Helmy

Honestly if i go back to having a fedi presence that's half the reason i want to self-host. Supposedly the close-knit communities are a good thing, but they're always about having one thing in common like some hobby, so you end up guilty of being off-topic. A generalist instance avoids that but it doesn't really form a local community.

The one i was previously on, it was generalist with reasonable policies (no fash, no jerks, otherwise post whatever). I went back to it recently to check its health, the admin said they quit posting over a callout post about e-dating age gap. I don't wanna be flippant about something that's definitely distressing to them but come on, half the instances end up dying for online reasons like this.

Self-hosting makes it simpler, don't like the posts, don't follow or block me/my instance, there's no admin you can bully with the threat of defederating.

slaps the top of the # This tag can fit SO MUCH explicit anthropomorphic art init

On the other hand I've seen a number of people on twitter now saying that they like it because it is a global chatroom, which is exactly what the global timeline's point was. But then the federation part ruined it, because if everyone chooses an instance based on what types of things they want to see, they're obviously going to see other types of stuff in the federated timeline.

Seems to me like the ideal arrangement would be an account where you can connect with friends/people you know, but also join groups of strangers that share interests.

In other words, they should bring back Google+.

Edit: i forgot about the global chatroom component LOL Basically seems like there should be three feeds:

• Posts by people I like/know/am interested in (e.g. following)
• Posts by people I share interests with (e.g. groups)
• Posts sorted by what things people are talking about (e.g. trending)