… YOU CAN IMAGE INSIDE A COMMENT!? Why did I have to learn this on a poop meme!?

Isn’t that a bit of hyperbole? If it was turning into what you said we’d be seeing a far greater amount of servers than we are.

The point of the fediverse is decentralization. That means if you have a predominant rigid viewpoint you can find an instance that shares that view. I don’t think at the current state of development that the fediverse can have a dominating instance that connects everything. It’s up to you to create a community you feel is missing on the instance you’ve settled in if no other federated instances have that community.

We’ve proven through Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter that we suck at communicating across groups on social media and are more interested in insulting whoever disagrees with us than communicatimg effectively.

That being said the Fediverse is young. Things aren’t perfect. It’s still less censored than almost any other social media platforms aside from 4chan and I’d urge you to use that if you are looking for anti-censorship.

For myself, I’ve picked out a dozen instances and I drift between them all while I figure this out. I treat it just like my half dozen alt accounts I had on RiF.

I think my “progressive ideals” point covers what you’re saying. Progressivism on the internet has a lot of positive ideas but a lot of authoritarian enforcement if you don’t agree all of the time.

I don’t think the goal is to increase the popularity at the moment. I think it’s manage the chaos. The fediverse has had a massive increase over the past few days and you kind of need to use the emergency tools that are part of federations to manage that growth.

I mean I’m just one person but I’m here to stay and if it shrinks or grows I don’t really care I just know I don’t want to go back to Reddit. I also like the ability to defederate as I’ve seen that reddit has had a long history of allowing bad actors to go untouched because they’ve never broken an actual rule.

Two things.

First, you can opt to follow that instance still, but I don’t know why you would want to hang out with a bunch of Nazis.

Second, I liken it to cutting out a cancerous growth. If you have an instance infested with Nazis and those Nazis are not being stopped due to a lack of admin and/or mods or worse actively being promoted by an admin then defederate them to keep the Nazis from spreading.

Look at the incel and redpill movements that happened on Reddit. Failure to act quick enough helped the movements grow. They were vitriolic to most people but most of them didn’t break any rules. They were destructive in nature and validated misogyny but Reddit didn’t act until it was a very vocal and well established community on its platform. Now, even after closing down their major subreddits, those users who weren’t the most extreme still actively espouse the values of those communities and have created new subreddits.

Or in this case Beehaw has some very progressive ideals, with rules that require a lot more active moderation, they can’t handle the influx of everyone jumping ship from Reddit. Instead of leaving the gate open for people who will ignore the rules it’s better to shut it and open a smaller “apply to join” door creating a protective barrier from individuals that may be Nazis.

In closing, I’ve both been a shitty redditor and seen shitty redditors and I appreciate that the fediverse has tools to decouple and recouple as needed. And again, if you like hanging out with Nazis that instance still exists and you can willingly hang out with Nazis.