I've got to say - I can't see how this is really going to take off.... It's so confusing.
Let me try to explain a bit...
- Tried making accounts, got one on lemmy.ml and lemmy.world.
- Saw some interesting feeds, but can't load lemmy.ml (502 error - maybe overloaded). However, the 'Fediverse' is linked up - so surely I should be able to find this user and connect to his post without too much hassle?
- Try to visit - he's on vlemmy.net - I can't interact without logging in. My account doesn't work - is it a different account for every instance?
- Compared to ten minutes on Reddit, after 2 days I still haven't found content and/or interaction that I want. I kind of understand how cool federated stuff is, but I cannot get to the product.
- r/firefox r/linux r/angryupvote r/jokes - you know.... stuff!
I follow a link for the user and end up seeing that I am not logged in, but a note says:
'If you use a Fediverse account that is able to follow users, you can follow this user.'
I don't understand this - How? Where? There's no context menu...
I AM LOGGED IN here and now... What gives?
If it's this hard for me, I'm sure that this rules out 99% of internet users from switching over... as I'm sure that more than 75% of Reddit users are dumber than I am.
Oh, and finally now I see another notice:
If you deselect Undetermined, you will not see most content.
WTF does that mean? Where did I select, or have an option to select 'Undetermined'?
To subscribe to outside communities on the instance that you signed up on, go to the search bar on your instance and type in the name of the community @ instance with an exclamation at the beginning.
For example, if you want to follow the Jokes community on lemmy.ml, you would type into your search bar: !jokes@lemmy.ml. It will pop up and you click on it, which will take you to the community. Click on where it says sidebar and you should see the subscribe. You do this for all the communities you want to sign up for that are not apart of your instance.