"Your username will remain unavailable."

[Mattlexic]

Pitch

I'm having trouble understanding what it means when it says, "Your username will remain unavailable." Does that mean my username will only remain unavailable in that particular instance or will it remain unavailable throughout Mastodon entirely?

Motivation

I'm asking this because I'd like to switch from mas.to to mastodon.social.

[AlanBell]

It will remain unavailable on the instance you were leaving. Usernames are not unique across all servers, there could be many people perfectly legitimately having the same name but on different domains.

[Mattlexic]

It will remain unavailable on the instance you were leaving. Usernames are not unique across all servers, there could be many people perfectly legitimately having the same name but on different domains.

Okay, thanks.