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If I have an account on Mastodon.Social, and another account on PieFed.Social are they technically on the same instance, since they're both on .Social?
to a layman it’s probably best to just… not really think too deeply about this, there is layer upon layer of possible nuance and yet at the same time 99% of the time it’s as simple as “if the ‘thing.otherthing’ isn’t identical then they have absolutely nothing to do with each other”.
To really understand what’s going on you’ll need to dive into how computer networking functions and a bunch of other things, which i do highly encourage since it’s good to know, but the important thing here is that you’re talking about domain names, which i’m not going to try to explain further but rather recommend you look up on wikipedia and other places to learn more about.
If I have a house in Orange County, California, and another house in Orange County, Florida, do I technically only have one house since they’re both in Orange County?
I mean, it communicates the same point. The two are unrelated even though they have the same county name, just like websites share the same TLD and are completely unrelated to each other.
Oh god… let’s not get into the nuance of web hosting. Soon you’ll have to explain dns or what a reverse proxy is… or heaven forbid how certificates work to secure it all.
The cost of a (word).com domain can be tens of thousands of dollars if nobody owns it to millions of dollars if someone does. The cost of a (word).social domain is like $10.
Yup, this is why most Fediverse platforms are hosted on domains with TLDs that seem unusual (.social, .io, .ml, .xyz, .land, etc). Since most of these projects are funded by donations (if funded, at all), the domain is an excellent place to cut costs on a project like this.
Mastodon.social is the address to that specific Mastodon instance. Take a look at this site for more info.
why not make everything (instance).com?
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that? Are you suggesting everyone to use a ().com? If so, because they are rarely available and if they are, quite expensive.
You can register a second level domain (e.g. “google”, "lemmy”, “cnn”) with a specific TLD, resulting in a domain name (e.g. “google.com”, “lemmy.social”, “cnn.com”)
The devout Christians currently going through a crisis on whether to go with “Jesus is in all of us, thus yes” or “Our boy J don’t want none o’ that nastiness”.