Im going around all the subs i use and a few big ones like askreddit asking for people to try lemmy and for subs to migrate, just to make lemmy get a bit of a boost so hopefully lemmy can get moat people over and lemmy can be a full replacement for reddit
Well I’m new to this so I’d appreciate someone else chiming in because I’m probably wrong but here I go!
An instance is a server in the fediverse. Mastodon, Beehaw, Lemmy World. I’ve created my username (or my identity) on Lemmy World allowing me to access any community hosted on Lemmy World. In turn Lemmy World has not only created and curated its own communities but because it shares the same open source communication protocols as other instances my identity can post to any other connected instance in a different community as long as the two instances agree to talk to each other.
The risk here is that Lemmy World can at any time defederate (stop communicating) with another instance. A good example of this is Beehaw. As the influx of users came in Beehaw defederated from the two major instances. Inside of Beehaw was a fairly large Technology community so because my identity was created on Lemmy World I have no way of seeing that community.
On the app I’m using I can tell if a community is outside of my instance when it says “community@instance” which helps me decide which instance I ultimately I’d like to create my identity in.
Hope that helps and if not let me know what questions you have!