i’ve seen the sentiment that most of the growth being on lemmy with .world taking on the large share of users isn’t necessarily positive. other than the fact that the point of federation is decentralizing, what kind of issues arise from congregating heavily in a single instance?
i know even in just .world there a few redundant communities and i imagine that this is compounded in other instances. i don’t suppose i should expect or even want monolithic communities at the whim of just a few moderators or admins, but i don’t want to miss out on discussion and content for communities i’m interested in.
i guess i’m just curious what the development of communities and their interaction should look like with federation, and how browsing and engaging with these disparate but related spaces is going to work for the average user.
apologies if my questions about federation are basic or these questions are well known and understood for those who have been a part of communities like this for longer than i have.
Here’s my spin on your model: Generalist instances will also be important to the overall health precisely because they will be the catch-all where the masses flock, keeping the other types of instances relatively clean and on topic.
Generalists will bring in traffic and be very busy, but people who just want to troll or don’t care much will remain in these types of instances, whereas those who have a need to flock as in 1, 2, 3 will jump ship accordingly. Whenever any given generalist instance becomes too overwhelming for other instances, they will be defederated, making them rise and fall at a higher rate than other instances.