If I registered at lemmy.world, is it possible to still comment on a thread at say lemmy.ml? I get the expected “You are not logged in” and while subscribing is easy enough, I’m not able to comment or interact with other instances. This seems normal as users are unique per instance, I just want to make sure I’m not missing a key component of federated services. The sign in page at lemmy.ml says “You will still be able to interact with other instances” so that is confusing wording there as well.
EDIT: it works fine, you just need to be subbed to the other community before you can comment. Thanks /u/nulluser !
Edit 2: you don’t even need to be subbed, I still have lots to learn, lol thank you all for your patience
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To your question, my understanding is that all your account activity is stored on your instance as the primary source, and then copied into other instances as users there view and interact with your posts and comments. So if the instance with your account on it shuts down, all of its content that was already copied over to other servers will be preserved there, but some of the newer activity that didn’t have time to propagate yet might be lost.
What about user accounts and ownership of the community though?
If that’s a worry for you, you can buy a cheap VPS and set up your own instance.
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I’m not sure what options there might exist now or in the future for gracefully migrating between instances, but in the worst case yes, if your instance unexpectedly shuts down then you won’t be able to authenticate and access that user account anymore. You do need to have some trust in the instance you join.
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That’s a good question! I’m still learning about federation and trying to get my head around things too.
it would help if there was some background identifier though so we could differentiate from the same community on two different instances without having to type @instance every time