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.
What happens if I make an account on a niche instance, and it’s operator decides to close it? Is my account toast? If yes, doesn’t that incentivize me to centralize more by only making accounts on the biggest and most stable instances so I don’t lose my “email” history? Not criticizing, just trying to understand.
It doesn’t feel like you aren’t trying to criticize Lemmy. This defense of your question seems very disingenuous.
Why would you knowingly make your account on an instance you believe to be unstable? Why would you trust a niche instance to be your “Main” if you couldn’t trust it’s administration?
As for Lemmy in general; the application is not yet matured enough in it’s codebase; there is currently no methods that I know of for you to transfer your account out of a Lemmy instance anyways…it hasn’t been developed yet. This feature is most definitely planned; but hasn’t been implemented as far as I can tell.
All I can tell you is choose wisely. Or don’t. I don’t care. The standard on Mastodon has always been you should run at least One Main and One Alt account anyways…so if something about your choice of a main instance unsettles you; create an alt quietly on a ‘bigger and more stable general instance’ or another ‘small-but-stable niche instance’ to fall back on depending on your preferences and needs.
As for myself; I’m here because I trust the person I know from the privacytools.io keybase chatroom(s); the developer who literally modded that room and did everything he could to make that original website worth something.
I appreciate your answer to my question, but not your aggressive tone. Before yesterday I had never even heard of a federated service, I’m just trying to understand how things work to make the best decision on a “home base”.
I wasn’t trying to be disingenuous, but just head off attacks from the insecure who might mistake my intentions. Thanks again for the in-depth answer.
It would be better if you didn’t treat the Lemmy community like it was reddit; or you’re always going to get the same redditor snark you always have.