They come and go. They’re random clutter. We only need a few big instances that hosts a majority of the communities and that’s it. Why do we need so many smaller ones?
I think you’ve correctly identified a problem, but misidentified the solution.
It’s true that there are many redundant communities of which everyone would be better served if there were an easy way to group them together. The solution, however, is not to reduce the number of instances, but rather to provide more tools for instances to group communities together. You want communities to be spread across many instances because this maximizes user control - it’s kind of the entire point? But of course, the lack of grouping makes it very difficult to try to centralize discussion, which is important for the community to grow. This service is still a work in progress, so these kinds of things - I hope - will come in time, as both the technology and culture develops.
tl;dr: centralized control bad, centralized discussion good, the current system does a bad job of reconciling these two positions
People say that a few large instances would be easy pickings for the profit motive, and monetizing.
There is a lot of handwringing over on mastodon about how people should not be directed to the large instances by default. And that people need to join the small instances to make sure mastodon (or fedi-verse) is not taken over by a few who want to profit off it. They mock those on large instances. They tell people they should join small instances.
But I have seen many small instances close and leave people in the lurch. I have seen a few people have to move several times.
I have seen users be abandoned and left with a broken instance that doesn’t work, and the admin nowhere to be seen.
I agree. But maybe the medium ones aren’t too bad.
100% agree
The small intestine is actually the longest segment of the gastrointestinal tract — the long, continuous pathway that food travels through your digestive system. In the small intestine, food is broken down into liquid and most of its nutrients are absorbed. The waste is passed on to the large intestine.
When cars first started being mass produced it wasn’t just Ford doing it. There were like 50 manufacturers, big and small.
I think you’ve missed the entire point. Like, completely missed it.
