• Xylight (Photon dev)@lemmy.xylight.dev
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    1 year ago

    an ELI5:

    When you set up a lemmy instance, it has no idea other instances exist. It’s like throwing you into a web browser with no search engine. You don’t immediately see every single website, you have someone tell you about a cool website you found, and then you type it into the address bar, and save it.

    It’s kind of the same thing with Lemmy instances and communities. Once a user types this syntax into the search prompt:

    !community@instance.com

    It will try and contact instance.com for that community. If it exists, the user can subscribe and the instances will now receive and send new posts to each other.