They are two completely different communities that just happen to share their names. (And one of them is full of tankies, while yours isn't)

How this works is the same with email: You can have john.smith@gmail.zz and you can have john.smith@outlook.com , but although those do have the same first name, the two addresses do not point to the same mailbox.

If a community is on your own instance (servers are called instances on Lemmy), then the part after @ is not shown. So, there is asklemmy@lemmy.world, and there is asklemmy@lemmy.ml. The latter one is luckily empty, as nothing on .ml is written without serious brainrot.

The one you see only as "asklemmy" is asklemmy@lemmy.world.
There are actually this many asklemmys:

Each of the above is an independent community. Each one was founded by a different person and has different moderators, etc.

When you login to Lemmy, you go to lemmy.world and login there.
I don't. I do not have a user account on lemmy.world, which is one of the instances (servers) for Lemmy.
However, I do have a user account on sopuli.xyz, which is another instance. When I log in to that, I can read anything written on any instances that have federated with sopuli.xyz. We are having this conversation in a community on yet another instance:

As you can see there, this community is located on an instance called lemmy.uk.

So, I am reading this through sopuli.xyz, which has a connection to lemmy.uk. When I write something, Sopuli sends all the text to lemmy.uk which then saves it. And then your instance, lemmy.world, has a connection to lemmy.uk as well, and shows you whatever is shown on that instance. When a Lemmy-instance creates such a connection to another instance, it is called federating.

The nice thing about this construction is that if someone tries taking over Lemmy, they only take over their own instance. Its users can just migrate to another instance, create an account there and continue almost as if nothing had happened. And if some instance is not moderating its users' activities properly, other instances can defederate from it. That means: They can stop showing their users content from the badly behaving instance, and also the users from that instance won't see anything held on the other instance.

I hope this blabbering helped!

Yes, "instance" is the word used on Lemmy for what is usually called "server" elsewhere.

If one user of your instance is subscribed to a community on another instance, then that community is visible on that instance as well.

I have no idea but every once in a while they’re interesting.

You’re right. Bringing it up to the country level instead of towns probably fits better.

Seems like a sound though-process

The fediverse is big enough for everyone, and unless there's ill-intent or something damaging in a user/instance, I don't see any point with excluding them. All this would do is limit growth, and may actually be the attitude that let's it shrink into a slow death.

If you don't like a user or instance, block them and go about your business.

As someone said in another comment “you know how when a corner shop closes in town, you’re still able to go to a different store, but if safeway has driven all the other stores out of business and then shuts down you’ll fucking starve to death?”

i think we'd heard about a second coming by now

also that's some typical absentee landlord behavior

Yep. It's a good analogy. I'm not sure that this is the kind of argument which will get sceptics aboard, but I like it.

It's just a bunch of reddits all whispering in each others ears

Hey sh.itjust.works, tell feddit.uk to leave this comment and upvote

Sh.itjust.works: "Hey feddit.uk, starman2112@sh.itjust.works said to leave this comment and upvote"

Feddit.uk: "Hey lemmy.zip, starman2112@sh.itjust.works left this comment"

Lemmy.zip: "Hey Blaze, starman2112@sh.itjust.works left a comment"

And then all the federated instances get on the group chat and update the vote counter

Edit: I didn't even realize I was commenting on feddit.uk lmao this game of telephone is wild

App UI peaked at RIF

It's literally just reddit but a bunch of them

I don't think the usability of Lemmy is the problem, it's just users not wanting to tune out of mainstream social media. Everybody is there. Why wouldn't they? It's where everyone is. And convincing people that the massive shift in the type of content you can consume is worth it to not be consuming the content all your friends consume.
It's a catch 22. The only thing we can do is to post as much content in the fediverse as possible.
I don't think framing the general public as incompetent is helping either.
Of course you didn't make the comparison in the first place. I really hope the vast majority of the users of social media are able to Google something.

The barrier to entry is a feature!

What? No it isn't. Any individual instance is as simple to navigate as Reddit. The federation aspect is still in an early stage of development and implementation.

Twenty years ago, Reddit was in a similar state. It took a long time and a lot of effort to improve the system enough to be easily navigated and searchable (and then more time to mangle these features in the name of monetization).

But the idea that federated instances being difficult to traverse and filter against are intentional is utterly bogus.

I want to hang with people who are at least smart enough to tie their shoes

If you're not navigating Lemmy via VIM, you are literally a baby who shits himself and needs someone to change his diaper.

They were waiting longer for Him to come the first time, soooo

I was very supportive of Beehaw defederating from lemmy.world early. It's lovely.

What about PugJesus and that squid guy?

Wow. You're very much not understanding - I'm definitely not saying it's intentional. It's a take on the "It's not a bug, it's a feature" notion.

I'm saying that signing up for Lemmy not being as one-size-fits-all intuitive as Web 2.0 social media is a net benefit because anyone who tries to sign up, gets confused SO easily, and then frustrated and gives up is not the kind of person we want taking up server space on a Lemmy instance.

All I want is keep scrolling new funny. Lemmy gives me that.