Yes if you look at https://lemmy.world/instances you can see all of the instances that lemmy.world talks to. It's because of the fact that lemmy.world and midwest.social both talk to each other, that we're able to talk to each other!
As the ecosystem develops, I imagine several Lemmy instances will become somewhat of a network where they all federate each other, this sort of already exists between many of the largest instances. Though I've discovered bakchodi.org which it seems does not federate with anybody which is disappointing.
So yes technically you are commenting on a thread within your own server that is a mirror and then if the original server allows, users there will see your comments and can reply to you also.
I also would like to see the platform be more proactive about indexing communities on other sites, to me that is the whole point of creating an allow list for federating. I shouldn't have to search for a community 5 times for it to appear on my home instance, and I should be able to subscribe from anywhere as long as my home server is federated.
To your point about the logout issue, it would be nice if identities could be federated between instances so a login on one would work like SSO for any Lemmy instance. Just now I clicked on your comment to reply and was confused why I couldn't, because I was viewing it on the original instance and not through my own.
I like it and there's probably about as much traffic here was there was on reddit when I was started using it in the early 2010s. The design is nice and I like the federated concept although it is going to be a learning curve for some users. My particular home server is slow and down sometimes but in a way I feel its necessary to take some ownership and contribute to server improvements as we get more users if we want to sustain this.
Hopefully there can be a URL rewrite feature in future Lemmy updates
It's a slight architecture change and people will get it with time. When I first started on reddit I couldn't wrap my head around how a self text post worked but with time it made sense. Each Lemmy instance is like its own reddit front page but it houses its own communities.
I did the same thing it is so funny how I open the Jerboa app now thinking it is Sync Pro.
A corporate run Lemmy server can remove competition by simply choosing not to federate with any other instance.
It's not intuitive to find communities on other servers. You have to be adamant that one exists it order to get it to come up in search after multiple attempts. Communities I've created on midwest.social still aren't showing up in the search on lemmy.ml or sopuli.xyz and I would rather people find my community than create a new one by the same name on their server.
And a fine part you are doing!
Sync user since probably 2015. Good riddance and something about sliding doors! 👽🚪
Well good for them, they can have a lot of fun paying reddit staff to be the mods now.