This question comes to me because since we cannot hop through instances (AKA transfer from one instance to another your account) I’d like to create an account into another instance, for research purposes, but if this ‘feature’ comes in a near future I’d love to bring my main account to said instance, preferably with the same username and if I have it “mirrored” (same username) I think that’d make it impossible.
From my understanding it should be possible, I think that’s the case with many communities/sites, but I’m not sure here.
I hope I’m being clear.
You need to adjust your thinking a tad. The instances are all separate servers / websites that have agreed to talk in a certain way, that happen to use identical software. So it’s like going to Amazon and creating an account and then going to Imgur and creating an account. No one cares that there are two identical usernames as it’s two entirely separate databases.
Where it gets more relevant to Lemmy is that your username has @instance.abc after it.
While this is absolutely true, the more accurate analogy is with email.
Bob@gmail.com and Bob@yahoo.com can still communicate, send emails to eachother, etc. Even if it’s the same person operating the keyboard. Separate platforms, common protocol.