I think the best approach might be general subject-specific instances? Like, video.games with a main games community, meme community, then smaller communities for various games - or sports.social, with communities for each sport.
I feel like we’re going to end up with a particular community on a particular instance ending up as the “default” community for that subject, but it’d probably be better (in an ideal world) to have those on separate instances to maintain some degree of decentralization
I know that it’s inevitable, but the signup flow should try to weaken that effect instead of contribute to it. An example of how not to do it is Mastodon’s old homepage which led to only one instance, mastodon.social, to “make onboarding easier”.
Some degree of centralization is inevitable. I think it may be 2-4 main instances that people will predominately use.
I think the best approach might be general subject-specific instances? Like, video.games with a main games community, meme community, then smaller communities for various games - or sports.social, with communities for each sport.
I feel like we’re going to end up with a particular community on a particular instance ending up as the “default” community for that subject, but it’d probably be better (in an ideal world) to have those on separate instances to maintain some degree of decentralization
If a community goes to shit due to power tripping mods you can just switch instances too.
I know that it’s inevitable, but the signup flow should try to weaken that effect instead of contribute to it. An example of how not to do it is Mastodon’s old homepage which led to only one instance, mastodon.social, to “make onboarding easier”.