Is Lenny.ml just locked down for now, or am I doing something wrong?

Reddit sucks. Let's make our own reddit with blackjack and hookers.

Result: there are now 15 competing reddit knockoffs. Each one is small and lonely.

Solution: let the reddit knockoffs talk to each other. This solves the problem of a fractured userbase. This was always reddit's strength: disparate communities united, on the same site. This size and diversity meant there was a high likelihood of someone who knows what they're talking about or someone with a unique perspective stumbling across the post and chiming in.

By understanding the motivation, hopefully the concept of "Federation" makes more sense.

Use wefwef.app or memmy, they make using Lemmy easy and more like reddit

Think of Lemmy.world as iOS and Lemmy.ml as Android. Both are able to talk on Whatsapp if that makes sense. You can see, comment and subscribe to Lemmy.ml content even if you are using Lemmy.world.

lemmy.world runs the Lemmy software. lemmy.ml also runs the Lemmy software. Therefore, the two sites (and a ton of others running the Lemmy software) talk to each other and play nice and which specific one your account is on doesn't really matter. Other than when a large influx of new users comes in and we start getting weird bugs, of course!

I remember in your other post you said you were using wefwef. So, let's get specific and say you want to subscribe to a community on lemmy.ml, perhaps AskLemmy.

In wefwef, navigate to the search tab, type in "asklemmy", and choose "communities with 'asklemmy'" from the options. You can then click into the community from your search results, hit the three dot menu in top right, and subscribe.

Your next question might be "how do I know which communities exist so I can search for them in the first place?" and the answer to that one is you can either speculatively run a keyword search in wefwef and see what communities come up, or you can use https://lemmyverse.net/communities

Oversimplifying it, but think of instances like lemmy.ml as an email domain. Maybe you have a Gmail account, you still get email from msn, Yahoo, etc. As long as an instance remains federated you can see and interact with posts from any other instance. So the instances appear confusing, but they're a bit meaningless for consuming.

One big advantage to instances, if I have a business, I can create my own instance and only allow my employees to have accounts. Everyone else can still post threads and comments, but my employees have essentially a verified status.

It gets easier, promise! You’re registered to the lemmy.world instance. You’re able to see all posts from all the other instances that are federated (kinda like you how you can see all subreddits that haven’t been shut down/set to private, even if you’re not subbed). There are a couple of instances that have been defederated for alt-right bollocks. I think sh.it.just.works might be one of them. If you’d like to see alt-right bollocks you can sign up directly with that instance.

The bottom line is that unless you have very niche interests, you don’t need to join any other instance other than lemmy.world. You’re here, you’re in, and you can see all the mainstream instances as well as all the different communities (subreddits) created on those instances.

I’d recommend checking out !newcommunities or !communities on the lemmy world instance to find and subscribe to the communities you’re interested in. Or you can all set your feed to “all” rather than “subscribed” and subscribe to anything you like from there. I hope that helps!

Use wefwef.app or memmy, they make using Lemmy easy and more like reddit

Oversimplifying it, but think of instances like lemmy.ml as an email domain. Maybe you have a Gmail account, you still get email from msn, Yahoo, etc. As long as an instance remains federated you can see and interact with posts from any other instance. So the instances appear confusing, but they're a bit meaningless for consuming.

One big advantage to instances, if I have a business, I can create my own instance and only allow my employees to have accounts. Everyone else can still post threads and comments, but my employees have essentially a verified status.