Honestly, it’s kind of a terrible experience.

You can just try to join them all but the problem we will run into is people not following or remembering the rules of each.

It perhaps would have been better if their couldn’t be duplicates but then who decides which domain can host which community?

My gut feeling is it will probably only get better if the websites and apps make it super clear with design and font that they are separate.

Ex. Informally Videos@lemmy.world is shown with a font color and an icon next to it in all apps and domains so it becomes uniquely recognizable.

This is just an unfortunate downside of a federated system.

At the moment I have a .world, .ml and .studio account. The .ml account is used to follow programming topics, .studio for music, .world for 'rest'. I'm working oj locally hosted instances, so I can dreate a user in my own domain.

When there are multiple magazines and communities about the same topic, I usually follow all, maybe weed some out later, depending on content. However, I pick the 'specialized' identity for studio/music and programming. (Although I use this identity most, maybe it'll become main)

In your example, I would subscribe to each community. Sans any federation issues you can cross-post between communities on different servers.

I have an account on kbin and mastodon since each platform has different features. I haven't had any of the servers I'm on have federation issues but I imagine I would change servers if needed but generally I pick a server and stick to it.

I’m a little guilty of this myself since I’m trying to see which instance I want to settle on, so I’ve made a few duplicate communities across the three I’m on (Lemmy, kbin, shitjustworks.)

That having been said, while they may be very similar now, I assume that each will develop its own unique flavor so to speak. There is probably also a sizable pool of folks who prefer local communities since they are probably choosing their instance based off of moderation, wanting communities to follow specific guidelines.

I just subscribed to a kbin magazine from Lemmy, yay!

I tried joining @RedditMigration@kbin.social from my login instance at lemm.ee so I navigated to https://lemm.ee/c/RedditMigration@kbin.social from the address bar and selected subscribe. Then I subscribed to another Kbin magazine by searching communities. Very cool.

Lemmy's canonical names are not working right 0.17.4 (the ones starting with an exclamation point). I think that's fixed in 0.18.0 so that will make things easier especially if it can recognize Kbin canonical names.

I'm not sure how well Kbin is picking up Lemmy communities but I see Kbin users in posts here so it must be working. In any case you can get the content on either platform so just use the one you like better.

I follow each, optimal is opinion, not fact, and will vary person to person. Yes you can crosspost, assuming no blocks or bans are interfering. No they will probably never merge, consolidation is the polar opposite of the main point of this entire place.

Reddit had shittons of duplication too, you're just not thinking of it right now.

I do have accounts on multiple servers, for when this one has technical issues. This is my main, however, I picked it because it will probably be the largest. Yes I subscribed all over from here.

Welcome to the community.

As a user, how do you decide which is the optimal one to follow? Do you subscribe to each? Can you cross post between them?

You don't have to decide which is optimal. Yes, subscribe to each. Yes, you can cross-post.

Do you have accounts at multiple servers? Do you pick one and subscribe from all over?

Yes, but I only use one. The other is on an instance which has it's end of life announced. A 3rd blocks my nick on another instance which I frequently visit.