It makes it easier to understand what this is and that they are interconnected, but I think I enjoy unique branding/themes more in practice now that I am actually using the fediverse.
It took me embarrasingly long to get a feeling for how Mastodon was supposed to work across instances, and what it means that lemmy, madtodon etc are part of the Fediverse.
I think the “join mastodon” or “join lemmy” rhetoric just obscures how things work. IMO it would be better to describe Lemmy and Mastodon as ActivityPub readers, similar to how there used to be RSS readers.
I like the different instances having their own branding but i like the option to switch back to the normal theme. I also like when users put their own spin on the services logo instead of using something unrelated.
Yes. Having the OPTION is great.
Absolutely. I think there should be sane defaults, and whoever deviates from them should know why they’re doing it.
