Most people access the Fediverse through one of the large instances: lemmy.world, kbin, or beehaw. New or small instances of Lemmy have no content by default, and can most easily get content by linking to larger Lemmy instances. This is done manually one “Community” at a time (I spent 15 minutes doing this yesterday). Meanwhile, on larger instances, content naturally aggregates as a result of the sheer number of users. Because people generally want a user experience similar to Reddit, I think it’s inevitable that most user activity will be concentrated in one or two instances. It is probable that these instances follow in the footsteps of Reddit- the cycle repeats.
I actually think the Fediverse is in the beginning the process of fragmenting into siloed smaller, centralized instances. Beehaw, which is on the list of top instances, just blacklisted everyone from lemmy.world. Each of the three largest instances now are working to be a standalone replacement for Reddit and are in direct competition with each other. It is possible that this fragmentation and instability? of Lemmy instances will kill the viability of Federated Reddit altogether, but hopefully not.
These are my main takeaways from my three days on the Fediverse. I will stick around to see if the Fediverse can sustain itself after the end of the Reddit blackouts.
Also, it was common on Reddit to be automatically banned from a community if you participated in/subscribed to other communities.
Just being subscribed to certain communities meant that bots would track your comments and downvote you elsewhere.
This lead to artificial groupthink and corporate manipulation of the site due to the bots keeping track of dissent. The Reddit hivemind was seemingly very singular and unified on certain topics because of this behavior.
Regarding the Fediverse, instances blocking other instances are not ideal, but it’s a perk of federation. Alt right sites like Gab and Truth Social are also using these technologies, but have been blocked from federation to the rest of the Fediverse. A single site can quickly and easily devolve into the next Voat or Poal.