It saddens me that every time I see a fediverse-related post on HN, it gets inundated by people who don't "get it" and that is to be expected: fediverse is not Twitter and everybody gets Twitter. That change in mentality is not easy.
Fun story: massive influx of users from India recently and the timelines got flooded by posts indirectly asking: "what is the way to fame here? How do I get followers?". Fediverse doesn't work like that. You just… talk with others. There's no "you and your followers". There's "us".
Analogy: you are not in a metropole. You are in a village that is extremely well connected to all other villages. You do not need to shout to be heard.
I'm on a FOSS-focused instance. We talk all kinds of stuff and FOSS is one of them. I have my Home timeline where I follow all the people I want to hear from (both my instance and all others). I have my Instance timeline where I'm basically guaranteed to read interesting stuff I can reply to and meet new people who also considered this instance to be their haven. And the Known Fediverse timeline… Well, it's fun to browse but come on, imagine a timeline of all tweets on Twitter: mostly useless.
Choosing the right instance also involves choosing the right moderators for you. Mods can block other instances. If you don't like what the mods do, change instance or start your own community. After all, it's not Twitter, the people decide how content is moderated, not a for-profit company.
That's the fediverse for ya. Hope to see you there!
Fun story: massive influx of users from India recently and the timelines got flooded by posts indirectly asking: "what is the way to fame here? How do I get followers?". Fediverse doesn't work like that. You just… talk with others. There's no "you and your followers". There's "us".
Analogy: you are not in a metropole. You are in a village that is extremely well connected to all other villages. You do not need to shout to be heard.
I'm on a FOSS-focused instance. We talk all kinds of stuff and FOSS is one of them. I have my Home timeline where I follow all the people I want to hear from (both my instance and all others). I have my Instance timeline where I'm basically guaranteed to read interesting stuff I can reply to and meet new people who also considered this instance to be their haven. And the Known Fediverse timeline… Well, it's fun to browse but come on, imagine a timeline of all tweets on Twitter: mostly useless.
Choosing the right instance also involves choosing the right moderators for you. Mods can block other instances. If you don't like what the mods do, change instance or start your own community. After all, it's not Twitter, the people decide how content is moderated, not a for-profit company.
That's the fediverse for ya. Hope to see you there!