this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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An instance is just the word people use on the Fediverse for "Fediverse website". It's often preceded by the name of the platform the website is running, eg "Lemmy instance" or "Mastodon instance".
It's kind of like saying "WordPress website".
Lemmy.ml, Lemmy.one, Lemmy.world, Lemmy.ca, beehaw.org, sh.itjust.works, etc are all different websites running Lemmy, so they're Lemmy instances. Mastodon.social, mstdn.social, Mastodon.world, tenforward.social, etc. Are all just different websites running Mastodon.
Fediverse websites have the ability to request and mirror content in an ongoing manner from users or groups (which is what a Lemmy community is, a Fediverse group managed by a Lemmy server) on other Fediverse websites. From other "instances". This gives an imperfect illusion of everyone being in the same place, when we're actually spread across a dozen (or over 10,000,of you count the entire Fediverse) websites or more.