Also don't let media tell you that something is dead.
If people are using it, it's not dead.
If you're getting value out of it, it's not dead.
Something doesn't need to have half the world using it to not be dead.

Don't forget us kbin users too! We're all in the same boat now

it warms my heart to see so many people slowly figuring this out. This is what the internet was meant to be all along.

Hi from a kbin instance!

Hehe, the joys of troubleshooting and profiling. Isn't it fun?

You got this. <3
I don't have experience scaling Lemmy, but I do have experience scaling stuff in general. I'm sure you've got a few people here who'd be willing to talk things through with you if you get too frustrated.
And don't forget to breathe and step back if you have to. Your well being is more important.

Defederation I believe is a really powerful tool. More so than it seems. It creates islands of a sort and you can be more or less assured that your interests are respected. If they're not you move to an instance that federates with likeminded individuals. Makes it so much easier to isolate bad actors since they tend to group together. And then you disconnect from them and suddenly a whole avalanche of problems simply goes away. Moderation is obviously necessary but it is much more of a community effort. Keep in mind that most admins and mods are here because they want to use the forum just like you do. Your interests align much more than if a vc backed company Hosts your community with the singular goal of extracting as much value out of you as they can in whatever way available.

Yup, you can definitely extend this way past social media. Whatever it is, if it works for you, don't let anyone tell you that it shouldn't. It's too easy to get swept up in opinions of the masses. I like quiet spaces. You hear much more there.

I don't think I will ever forget my icq number

I don't know how much of a good fit it might be but maybe Divinity original sin 2?

Someone posted a link a while ago to an article called killing community. I believe it speaks what I've been thinking for a while. I've quit so many social media over such a long time but I'm also part of a small community of friends. We Have our own little corner of the internet with file sharing and things like password manager and chat server and so on. We've been going strong for 15 years and going. Growth at all costs destroys communities.

The Streisand effect is a beautiful beautiful thing isn't it

I think there is a lot of usability work still to be done. You can only sign in to your instance with your credentials, not at any other. Other instances should preferably give you a button to view the post you're currently looking at in your own instance. So click the button, type in the address of your instance, and it redirects you to your own instance with the post you were viewing already open. Right now you have to copy the address of the post you were viewing and paste it into your own instances search field, or get to the post in some other way on your own instance.
This is particularly problematic when a post links to another post using a full URL to the post. If you click that, you get moved to the original instance that this post is on, which may not be the instance you yourself are on.
This sounds more confusing than I believe it is. If you have an account on beehaw.org, you can only interact with other posts if you're currently viewing that post on beehaw.org. If you're not on beehaw.org, you have to find the post you want to interact with on beehaw.org first before you can interact with it.
I'm trying to come up with an analogy. Like... uh...
Imagine you're borrowing a book from a library. This library also has the possibility of borrowing books from other libraries if they don't have it. But once you've borrowed it, you can't just go back to any library and hand in the book there. You have to hand it in to the library you yourself have borrowed it from, which can then send it back to the library they borrowed it from. You always have to go through your own local library because the other libraries might not know who you are.
Maybe that's stretching it a bit. I'm definitely all ears for better analogies.

This has to be one of the strangest rabbit holes I've ever gone down.

I really do hope that's the case. I'm a bit skeptical but I really do wish.

I believe it just felt more pseudo anonymous because of how lively discussions can get, but nothing stops you from going back through peoples accounts and getting a feel for them. If you'd like to post something completely anonymously here you arguably have even more choice since you could set up accounts on entirely different instances with an entirely new name and nobody would know who you are. So I think it's a mentality problem and not exactly a technical thing. You can be anonymous here too. :)

No matter what it is, if it can be put in a tea bag, it will be.

That's a community/mindset issue, not a fediverse issue I think. It was useful because that's where the people went, so if the people went somewhere else, the niche communities would thrive there just the same I'd think.
Over the last 10 or so years this centralized mindset has really taken a big hold. Before sites like Reddit, Twitter, FB, etc. existed, the internet was basically all niche communities that all had their own space.
I think especially for niche communities the fediverse could be a fantastic opportunity.

Just save your instance as "reddit"/"apollo"/whatever on your phone. This is the trick they wish you didn't know.

sshhhh don't tell my boss I'm here