An example:

Say you wanted to add “ShowerThoughts” from lemmy.world.

  1. Go to https://lemmy.world/c/showerthoughts
  2. In the right column, Look for the blurb that says something like “You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !showerthoughts@lemmy.world
  3. At the bottom of that blurb, you see where it says “!showerthoughts@lemmy.world”? You copy that.
  4. Then you go to the search page on this site(from the search button in the upper right of this page), and you search for what you just copied. You may need to search for it 2-3 times for it to come up.
  5. One of the results will be that community. Click the link, and then click join in the right column.

From that point forward, you should see posts from that community in your feed on this site.

    • obvs@talk.macstack.netOPM
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      1 year ago

      “Your instance” means the domain of the site you’re using.

      So if you’re using macstack.net and you’re searching for the sitediscussion section, you’d enter sitediscussion in the search box, but if you’re on another Lemmy site and you wanted to subscribe to the sitediscussion site on talk.macstack.net you’d go into their search box and search for !sitediscussion@talk.macstack.net

    • SpaceJim@colony.red
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      1 year ago

      So your instance is talk.macworld.net. My instance is colony.red. Shower thoughts’ instance is lemmy.world. The instance is where the profile and posts live, but the posts can be displayed in any feed on any site (I am reading and replying to this on my own site.) Following an account pulls the posts from a user on an instance into your feed on your own instance/site. Since I follow you already I see your posts on my server, and I am reading and typing this response on colony.red.

      To follow this shower thoughts account from lemmy.world I paste showerthoughts@lemmy.world into the search bar on my colony.red site/instance. (The leading ! is a thing that seems to be required or not depending what your instance is running, mine does not want it.) Sometimes search is winky and it takes one or two tries, I dunno why.

      • uki@talk.macstack.net
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        1 year ago

        well, I can see your message, so… thanks? I never clicked anything that said “follow” or “join”, but if I’m seeing this I guess it worked This fediverse thing is weird and complicated to me. If everything is supposed to be connected, it should be easier.

  • uki@talk.macstack.net
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    1 year ago

    can I follow other fediverse accounts here? or only Lemmy stuff? I’m putting accounts/addresses/whatver into the search bar here, and they show up in the results, but then nothing indicates if I’m following them or not…?

    • obvs@talk.macstack.netOPM
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      1 year ago

      It seems to be possible to use those accounts to log in, but not to actually follow them within Lemmy.

      • uki@talk.macstack.net
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        1 year ago

        What I want is to follow specific people that are not here. They’re in some fediverse site, but neither is a Lemmy site. Is that possible?

        These https://bitbang.social/@NanoRaptor

        https://colony.red/@spacejim

        USING MY ACCOUNT HERE, I’d like to be able to comment/reply on their posts, and get notifications for their posts/replies, here.

        I thought this whole fediverse thing allowed that.

        If I enter those addresses in the search field here, I get something that looks like their… accounts… damn I forget the name. BUT, I don’t see any link/button that says “follow”. So the search engine here in this site CAN find them, one of them replied to one of my posts here, so THEY can see my post and interact with me.

        • obvs@talk.macstack.netOPM
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          1 year ago

          So if you want to view those people’s accounts, you can search using this format:

          @spacejim@colony.red

          and you can see their accounts and respond to them, and they can respond to you, but it doesn’t look like there’s an easy way to subscribe to their accounts yet.

      • uki@talk.macstack.net
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        1 year ago

        to login? what do you mean? WHO can login with those accounts? and logon to what?

        Please understand that I’m not complaining.I am upset with myself because I can’t understand how this whole fediverse thing works… or doesn’t work

        ANYWAY. FINALLY, the thing is. I thought I wasn’t going to need to make more accounts in more websites. I don’t want to do that.

        I HAVE been able to join other lemmy places, so there are limits, it seems.Lemmy sites can interact with other sites, but not “fediverse sites” that are not lemmy…? sigh my head hurts.

        I bookmarked those accounts I’m interested in. I guess I’ll manually go check them out from time to time, if I remember to.