This place has roughly 3,000 people and was intended to be an entire replacement for DaystromInstitute and StarTrek as they were going dark indefinitely. Well, within 4 days the moderators have walked back those statements and opened both subreddits up. I see no incentive for people to come to this website now and while a few may come here in the future, most people will go to r/startrek with 600,000 people.
I picked lemmy.ca which seemed like a middle of the pack one, which was advised. But they said it didn’t matter because you can see content from all. Can see it and seeing it by default seems to be different because now I have to track it down or something. This is the confusing part. Just give me a default front page. Then I can edit my own subscriptions as I learn.
I’m hearing ya. I’ve created three accounts now, thinking mastadon, lemmy, and kbin are different … which they are, but also they interact and I could just use one of those accounts to interact? But half the time when I click a link I end up somewhere where I need to sign-in to comment. I’ve learnt today, to search that same thing up on my own server, but I’m still well confused. However I’m also excited to keep trying at this unique new platform because I know I’m gonna have an “ah-ha!” moment eventually. lol. It’ll just take a little personal persistence, and I also believe the accessibility and features will evolve and improve as more join in.
Things make a lot more sense once you realize that “instance” is just a hand-wavy synonym for “website”.
“That community is on another website”.
“When I click a link, it takes me to another website”
Etc.
Watch the url. If it’s still showing you’re on the website you have an account on, then you’re working with locally mirrored content, and can comment without barriers. If it’s the url of some other website, then… It’s some other website,and you’re probably not logged in there unless you have an account on that site, just like following links to Twitter or Facebook from Reddit.
The only real differences here compared to centralized social media is that other websites will share the content directly with each other. If they’re asked to.