I appreciate the decentralized architecture and the privacy that comes with it, but it’s organization isn’t great.
I’m not sure if I understand why certain instances can choose not to federate with other instances. It just seems to limit the content that is accessible to me. I don’t want to have to switch between 4-5 Lemmy accounts that I switch just to curate what I to see. Its impractical.
I’m not happy with the changes on reddit and will most likely ditch entirely soon. Lately I’ve only been using it for tutorials. But at least I wasn’t closed off from viewing anything and everything I wanted without sifting through instances. I hope great things come for Lemmy, competitors are great, but in its current state it just seems doomed.
An instance owner is still running a server. Reddit isn’t federated with anyone. Posts on Reddit don’t interact with Twitter, or on Youtube. So odds are you already bounce between several accounts. Yet on the fediverse, posts from Mastodon about a video on Peertube, can be discussed on Lemmy. If that’s not flexible enough, then that’s okay. If you think of it that way, then the big federated instances are an analog to sub-groups on one platform. Some instances specifically don’t want to federate, because for one reason or another they want a more narrow community. No harm done to us or them. Your time is your own, spend it doing what you want.