No, it doesn't really encourage closed off instances. I've been using for a while and, especially during recent times,my gut says the author's just wrong here;

No, it doesn't really encourage closed off instances. I've been using for a while and, especially during recent times,my gut says the author's just wrong here; not my experience and also not likely to happen -- even if that's what some people think they want. My belief is that the collective "want" for something like Twitter, plus the superior model for doing so, will drive Mastodon to be effectively the new Twitter. Roughly, I think the human desire to "be up on everything" aka the desire for a "town square" will override this "divided up little spaces" thing. Two things make me optimistic about that. The first is the personal experience of watching a strong push for "Content Warnings" and the subsequent mostly-dismantling of that idea (owing to the fact that it became apparent that the sort of thing some people wanted to be warned against was also the very thing you should be paying attention to, mostly in the realm of racism). But the second and bigger feels like the killer here, if companies are smart enough to figure it out. On Mastodon, companies and corporations can be their OWN primary source of truth. No Eli Lilly Situation. They're starting to catch on.