> Personallly, I think an anonymous social media could work better.
I'm leaning hard in the opposite direction. In my mind, a social network graph that is extremely personal and reflects and behaves like an _actual social network_ is "the way".
I run my own ActivityPub node. There is no reason for anyone to want to join who doesn't know me personally and want to join in just for personal reasons.
Then I federate with nodes that I personally know, not for exposure but because I want to follow their updates and occasionally chat with them about things (e.g. I follow Codeberg because I think what they're doing, particularly with Forgejo, is interesting).
I also _do not_ federate with generic instances like the main Mastodon one because they're not focused/personal enough for my taste (that's where you get the "eh, might as well" crowd").
This does mean I have a low rate of discovery of new stuff, but that's the way real socializing goes as well. Most of your time is spent with people you already know and occasionally either you change contexts and meet someone new or your existing actual social network introduces you to someone new.
That said, there are different use cases for social networks which is more the "publishing" angle that needs a much broader but shallower network (probably same for discovery which is probably just the other side of publishing). I haven't thought as much about these use cases, but it seems necessarily fraught because once you get to publishing, bad actors get interested, even (/especially?) if it's anonymous. I'm not sure there is a solution to that problem.