Most people access the Fediverse through one of the large instances: lemmy.world, kbin, or beehaw. New or small instances of Lemmy have no content by default, and can most easily get content by linking to larger Lemmy instances. This is done manually one “Community” at a time (I spent 15 minutes doing this yesterday). Meanwhile, on larger instances, content naturally aggregates as a result of the sheer number of users. Because people generally want a user experience similar to Reddit, I think it’s inevitable that most user activity will be concentrated in one or two instances. It is probable that these instances follow in the footsteps of Reddit- the cycle repeats.
I actually think the Fediverse is in the beginning the process of fragmenting into siloed smaller, centralized instances. Beehaw, which is on the list of top instances, just blacklisted everyone from lemmy.world. Each of the three largest instances now are working to be a standalone replacement for Reddit and are in direct competition with each other. It is possible that this fragmentation and instability? of Lemmy instances will kill the viability of Federated Reddit altogether, but hopefully not.
These are my main takeaways from my three days on the Fediverse. I will stick around to see if the Fediverse can sustain itself after the end of the Reddit blackouts.
If being focused on one thing is for you then by all means, go for it. I very much doubt that that’s the case for everyone, though, not everyone is comfortable saying “metal is my whole (online) life”, “crypto is my whole life”, “plush toys are my whole life”, and if that isn’t the case, well, do you join the plush toys or death metal instance?
It’s not like the universe put an upper cap on the number of communities. Instances themselves can be little villages in which everyone knows each other on a human, instead of interest, or they can be big cities in which you’re considered crazy if you greet someone on the street, goes about their way, and maybe you get a chance encounter. Or all they do is focus on wet shaving and gladly engage with anyone else who is in need of advise or information, but not nearly as nerdy about it than them.
There’s place for all of that in the fediverse.