So I commented on a post on lemmy.world, and somebody from lemmy.ml replied to my comment.
I was finally able to reply to their comment in turn by using the reply symbol under their post in my notifications. I couldn’t reply before because clicking on their comment took me over to lemmy.ml and I thought I would be able to sign in with my credentials from here and post, but I think I understand now that that isn’t possible. Every instance has its own registered users and you can’t cross-post, you can only reply on the federated thread on your own instance and wait for it to be federated over to the user from the other side.
When I look at their post now, my comment shows up on lemmy.ml. So the thread was federated over to lemmy.ml from here, I guess?
I have not registered on lemmy.ml, just on lemmy.world.
Did I comment on lemmy.world and it got federated over to .ml?
Because I can’t comment on the post on lemmy.ml, but that’s expected I guess, since I’m only registered here.
Does this make sense?
Sorry if I’m just blabbering on here, but I’m still a bit confused about how all of this works exactly. Typing this out helps me understand this.
Is anybody facing similar issues of not quite understanding what they’re doing?
I will attach a screenshot.
Your understanding is pretty much spot on. I think a lot of confusion comes from comments (including in your notifications) having two icons linking to them. One is the typical chain link icon, which will take you to that comment via your home instance so you stay logged in and can upvote, reply etc, and the other is the rainbow coloured one that takes you to the original, possibly remote, URL.