Most of us are Reddit refugees, and probably clicking more random links than we ever did before on websites we’ve never seen before. This whole experience feels like the old internet, but also throws up insane red flags with a modern internet perspective. What are the cybersecurity weaknesses we should all be looking for, and what are the best practices?
Here’s my reason for posting this. As I search for new communities across instances to follow, I sometimes end up clicking a link and I’m no longer logged in. In the corner, that could be a Sign In link or it could be phishing. It’s likely due to me not understanding how to properly navigate this system, but there’s nothing stopping someone from setting up a sight like this as far as I know.
Thoughts?
You’re likely no longer logged in because you visited another instance. For example, if I’m browsing from lemmy.ml but click on a link to [email protected], now I’m kbin and not Lemmy.
What you can do from your instance is go to your browser, paste the magazine or community url into the search bar, then subscribe from their sidebar.
I understand why this happens, but I consider this is a usability issue that the Lemmy devs should try to resolve. It’s not an easy problem to solve, though.
Federation is great, but it does tend to make certain interactions more complex. If Lemmy wants to retain normal users and not just highly motivated and/or technically adept people, the UX issues federation introduces need some serious work.