optimized broadcast when you post to your own instance when someone is subscribed to a community on your instance.
I joined just a few hours ago so I might be somewhat off, but the way I think about it is: every instance is like a server with its own set of communities and moderation rules. You can create an account on any instance but can interact with communities in that and in other instances. That is why you will see communities such as gaming in more than one instance. Is this close enough?