Took this from the sidebar at newcommunities

[link text](/c/community@instance.com)

This provides a link that should work across instances, but in some cases it won’t

To my knowledge this doesn’t work if a user in your instance hasn’t previously searched for the community

You’re one of today’s lucky 10,000

There are a bunch of comments in this thread on kbin.social at https://kbin.social/m/programmerhumor@lemmy.ml/t/26213/XKCD-1172 but none here at lemmy.one. Every time I think I understand federation I get thrown for a loop

Your handle only works on the instance you signed up on (lemmy.one).You can view communities from all other federated instances (lemmy.ml,etc) from your home instance (again, lemmy.one). You shouldn’t be trying to sign into other instances with your handle

This and the email analogy has helped me understand how all these fediverse apps interact. Thanks for the explanation.