Decentralization is obviously the big thing about the Fediverse but is it TOO decentralized to gain traction?
There is no reason why they have to be fully separate domains in the same branch. You can set up a system of fully independent moderation and extreme levels of customization while having them all on one site with a front page that allows everyone to see whats popular.
A front page wouldn’t prevent individual subgroups from requiring approval to join, it wouldn’t prevent subgroups from banning those it doesn’t want. It doesn’t prevent users from blocking subgroups that it doesn’t want to see on the front page.
What would be most useful is that now someone could create an account on the Reddit, Twitter, Facebook(?) alternatives and give them access to every community, and then allow each community to set its own rules, and customize its own to be unique while having a unified product to “sell” and get people to move.
Hot take? Blue Sky should be worked with to join the Fediverse as the twitter alternative and Mastodon should work to be the Facebook alternative
TLDR: One front page and general site for Lemmy, Mastodon…and to sign up and see whats popular and then have fully independent subgroups.
I feel like the current Lemmy, if it grew to be as big as Reddit, would immediately defederate from a large section of Lemmy itself, creating many separate communes rather than the one (or two) we have right now
There is that advantage.