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I stole this from u/fuckass on Hexbear
PorkrollPosadist
joined 4 years ago
Federation means it’s almost meaningless which instance you register with, and as integration between instances and other Fediverse apps gets better it will just become more and more meaningless.
IMO, this couldn't be further from the truth. Different communities have different priorities, principles, and technical requirements, and will take different approaches to controversy. Some communities are low-profile and laid back. Others are magnets for abuse and may require additional moderation, and even technical changes, like disabling image embeds (as one example) to mitigate harassment. Some are filled with avid shitposters, while others insist on the utmost degree of civility. Some have advanced requirements for operational security. Some want broad access to the network, while other would prefer a quiet corner. Some might be focused on video and require an instance that can handle the additional bandwidth and storage requirements.
Who hosts your instance is important. The jurisdiction your instance is housed in is important. If a community requires special accommodations for accessibility or other reasons, that is important. If an instance wants to go above the technical level and do things like verify users (kinda like journa.host) that makes an important distinction from your typical instance.
In the beginning, we won't know who's trustworthy, but this is the Internet. There will be controversies, and we will see how various admins respond to these controversies. Over time, they will gain reputations, both good and bad. It is best if somebody who already has a good reputation, like a respected mod from another community is able to operate the new home for that community.
For now, it probably doesn't matter where you end up, but as time passes, it is good to keep an ear to the ground and see how things develop. Eventually you will find a solid niche. This is a problem even the fanciest join-xyz-fediservice website can't really solve, but it is meaningful.
As somebody who's generally interested in science and technology, HN also sufferers from terminal libertarian VC-brain. It's a club for wannabe founders of unicorn tech companies who view themselves as enlightened ubermench. This doesn't always bubble to the surface, but at times of controversy it is quite glaring. Most recently, when the founder of CashApp got murdered they were practically calling to liquidate the homeless, even though the incident - predictably - was the result of a personal dispute with somebody he knew.
Even if the subject matter scratches an itch, the community is not for me.
There are Mastodon instances with hundreds of thousands of active users, and none of them are ad supported. Donations generally are capable of paying the operating expenses, as long as the staff is halfway decent at creating a space that people appreciate.
At the moment, you can't subsribe to individual users on Lemmy, so there's no way to really consume posts from Mastodon, but I am pretty sure if a Mastodon user replies to a Lemmy comment, it will be visible on Lemmy. Problem is, as Knighthawk points out, Lemmy threads are kinda unintelligible on Mastodon. I suspect this will improve with time.
There's nothing they can do. Both the firm and the platform are completely infiltrated by intelligence assets.
I'm pretty sure this is something which needs to be implemented on Mastodon's end. Mastodon and Lemmy handle images a little differently. On Mastodon, videos / images work like attachments. They always show up below the comment. On Lemmy, images are embedded within the body of the comment. They can show up before, in between, or after the text.
For now, if it turns out to be shit, you can just join a different instance. Perhaps leave a note in your old bio which directs people to your new account.