Lemmy claims decentralization, but once you join a community on one instance you’re still subject to that instance’s rules and moderators. Being banned from c/community@instance still means you can’t post there unless you make a new account elsewhere. That isn’t real decentralization, it’s just fragmentation where every instance ends up replicating the same centralized moderation power in a different place. Federated instances don’t stop this, they just scatter the same problem across multiple servers. If the goal is escaping centralized control, the reality is you still get banned, silenced, or cut off the same way, the only “freedom” is signing up somewhere else. That’s not decentralization in practice, it’s decentralization in name only.
I don’t think you understand federation. Its like bars. with reddit you only have bars owned by one place. here you have all sorts of independent one. if you don’t fit in at community@instance for whatever reason, maybe the mods are powertripping. Well you can go to community@otherinstance and talk on the subject. Just like if the bouncers at some place won’t let you in you can find one that is more chill. Hey man sometimes just someone who hangs out at a place turns you off. Its great to have options.
That just causes fragmentation, in Reddit all the community is in a single place, that’s what made it popular otherwise we could go back to using forums. Each person chooses a different one and then we end up with dozens of barely active forums.
You can subscribe to communities on different instances. I click All or Subscribed I see stuff that isn’t just in my instance.
That’s kind of the opposite of fragmentation. Personally, I enjoy seeing which instance each person is from.
well, lemmy itself is pretty niche. Yea I get that it’s frustrating when there’s a niche community with basically zero activity … I feel like that’s just because lemmy itself is relatively small.
well us just having a alternative keeps it being in one place and then there are other things like slashdot or any other competitors. piefed does a good job of grouping things (kinda comics seems to be split in at least two topics). Personally I don’t want to be in one place with everyone on the planet as I don’t like many people. I want a place with somewhat like minded folks just like I would with a club or bar or whatever.
go back to using forums.