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My problem with fediverse is that is not that well connected. There are some mastodon instances, but I am not sure if you are a user on one instance you have ac

My problem with fediverse is that is not that well connected. There are some mastodon instances, but I am not sure if you are a user on one instance you have access to other instance. I am not sure if we have fediverse, or if we have isolated siloses. I am asking if that is the case.

TechSquidTV 3y ago
I see people repeatedly misunderstand this aspect unfortunately, because it's hurting the adoption. It has no effect what instance you are on, you are all on Activity Pub. You can join any instance you want and it will be no different from joining any other instance. You can interact with anyone on any instance. This is just like how you only need to know my Email address to send me a message, you do not need to also use the same Email provider as me.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- neogodless 3y ago
  > it will be no different from joining any other instance This is not 100% accurate. Who the collective members of a server follow affects the content shown in searches and feeds to some degree. For example, compare https://hachyderm.io/tags/cybertruck https://hachyderm.io/tags/cybertruck to https://mastodon.social/tags/cybertruck https://mastodon.social/tags/cybertruck As you can see, the bigger server 50% more posts, 40% more participants, 25% more posts today. As you surf your "local server", you don't get "everything" from the Fediverse. If you care about that, you likely want to join the "biggest" server you can. Personally I don't care too much about this. There's more content added to the Fediverse than I have time to consume, and so seeing a slice based on who I currently follow and the server I utilize is plenty for me. But it also makes sense if it bothers people who don't want to miss out on some zeitgeist.
- iteratethis 3y ago
  There are incredibly important differences in user experience when picking one instance over the other. A very small one has a large likelihood to disappear. Each instance has different moderation rules. On a small instance, you don't even see entire threads and lots of other stuff does not sync properly.
jonathankoren 3y ago
The servers are connected. That’s the federation.
sleepybrett 3y ago
it is probably not unless you are on some very extreme instances.
pimterry 3y ago
In general, yes, a user on any mastodon instance can access any other - they are not siloed. Even further: a user on a mastodon instance can see & interact with posts on Lemmy (the Reddit alternative), pics on Pixelfed (=Instagram), videos on Peertube (=Youtube), and content from a long list of other services, all from their single mastodon instance. (There are exceptions, e.g. you could run a siloed internal company mastodon, and notably server administrators are able to block other servers entirely - but as a user you can always choose a server that federates as widely as you'd like, and if you self-host you're unlikely to block or be blocked by anybody)
sschueller 3y ago
If your instance on which the user is on or the other one blocks that instance you will not have access. The user identity is an issue on the fediverse and it is know by the creators of ActivityPub. There are plans to create a way for global identities which will solve many of these issues.
rsynnott 3y ago
> There are some mastodon instances, but I am not sure if you are a user on one instance you have access to other instance. _In general_ you may assume probably yes. Caveats are if one of the users instances blocks the other one's instances (in practice, rare) or if one or both instances doesn't federate at all (Truth Social and Gab are the big examples of this).

TechSquidTV 3y ago

I see people repeatedly misunderstand this aspect unfortunately, because it's hurting the adoption. It has no effect what instance you are on, you are all on Activity Pub. You can join any instance you want and it will be no different from joining any other instance. You can interact with anyone on any instance. This is just like how you only need to know my Email address to send me a message, you do not need to also use the same Email provider as me.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
neogodless 3y ago
> it will be no different from joining any other instance This is not 100% accurate. Who the collective members of a server follow affects the content shown in searches and feeds to some degree. For example, compare https://hachyderm.io/tags/cybertruck https://hachyderm.io/tags/cybertruck to https://mastodon.social/tags/cybertruck https://mastodon.social/tags/cybertruck As you can see, the bigger server 50% more posts, 40% more participants, 25% more posts today. As you surf your "local server", you don't get "everything" from the Fediverse. If you care about that, you likely want to join the "biggest" server you can. Personally I don't care too much about this. There's more content added to the Fediverse than I have time to consume, and so seeing a slice based on who I currently follow and the server I utilize is plenty for me. But it also makes sense if it bothers people who don't want to miss out on some zeitgeist.
iteratethis 3y ago
There are incredibly important differences in user experience when picking one instance over the other. A very small one has a large likelihood to disappear. Each instance has different moderation rules. On a small instance, you don't even see entire threads and lots of other stuff does not sync properly.

jonathankoren 3y ago

The servers are connected. That’s the federation.

sleepybrett 3y ago

it is probably not unless you are on some very extreme instances.

pimterry 3y ago

In general, yes, a user on any mastodon instance can access any other - they are not siloed. Even further: a user on a mastodon instance can see & interact with posts on Lemmy (the Reddit alternative), pics on Pixelfed (=Instagram), videos on Peertube (=Youtube), and content from a long list of other services, all from their single mastodon instance. (There are exceptions, e.g. you could run a siloed internal company mastodon, and notably server administrators are able to block other servers entirely - but as a user you can always choose a server that federates as widely as you'd like, and if you self-host you're unlikely to block or be blocked by anybody)

sschueller 3y ago

If your instance on which the user is on or the other one blocks that instance you will not have access. The user identity is an issue on the fediverse and it is know by the creators of ActivityPub. There are plans to create a way for global identities which will solve many of these issues.

rsynnott 3y ago

> There are some mastodon instances, but I am not sure if you are a user on one instance you have access to other instance. _In general_ you may assume probably yes. Caveats are if one of the users instances blocks the other one's instances (in practice, rare) or if one or both instances doesn't federate at all (Truth Social and Gab are the big examples of this).