I’m a reddit refugee trying to figure this out. It seems to me like it’s a decent idea to break up countrol like this, but unfortunately there are some inherent problems that mean it might not work in the real world.
The biggest in my view is that communities are scoped to the instance they started in. You could have 2 different communities with the same niche and the same or similar name but different insurances and the subscriber numbers will be split across them. I think this is damaging to growth because it spreads active users.
Eventually if the niche grows one of the communities of the niche will be the biggest and most active. So generally users will consolidate around the instances with the most active communities thus making those instances have a lot of control and defeating the purpose of federation.
Is there something I’m missing here? Because currently I’m not convinced this can both grow and keep things decentralized.
Yes, and I don’t understand how anyone thinks it’s sustainable. Inevitably, 1 instance will rise above the rest, and become the only one that matters. But due to the ever growing number of instances, and user’s insistence that federation is the way forward, it will take years before anything palatable appears.
People will lose interest way before that ever happens just like VOAT.
It’s already slowly becoming hostile and the grammar Nazis are already here.