If I understand right, you can respond to a post if you arrive at it through your instance that you’re logged in to. If you find a post through Google or another link, you can’t just click “reply” - you have to find your way back to the post through your server.
I’m sure the devs are working on cleaning up that experience. Sounds complicated.
I’m also new at this, and agree that it’s confusing.
I also think that subreddits were ready confusing at first. When reddit was new, I had to explain to people that the front page was garbage and that they had to find the right communities.
As the Lemmy ecosystem grows, I picture communities on certain servers becoming the clear winners, and the equivalent communities on other servers withering.
For example, I’m following the Linux community on both Beehaw and Lemmy.ml. I think the Lemmy.ml one is gonna be a lot busier, and folks will naturally gravitate towards that one. On Reddit it took me a while to figure out that /r/meirl was so much better than /r/me_irl.
Personally, I like it here and will probably stick around. I hope the servers can scale, and that new communities grow.
I’ll still wind up looking at Reddit for meme content until it turns up here. There’s a lack of goofy pointless shit here currently.