Why would you join when you can just follow the accounts that interest you on it from Lemmy or Mastodon/Pleroma/Akkoma/etc ???

Honestly a forum is much better than the endless stream of live chat that is basically Discord and Matrix, et al.

IRC > XMPP > Matrix > Discord.

Matrix is heavy. I ran my own instance once and it is very resource intensive (even using Dendrite) even if you have only joined a handful of rooms. XMPP chat gives most of the same things I need for chat and is much lighter but no one uses it (sadly). IRC deserves a mention for something that is rock solid and simple and will still be around after Matrix and Discord (if they ever end), however people can't post their meme pics or their emojis so it doesn't appeal to younger people.

Concerning Discord. I literally only made an account because I had classmates that made a server.

Because f*ck Meta? Isn't that enough?

There are other sources besides the big mainstream ones, such as The Walrus, The Tyee, The Conversation, Rabble, Canadian Dimension, and others I'm probably forgetting.

My main problem with live chat is its ephemeral nature. So you can end up having people asking the same thing that someone else asked but the previous answer is buried/lost. Forums are good because you can index and search.

It says it uses ActivityPub, so yes, interoperable. Though Mastodon has its own quirks and doesn't line up neatly with the protocol.

The thing is if you're going to be sharing the road with other vehicles, you need to ride predictably and communicate with other drivers/riders or you're just more likely to get yourself killed. Deciding to ignore a Stop sign is not predictable behaviour.

The specific distro doesn't really matter. What matters is package choice (being able to do the few things you listed with the apps you would like to use). I guess if you're among the Debian evangelists you probably value stability more than any other consideration. Just pick some server distro or Debian again.

Of course you don't. I'm sure 95% of people don't. Most people don't bother taking a stand on things unless it affects something more substantial like their wallets.

At what baseline should contributors be writing articles or edits? Like 10th grade reading level?

I always hear people appreciate brevity and clarity, but that seems a pretty tough task for certain subjects like the aforementioned math ones.

Who in their right mind at Netflix thought that putting out games would be a viable source of revenue.

What's a tweet?

Droughts in the west are going to end up causing mass migrations once all the water is finally gone, and the extreme heat in the east makes me think if anything people are going to be leaving the USA, probably in our lifetimes.

UI/UX is incredibly important in on-boarding and retaining users.

Buying a bike. I had one before but it was stolen and couldn't afford to buy a new one. I got a new job though that pays much more than my old job so hoping to finally get back to cycling.

Not sure I've ever run into anyone who seems to have put so much thought into this. Good stuff.

I suspect it's partially to do with the Activitypub protocol itself, at least how it's implemented by Mastodon, which most other software treat as the de-facto standard. Someone brought this up to Eugen on Mastodon where the guy was showing the different amount of boosts and what not. I remember it being different on every server the guy showed screenshots from, on the same post.

Wish I could find the thread, but Eugen basically said it's not a big concern to him and didn't sound like it would be fixed.

Even if your security oriented it seems many frown upon any self hosting whatsoever.

Sure, that's assuming the OP or those looking for a chart like this care about such things. This comment comes off across a bit as moral posturing.