can you login to other instance's with lemmy.ml accounts

This probably has been asked a million times, so apologies in advanced. But can we log into other instances with our login here for example if I went to lemmy.world and logged in with Designate6361@lemmy.ml should this work? Or do I just need to make an account on their instance as well ? Already know how to browse and comment on other instances but this was interesting me to know if it could be done.

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You can use your account to comment and post on communities on other instances. This does NOT mean your login will work on their site.
If you go to https://Lemmy.ml/C/mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world you are now interacting with a community on that instance. The posts, comments and votes are synchronized across at a server-to-server level and cached in Lemmy.ml
I would get an account on a different instance anyway though, lemmy.ml is overloaded and needs people to spread out to different servers

That's not how it works :) Your lemmy.ml account is tied you this specific instance.
IIRC they are looking into an option to transfer your account between instances but I might be wrong.

You only need one account and that will allow you to post and comment on other instances.

It's really a lot like email, only the messages are (mostly) public instead of private.
If you have an account at gmail.com you can send and receive emails with someone at another site like mit.edu, because your mail server and their mail server know how to talk to each other (that's "federation").
But you don't have to personally log into their mail server to do that. You just use your account on your server, and the servers take care of getting messages to the right server for the recipient.
Similarly, here, you can subscribe to and comment on forums ("communities") originating on other instances. You don't have to personally log into the other instance to do that; the servers take care of that part.
- Unless they are not "federated" with the version of lemmy you created an account with, I assume? I had to create an account to see startrek.website, and when I try to look at "all" communities from that account, I can't see, say, this community, for example (lemmy.fmhy.ml). Similarly I can't find startrek.website on the list of public communities from the account I created for this instance.
  
  I've only read the basic protocol documentation but my impression is that if nobody on your instance has subscribed to that community before, you won't see it in the "all" list, because it's not known to your instance server yet. Instances become aware of remote communities only when someone tries to access that community through the instance.

7 comments