This reminds me a lot of old BBSs, specifically the segmentation and even some of the post propagation through federation/etc. it seems a really brilliant way to filter content to reduce take over/bullying. Not perfect by any means, but so far impressed.
Remember folks, if you're feeling irritated about lack of access or not enough instances, consider starting your own. Encourage friends to join. Build your little world and share as you desire. I think that is where this medium will shine.
@Cheshire I'm a little worried about instance fracture at the beginning. A lot of the early instances are likely to fold, and that'll result in people having to create new accounts.
On the other hand, not ENOUGH instances means everyone is putting their eggs in the same basket, or groups of instances creating federation monopolies
@Phancypants Definitely, and it's on us who have opsec backgrounds to help defend the spaces. Come up with new ways to provide opsec on the server so that they can't be monetized as easily, but still able to maintain accessibility.
@Phancypants There is a certain amount of pressure on us as a community to try to create/encourage tools that will help the community flourish.
Examples would be:
Setting up guides on starting up instances.
Establish best practices on running an instance(number of users recommended, how to admin an instance.
Tools to minimize effort and cost to starting an instance.
At the same time I think there is enough internal pressure by design to keep on one instance.
@Cheshire There's still a lot of monetary value in what people are posting here, so eventually people are going to try and game the system to maximize their access to it