or maybe some other terminology would be better? lots of people get confused when you ask them to choose an instance, sometimes I think even the word “proxy”, “host”, or “hub” is simpler
the specific terms aren’t my point, just a discussion to see if we can come up with a better name
Rewording it doesn’t really help.
Old adage…People don’t want choices, they want what they want.
Every time you ask a question you lose a chunk of your audience. With something like lemmy, they want to look at messages and respond. Let them do that. Encourage them to choose an instance later, when they’re equipped to make that choice.
Yes that’s a hard problem with federation… mastodon went for a default instance as a solution. There are likely better ones but that’s a problem lots of people are working on.
What you describe is catering to the marginal user: https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-marginal-user
Luckily the Fediverse doesn’t have to grow at all costs and can aim for more long term goals.
yes and no… we don’t have revenue goals, but we have goals for the fediverse and we have the social media critical mass problem: you have to hit a critical mass before you become indispensable… if people try the fediverse and there’s not enough content, they tend to just leave rather than stick with it