James R Kirk

When using the official Mastodon app (as suggested in the “guide”) “instances” are not a factor at all (unless the user specifically goes out of their way). A new user could have never even heard of the term “instance” and the above steps would work fine.

You don’t just download the app, create an account, and go.

Actually with Mastodon this is literally how it works.

EDIT: I should say this is how it works now, it didn’t always used to be this way. The official Mastodon app used to ask the user to pick an instance, but for a number of years now it defaults every new account to mastodon.social unless they opt out. There was a big brouhah about centralization but the Mastodon devs felt it made for easier on boarding.

If an instance has a lot of spam, admins tend to notice and block it. In the future it’s likely admins will have more tools too, but for now the system works pretty well.

I agree with your overall sentiment but also literally 100% of BlueSky users are on one instance.

BlueSky is not federated. Also German users have outsized representation on Mastodon but most of the network is outside Germany.

Yes absolutely, and that’s why I don’t think commercial social media will die. But I do think it will come to more be associated with activities gambling or vaping.

There will always be two types of users: people looking to connect and people looking to be entertained. Fedi is better at the former and commercial better at the latter.

People get so weird about Dansup.

If Mastodon/Fedi was at the scale those platforms are we would see more harassment, absolutely. It remains to be proven but I think federation enables a lot more eyes on content which implies harassing material can be removed more quickly.

Federation/decentralization solves a lot of problems over centralized social media, but ultimatley you can’t engineer human nature.

I had a response typed out but have a question, is this feature pulling in comment feeds from every community the instance is federated with? Or only from communities the individual user is subscribed to?

Don’t get me wrong I am a huge fan of Piefed overall. I think you misunderstood my second point a little, I don’t want to be “exposed to new things” in my social media per-se, I want to read my chosen subscriptions (with my chosen social groups) and move on.

I see the “issue” of “divided” communities coming up a lot. But to me, the variety of perspectives and moderation styles on the same topic is a major benefit of the Fediverse (to the point I might describe it as its greatest strength) especially when it come to non-technical or social topics like politics. For example Lemmy.ca users are going to have very different perspectives about US politics than Lemmy.us (hypothetically). I’m not sure that it benefits those users to centralize the discussion (not saying that’s what’s happening exactly but it is something I see come up a lot).

Two reasons:

1. There are many steps between “I never wish to see any unmoderated content ever again” and “I wish to see unmoderated content in my feed every day”. I don’t want to block Lemmy.world communities but I also will go insane if I read those comments every day.

2. I can’t know what those communities are in advance of their being inserted. I don’t want the default option for content in my main feed to be “opt out”.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I kind of hate this? I think most communities are lazily moderated and I don’t want to have every goon’s unmoderated takes on whatever the topic is forced in front of my eyeballs.

I haven’t seen anyone mention lemmy-explorer yet, it’s a good way to find communities too:

https://lemmyverse.net/communities

Exactly, not being beholden to one set of rule-deciders is not so much an “issue” as a distinct feature of the Fediverse.

Well said. I personally don’t get the opposition to Threads using ActivityPub. I like being able to follow Threads profiles without exposing myself to Meta.

Yeah personally I like being able to follow Threads users without needing a Threads account or exposing my information to Meta and I honestly don’t understand the vocal opposition to that.

Size has not much to do with it. If a hypothetical instance allowed a “troll farm” to set up shop there, sane admins on other instances would de-federate from the one that allows trolls pretty quickly.

Threads users cannot subscribe or post to Lemmy communities or follow Mastodon users (yet). Threads has a sort of halfway federation situation. Mastodon users can follow Threads users without having a Threads.net account but that’s it.

Also, the ability to allow Mastodon users to follow Threads accounts is opt-in, and only a small portion of users have chosen to do so.

You won’t see it on Lemmy because there is no way to follow individual users on Lemmy. Here’s an example of viewing a Threads user from my instance. There is no content because Kara cannot interact with Lemmy and Lemmy users can’t follow her.

On Mastodon, Threads accounts (or any account) won’t federate to your instance until you (or someone on your instance) specifically requests to follow. It’s a common misunderstanding when people think that federating with Threads.net will “overwhelm” a small instance.

Also, not every Threads account has opted into federation. So there’s really very little available content out there.

Threads accounts (or any account) won’t federate to your instance unless you (or someone on your instance) specifically requests to follow. It’s a common misunderstanding when people think that federating with Threads.net will “overwhelm” a small instance.