To expand on what @Sergio@piefed.social said, each user has a home instance. Yours is ani.social. Sergio’s is piefed.social. Mine is lemmy.today.
If you use the bang reference like that (!FunnyPanels@ani.social), then the link will automatically be modified for users reading your comment to direct to the version of the community for every user on their home instance, which is normally what one wants.
If one just puts “https://ani.social/c/FunnyPanels”, then when I click on it, I’ll be viewing the community via ani.social, rather than view my home instance.
IIRC PieFed will convert URLs for users using a PieFed home instance, but (a) that doesn’t work for people with Mbin and Lemmy home instances and (b) I’m not super-enthusiastic about that approach, as sometimes I do want to link directly to a community on a specific home instance, especially when troubleshooting or similar (maybe PieFed provides a mechanism to do so, but if so, I’m not aware of it).
To expand on what @Sergio@piefed.social said, each user has a home instance. Yours is ani.social. Sergio’s is piefed.social. Mine is lemmy.today.
If you use the bang reference like that (!FunnyPanels@ani.social), then the link will automatically be modified for users reading your comment to direct to the version of the community for every user on their home instance, which is normally what one wants.
So when viewing your comment, I’ll get a link to “https://lemmy.today/c/FunnyPanels@ani.social”. Sergio will get “https://piefed.social/c/FunnyPanels@ani.social”. You’ll get “https://ani.social/c/FunnyPanels”. An Mbin user would get something like “https://fedia.io/m/FunnyPanels@ani.social”.
If one just puts “https://ani.social/c/FunnyPanels”, then when I click on it, I’ll be viewing the community via ani.social, rather than view my home instance.
IIRC PieFed will convert URLs for users using a PieFed home instance, but (a) that doesn’t work for people with Mbin and Lemmy home instances and (b) I’m not super-enthusiastic about that approach, as sometimes I do want to link directly to a community on a specific home instance, especially when troubleshooting or similar (maybe PieFed provides a mechanism to do so, but if so, I’m not aware of it).