What is the point of small instances?
They come and go. They're random clutter. We only need a few big instances that hosts a majority of the communities and that's it. Why do we need so many smaller ones?
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They come and go. They're random clutter. We only need a few big instances that hosts a majority of the communities and that's it. Why do we need so many smaller ones?
1: Even big instances start out small.
2: Also having other instances besides the big ones helps prevent a monopoly over the fediverse.
3: Bigger isn't always better. Nothing wrong with a small Cozy community.
I agree and basically, it's not a bug, it's a feature
There is no monopoly if you have a dozen big instances. But if you have 1000 instances? What is the point. Can't start a community there without it going poof the next week.
That is always a risk for small instances.
It is the same for small businesses or libraries/museums funded by donations.
Imo just because there is a risk does not mean they shouldn't do it.
The core issue here is instances disappearing, and That goes into the discussion of the structure of the fediverse right now vs. the fediverse in the future
A dozen big instances feel better now, and I personally wouldn't make a community on a smaller instance unless I know it is likely to stay up. If it was run by an existing organization for example.
Long term though, I trust existing organizations to set up stable instances that won't be shut down easily. If a government, school, game company etc. makes an instance it's not likely to go down. Having lots of instances will look more normal then.
Ultimately we don't need to do anything differently, I recommend new people join a big instance and then make a new account once they know what instance they like.
note to everyone: please don't downvote good faith questions
OP asked a pretty reasonable open ended question. There are other people who may be thinking the same, and reading the discussions here might change their minds. Save downvoting for rule breaking / content that's bad for the community
Thank you for this
Would be nice to be able to backup your magazine/community, so if for example random.lemmy goes down, you can still migrate your /mini4wd elsewhere. Don't know how it could be implemented though, I'm still in the "i get it but not really" phase with the Fediverse.