Yes! I was just reading a post from the authors of Lemmy on lemmy.ml, and noticed I was not logged in. I assume that because lemmy.ml is another instance, I can't log in with my usual lemmy.world credentials, but since it is federated I should be able to post, correct? However, I am not sure how, and I think a lot of people would just try logging in normally, since it's just Lemmy, right? Lemmy.ml might be safe, but I think it could be possible to confuse people into entering their password for fediverse sites on malicious instances, which steal their credentials. It's a little bit confusing to noobs like myself to be honest.
An app that can manage credentials and post properly across compatible instances and show informative messages to notify the user if and why they cannot post would be very useful, managing multiple accounts seamlessly even more useful!
Well think about it with this crude kind of inaccurate analogy.
You have a windows laptop. Your friend has a windows laptop. When you're logged in to your laptop you can send your friend email. And see his emails to you.
But just because your laptop is windows and his laptop is windows doesn't mean your windows log-in would work on his right? Lemmy works more like that. Reddit is kind of like one large windows laptop and everyone gets their own keyboard. Your log in works no matter which keyboard you use.
You may notice that Lemmy communities have the @ symbol like an email. So tech@lemmy.world is different from tech@lemmy.ml (just like how robert@yahoo.com is not the same account as robert@gmail.com). They MAY be made by the same Robert but there's no guarantee.
You really just need one account. So in the communities tab from your instance (Lemmy.world) you can search for the community on the other instance (Lemmy.ml) for example tech@lemmy.ml.
Your account let's you post and comment on @lemmy.ml posts
Even when you understand all that, though, it does just feel weird and unintuitive that you have to search for the community you want to interact with from within your home instance, and can't just directly go to that instance's website, e.g. beehaw.org, and log in.
Having an app (including a desktop app) to point people to that would just consolidate everything for a given user so that it's more intuitive, and so that you can easily switch between accounts or set it up to see posts from all your accounts together, would make it a lot easier on newbies, and make navigation more convenient for everyone else as well.
Coming from reddit is fun app, I don't really understand how what you're proposing would work. You want the same functionality of having a separate account on each instance, but consolidated into one app to easy switch between accounts/instances, right?
If we translate this use case into the existing rif app layout, the subreddit selector panel on the left would need to have like lemmy instances instead of subreddits, with communities nested under each instance.
So you would have a different frontpage for each instance, which consisted of only the posts for communities hosted by that instance. Maybe I'm on the wrong track here, or you have a better idea of how it'd work.
How is that better or more intuitive than just having one personal frontpage for all of your subscribed communities? That way you don't even need to make a conscious decision to browse beehaw posts, they're just in the same feed as everything else.
I feel like it's more about the way you're thinking about posts being hosted on a particular server and what that means. In the context of Lemmy it only means something where the post you want is on an instance that's been defederated from for whatever reason, and even then only in terms of community discovery. Otherwise it's kinda meaningless in terms of your interaction with posts.
Thinking of the given community as a community 'on beehaw' per se is only really pertinent in cases where the fact it's on beehaw alone has some kind of impact on how you interact with it, e.g moderation style. But even in that case, moderation style could equally be an attribute you ascribe to the community itself, rather than beehaw. e.g. preferring r/games over r/gaming.
This way it makes more sense to think of the community as a lemmy community than a beehaw one, which seems fairly intuitive to me. Plus, that way the instance is doing the link aggregation and not your phone, which would be problematic for users and for scaling the ecosystem
You don't need to make multiple accounts though? You go to lemmy.world, or wherever your account is and find your communities, anywhere in the fediverse from there.
To expand on the above analogy, if you are on your laptop, and your buddy is on his laptop hooked to the same network and you need a file off his computer you don't go to that computer to create an account and get the file, you just access it through the network you are both attached to. You can make comments and post all through the network.
I assume that because lemmy.ml is another instance, I can’t log in with my usual lemmy.world credentials, but since it is federated I should be able to post, correct?
I think the difference is whether you’re viewing lemmy.ml directly (as in, the URL in your browser starts with https://lemmy.ml/), or whether you’re viewing it via lemmy.world (or whichever site you have an account on).
for example, you can see other lemmy.ml community and post there by going to its @
like putting https://lemmy.world/c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml in the address bar, lets you access asklemmy on lemmy.ml via lemmy.world, and I think you can directly post to that community without login again with that instance's credential.
I have not seen the need to manage multiple accounts so far. I am logged into thelemmy.club but am subscribed to lemmy.world which works fine since it is federated. I am able to reply to you from thelemmy.club. Most of the content I follow is from other (non club) servers and have not had any issues interacting with people.
You would need a separate account to participate in instances your home instance isn't federated with, ie anyone logged into lemmy.world would need a different account to use beehaw
I think this is where I lucked out when I had so many issues creating an account on lemmy.world. I ended up making an account at thelemmy.club instead and it seems I can see and respond to all content from here so far.