Kind of off topic, but like the author I was looking at Mastodon yesterday (reading the ruby code, ha ha!). One thing struck me, though. The documentation seems to imply that it doesn't matter what instance you're on and to simply look for an instance that has people you get along with. However that doesn't seem to be a good idea in some cases and I'm wondering if I'm wrong.

Some instances are blocked by other instances. And even though some are only "silenced", if you happen to join an instance that is blocked by a lot of other instances, then nobody will see what you are writing. For example, I joined mstdn.jp because it's in Japan (which I am as well), and it's popular. I thought it would be convenient to join that instance because then I can follow more Japanese people and improve my Japanese. But then I found out that mstdn.jp is blocked by some other instances due to fears over lolicon material (it hasn't shown up in my brief troll of the federated feed, so I wonder how prevalent it actually is -- also, I wonder if my information is old news and it isn't actually blocked by people now...).

So potentially anything I write will never show up in the federated feed in those other instances (and may be completely blocked by other instances). So I should pick a different instance. Sounds easy, but which one?

The problem is that (as I mentioned earlier), I want to follow content on the main Japanese servers. So I need to find a server that doesn't block those servers entirely. Except there doesn't seem to be any way to find out exactly what servers people are blocking (except for a handful who helpfully tell you that they are following the tootcafe blocklist[1]). That kind of solves my particular problem because the main Japanese servers are not blocked on that list.

But, for me it illustrates a pretty serious problem. How do I know that the instance I'm on isn't blocked by the majority of the fediverse? If I'm writing and I'm interested in a wide variety of people reading what I'm writing, how do I ensure that I position myself in the right place? And if I like an instance (regardless of a lack of moderation that is causing it to be blocked by the world), how do I remain connected with the people on that instance without maintaining a presence there?

It almost seems to me that I really need multiple accounts on multiple instances to ensure that I can get what I want -- but since the client is tied to the instance (as a web sever), that's a difficult trick...

Sorry for the length (for people who got this far). My ideas are still a little unformed.

[1] - https://github.com/tootcafe/blocked-instances