I still don't know what this supposed burden is [0] ... you pick an instance (is that actually hard?) ... done.
[0] migration is a challenge if your instance vanishes without warning, but that's true of Bsky too.
[0] migration is a challenge if your instance vanishes without warning, but that's true of Bsky too.
I'm going to push back on the migrating being a challenge even for Bluesky if an instance vanishes. If nothing else, you do not need your old host ("PDS" in atproto parlance) to cooperate — or even be online — if you wish to migrate in Bluesky. With a local copy of your data, you can send your social graph to a new host with ease and be right back in business.
But I wouldn't say it's a fully inconsequential choice, either. Your instance and how it's situated in the wider fediverse does matter to some degree. Not having a full view of the network, missing meaningful replies, at the mercy of some admin #fediblock drama, etc.
Or maybe you finally find a good instance but your admin dislikes Meta so you're defederated from threads.net now. That's a bummer.
If you don't agree with your admin's choices on such important matters, your instance is not a good one for you.
The differentiation between instances, the way each can have their own community with its own morals is a strength, not a weakness. As the fediverse gets bigger, the bigger platforms will diversify more and have more of their own identity. For example beehaw, it's not really a Lemmy instance with some policies configured, it's beehaw. As the fediverse gets bigger, instances will develop their own identities more and it will be easier to choose.
And gab, for the cesspool it is, you can't deny it's got its own identity. Of course it's one that almost nobody wants to federate with but that's their right too. Freedom of speech doesn't mean everyone has to listen to you. The system works as intended.
The thing is, if you're aligned with your platform you probably agree with most of the choices your admin made. If not you can just pick another one.
But I think that's all about a totally different problem: people not finding the culture they want on Mastodon.
They've picked an email provider. They've picked a mobile phone provider. They've picked their car insurance. They pick what bars to socialise at. Yes people have no issues making choices like this at all.
Not likely. The world picked gmail for them
Gmail is the biggest but not the only one by far. The privacy movement getting more traction here than in the US might be playing into that too.
The new premise after the "de-federation" update is it still works transparently so long you're a good citizen with nothing to be ashamed of, which is enough to make users feel the Fediverse lost its thing or something along that.
No, that premise is a misunderstanding of the actual initial premise: build a bigger system via federation, that is a series of independent systems that can agree or disagree on precisely what level of interoperation they will engage in.
Some people mistakenly imagined that everyone would make the same choices, and thus "make an account and it works everywhere".