Reprinted from the Fediverse-City Matrix room, with permission from the author (myself):
I was just participating in another discussion elsewhere on the connotations and perceptions relating to a global feed of the entire known Fediverse, as it pertains to what various platforms call it (in their selector tabs).
Lots of suggestions, and every platform uses a different nomenclature. Some use 'global', some use 'live', and there's a few others as well that try to convey that type of extremely busy feed.
But then I touched on the subject of Local feeds - not all Fediverse platforms utilize this type of concatenated feed. I related that the Hometown fork of mastopub was [at least one of] the first to incorporate this as both a feed, and a type of post that is localized to only that particular instance.
I also, because I've read his contention, included the Dev's reasoning on having such a utility as a feature - because he intended Hometown to be a Fediverse platform that could encourage a Highly localized "community".
So you can select the other various, common types of scope for a post when making a post, as well as posting something that is only viewable to other users on your local instance - thereby supporting the 'local community only' aspect that has eluded and mostly deluded users on other platforms.
Why "deluded", because having a Fediverse account in the minds of most folks coming from the deprecated, monolithic silo space is something that has been heavily promoted by Fedizens as one of the reasons why it's better to use the Fediverse instead of those impersonal deprecated silo systems.
And that's simply not true.
Take me, for example. I have several accounts and interact using them with different circles of people (I won't get into the power of recursive circles as they were implemented in gplus). So I'mma just use mastodon.social, one of the biggest monolithic-like silo instances in the Fediverse, as an example here.
People there, most often n00bs from the November Rain or later) talk about the sense of "community" they have there, when they're really only speaking of the connections they have by following and being followed by not just people on that instance, but across the entire Fediverse.
The sense of community that almost everyone in the Fediverse perceives is mostly a compilation of the follows and followers that they each have, and is unique to themselves alone.
For example, I prolly know 4 or 5 people on each instance I have an account on. My community is comprised almost entirely of the direct connections I have made with others across the Fediverse at large, and yes, people on platforms with 'local-only' feeds to see my posts, know them to be local, but so do folks on other instances watching their 'global feeds' (or home feeds where someone they follow includes a follow of my account).
So to me, in my experience, my community is comprised of those who I've made connections with and the people they are connected to, with very little traffic from the local instance I am on at any given time.
To think that you're going to have a community on mastodon.social consisting of people primarily from that instance is a bit naive, IMO, coz your default feed grows exponentially with foreign user's posts the more you connect with anyone - not just the people you follow that are local to your instance. You see something, you interact because it's interesting, pertinent, or relevant to you - you don't do that because you've discerned that you will only interact with local accounts... that just ain't natural, human tendency.
So the creator of the Hometown fork realized that one type of vehicle in the feature set to mark this kind of delineation was that of the ability to post and see in your feed, local only posts, with the overt assertion that Hometown is a fork that in part, is a platform that can facilitate the social diaspora consisting of a 'mostly local' community.
Even entire instances, named or stated as localized geographically or topically, as having publicly open registrations miss this mark in a big way - people for whatever reason, want a Fediverse account, pick a host/instance, by whatever criteria, and then inadvertently end up creating their own diaspora of social connections across the entire Fediverse anyway.
nostr, Bluesky (when it eventually fully supports other instances), Threads (yeah, I know, it's a bastard, lolz), Minds, and other, bigger instances or monoliths, don't try to capitalize on this notion of "Your instance is your community" because overwhelmingly, it just isn't the case in reality.
I'm not saying that there aren't Fediverse instances are successful in cultivating small communities consisting of connections with others on those particular instances, but the most successful of those are the instances that have actually disabled Federation on those instances, lolz.... There's lots of examples of that, which is kewl - to each their own.
But the tendency of everyone to follow the Ew! Shiny! paradigm of simply liking and following what you like irrespective of whether it's on your local instance or not is the lions share of how people interact with each other.
Your thoughts, observations?
Attached graphic attrib: A Jack Russell, happy as can be, sitting in the pilot's seat flying a Cessna, not knowing WTF he's doing.... but he's really happy! The caption reads: "I have no idea what I'm doing".
I've not been on #Mastodon 48 hours yet but I already passed follow numbers of single digits. Look, I know that's nothing special to most, but it does put a little smile on my face. Thank you for the #Follows & #Boosts! I plan on sharing some older stuff to get more content on here, especially since I'm still unable to get into my #CraftRoom since fracturing my ankle. 😥👎🏻 #MastodonNoob#InjuryWoes
I see people everywhere on #Mastodon say that "this is not like #Twitter, people don't clamor for likes and RTs and #Follows"
Speak for yourself, but I LOVE having people interact with my content. There's literally no reason for me to be here posting my content if nobody sees, reacts, or cares. If. Mastodon didn't have #Boost or #Favorites I probably wouldn't be here, nor would a lot of others, I feel.🤷🏻♂️
It's Friday so we do a #followfriday thing? I'm a transmedia artist from Uganda, mostly work in #film and #writing in the #sff realms and would love to follow people in the same fields, generally, but anyone involved in the #art business, or those who #shitpost and have a good sense of humor. I'll #followback such folk.
Its hard to read a post with so many hashtags, but well, looking to increase my #followers and #follows so give me a boost or tag people you think I should connect with.
I created this account on 6/6/23, intending it to be my replacement #Instance for my current/active one https://kolektiva.social/@MsDropbear. However back then, after doing all my #Imports et al, i halted my changeover & placed this https://infosec.exchange/@MsDropbear42 on-hold. That was coz i was disappointed, indeed frustrated, that several of my desired #Follows, each of which work fine in #kolektiva, seemed to work only partially or not at all in #infosec. Huh?
Every now & then i've logged back into this account to check if they're better, & no they're not. That's a bugger, coz the infosec.exchange Instance seems to have several nice GUI enhancements over other #Mastodon Instances' #browser websites' #AdvancedWebInterface, which would be good to use.
So, a bit of a #Catch22; make infosec.exchange my new full-time daily home & accept the effective loss of those Follows, or stick with the fully-available Follows but slightly less sophisticated UI of kolektiva.social. Hmmm.
Tonight whilst doing this latest round of testing & head-scratching, i did at least finally ascertain, afaict, exactly why those particular account-Follows aren't working well here. At least one of them is from the domain @bird.makeup, which only tonight i realised, per https://infosec.exchange/about - Moderated servers, is listed! Ah.
⬇️
bird.makeup
Limited
Reason not available
So then i checked each of the troublesome Follows, & voila, they're all on that domain. Gaaaah. 🤦♀️Weirdly though, two other Follows, also on that domain, seem to be working ok here, so that's another huh? 🤷♀️
I'd be sad to lose all four, but the one i most wish to have still, if i had to pick, is the Crikey one. Doing a search in infosec.exchange yielded a possible alternative, which uses a different domain, not included in the Moderated servers list; @crikey_news. So now it's another little waiting game; dunno how long it'll take for my Follow request to be approved [or not], & then... does it actually feed the Crikey posts into my Home timeline with the same alacrity as now in kolektiva.social? If yes, then i'll make infosec.exchange my new daily Instance. If no... then... 🤯
Reminder for those interested that we have a list of people working on security and defence policy topics (mastondon and twitter handles) #defence#security#follows#ukraine#natsec