A also bothers me. It isn't hard for an instance admin to change the character limit, and does seem like a way instances could stand out from each other, yet it

A also bothers me. It isn't hard for an instance admin to change the character limit, and does seem like a way instances could stand out from each other, yet it's rarely done. Federated instances do seem to handle long posts gracefully (there's a "read more" expando link). B seems inherent to social media as we know it. What would be a better design for you? C is handled in part by relay servers synchronizing content between instances. Small instances often aren't well-connected though and I think both instance admins and relay operators could do better here.