Fediverse

An instance effectively is the website. Just a more techy term. Lemmy.ml is your instance and hikki.team is mine. You write something on your site (lemmy.ml), I get it on mine (hikki.team), and vice versa. This is possible because our two sites interact between themselves (i.e. "federate").

The overall process is like this:

• I wrote this reply and hit "send".
• My browser (well, in my case, a Lemmy app, specifically Eternity) has sent it to hikki.team, the site I chose to connect to Lemmy from (i.e. my instance).
• hikki.team has sent it to lemmy.ml (and to all the other instances, too)
• lemmy.ml figured from the data it received that it's a reply to your comment
• Since your account is registered on lemmy.ml, it sent you a notification, so you wouldn't miss it among all the rest. Ping!

Now, if you decide to reply to me, it will go that same way in reverse.

Here's a quick doodle:

From a user perspective, the interaction within an instance or between them doesn't differ at all, and that's the whole point. No matter where you enter Lemmy, you connect to all of it. You see my reply regardless.

It's not just Lemmy, either. People coming to PieFed/Kbin/Mbin can also see this post, the comments, and reply to them. The software they use affects their user experience, but doesn't change their ability to connect with others. That's one of the key promises of Fediverse - ideally, all Fediverse instances (websites) running any Fediverse software should interact in this way, forming a single network that everyone interacts with in their own way.