This reminds me a lot of old BBSs, specifically the segmentation and even some of the post propagation through federation/etc. it seems a really brilliant way to filter content to reduce take over/bullying. Not perfect by any means, but so far impressed.
Remember folks, if you're feeling irritated about lack of access or not enough instances, consider starting your own. Encourage friends to join. Build your little world and share as you desire. I think that is where this medium will shine.
@Cheshire There's still a lot of monetary value in what people are posting here, so eventually people are going to try and game the system to maximize their access to it
@Phancypants Definitely, and it's on us who have opsec backgrounds to help defend the spaces. Come up with new ways to provide opsec on the server so that they can't be monetized as easily, but still able to maintain accessibility.
@Phancypants There is a certain amount of pressure on us as a community to try to create/encourage tools that will help the community flourish.
Examples would be:
Setting up guides on starting up instances.
Establish best practices on running an instance(number of users recommended, how to admin an instance.
Tools to minimize effort and cost to starting an instance.
At the same time I think there is enough internal pressure by design to keep on one instance.
@Cheshire Reminds me of the same thing. A lot more users, and the propagation is faster; but there is the same feel. We don't quite have the same concept as 'boards' as we used to, since hashtags can cross federation.
As with those old boards, we may end up with loosely connected islands of high connectivity as the community self-segregates. When that happens, it'll be worth it to have multiple accounts.
@sysadmin1138 I strongly suspect that is where federation will come into play. I think the segmentation and so
silo-ing is inevitable, but at the same time I think that we will see more conscious sharing between groups.
@Cheshire Old BBSes is a great analogy! I basically missed those - they were just a hair before my time. I only caught the very end of them.
@AGTMADCAT Don't get me wrong, I entered in only at their sunset, but I had the opportunity to play with them some. For that matter I studied internet history to get a better grasp of what existed before my time and to find out how things developed to where they are now.
@Cheshire I'm a little worried about instance fracture at the beginning. A lot of the early instances are likely to fold, and that'll result in people having to create new accounts.
On the other hand, not ENOUGH instances means everyone is putting their eggs in the same basket, or groups of instances creating federation monopolies