Well, it’s not that simple. I accidentally made, like, 5 Lemmy accounts across different instances until I understood how federation works. Now I rotate through them for privacy’s sake lol.

How long does said number last/stay valid? This is all fascinating as I’d never heard nor read of this before. Would you be willing to go into more detail, like naming such VOIP services, etc.?

Right, make sure @ understands that “instances” = “websites.” The Lemmy discussion protocol is scattered across dozens of websites to avoid tyranny by any one of them, and they choose to federate with each other or not so that you’d only need an account on one to see content from the rest.