Someone correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is I can use this log in with other servers. However, when I try to log in on any of the other servers the login button just spins. Doesn’t tell me my password is wrong or anything else, it just spins endlessly. Am I doing something wrong or misunderstanding?
This is correct. Find the community on the server with which you want to interact, then use the instructions from its sidebar to search for it on your own server. From there, you can hit “subscribe” and interact with its content.
Ok, a bit confusing, but I think I get it
It’s definitely not as streamlines as reddit, but 18 years ago reddit wasn’t streamlined, either
Reddit is a single packaged site. As said, Lemmy is distributed. I find it nearly as streamlined as Reddit but the flexibility of picking your servers means some functions are not consistent across all platforms. Can not expect to do things the same way or get the same answers always when asking Lemmy specific questions. That can be confusing to those that are not particularly tech savy in network systems. Which is a large percentage of the population.
When you’re confused by fediverse stuff, just think back to email. If you make an account on gmail, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to log into hotmail’s servers, but it does mean you can send and receive emails with users on hotmail’s servers. And if you really want to for whatever reason, you can make an account there too.