I am currently using Lemmy.zip through the app voyager.
I can also see content from other places like hexbear and fedinsfw.
If I login to lemmy.zip on a desktop I can use my voyager credentials. But I am only able to view lemmy.world and nothing else here.
If I login to fedinsfw on desktop I can seemingly access a multitude of places such as I can on voyager, including lemmy.zip.
I’m sorry if this is such a dumb thing to get confused about. I’ve heard explanation for what all this is, but I’m still just not quite sure I understand.
That’s strange behavior.
Are all the other “views” working correctly (local, subscribed, all)?
I messed around with it some more.
I’m not sure what I was missing but everything seems to be showing as it should on desktop. Sorry about that…
I do want to ask though: I can use everything just like I am going through FediNSFW. Aside from a different aesthetic, what is the difference between accessing everything I can right now on lemmy.zip and using another lemmy (instance? Server?)
In addition to what others have said, your server protects you from other servers.
Only your home instance has your login credentials. When you “go” to another server through yours, you aren’t actually going anywhere. Your server fetches it for you. No other server receives any identifying info about you. So you don’t need to vet every server you can access content from.
Instances may have different focuses, e.g. ani.social being focused on anime, hexbear.net on communism, and lemmy.world being generalist.
Instances may also use different software, like mine which uses Mbin, FediNSFW (successor of LemmyNSFW) using PieFed, Mastodon.Social using Mastodon, etc. And each software has a different focus in design and functions.
An instance may also block communications with another, e.g. if a given instance is rampant with bots and scammers, the two involved instances are not aligned ideologically, and so on.
Also on a small tangent, this “defederation”, the process of blocking communications with another instance, is to be expected. Instances won’t always align, and I’d be concerned if they always did. But if you’re ever caught in the cross-fire, it’s easy to mitigate, like with having an alternative account here or there, and/or by using RSS feeds for your followed communities and users as the fediverse is full of those (plus Lemmy and a few others have hardcoded links for searches so you could easily add a redirect script).
I think I’m understanding it a bit better, but in a very broad kind of way.
It can be quite a lot to wrap the head around, yeah.
Imo, it’d be better to stick to using whichever instance you picked, and maybe using another instance, preferably with another software, to see what’s about. Mastodon is what I’d suggest for minimal overlap with Lemmy. Later, you could check something like Mbin, Friendica or PieFed for a reason you may notice as you rotate between Lemmy and Mastodon.
Each instance is run by a different team, often based in different countries and jurisdictions. Day to day, the main differences will be around content policies (moderation, how openly federated it is)
It’s like picking between different email providers, just that all have more or less the same features.
We have these guides too
https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/get-started
https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/threadiverse/detailed-overview
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/01-getting-started.html This page does a good job of explaining things. Probably answers questions that you may not even have yet.
FediNSFW, lemmy.world, and lemmy.zip are examples of instances.
Thank you for responding. I will definitely give that a read.
Some servers have other servers blocked so you wouldn’t be able to see content from there, others might not be running the newest version of the lemmy software, or are using something else altogether. Lemmy.zip is pretty good about updating and not blocking other servers which is why I like it.