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.
Is it difficult to find a small instance that has access to the larger instances? Are you able to post to both Beehaw and lemmy.world from the server you mention?
I’m thinking about self-hosting an instance, but I’m not clear if these bigger instances would block me because I’m some little unknown server. Would they have to manually give me access to interact (federate?) with them if I self-host?
They don’t automatically block you. Beehaw seems on the lookout of troublesome users more than other instances. When they notice a lot of those users are coming from the same instance, they just defederate it until better tools become available to moderate.
I’m still federated with both instances. I’m also the only user on my instance.
I am from feddit.de and have subscribed to communities on my home instance, lemmy.ml, lemmy.world, pathfinder.social and beehive and can post and comment there to my heart’s content.
I don’t know how private/self hosted instances work