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.
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.