<story><title>The Federated App Problem</title><url>https://plug-world.com/posts/the-federated-app-problem/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sxg</author><text>I agree with the premise of the article. I’m a new Mastodon user trying to give the platform an honest shot, but I can’t understand why I would choose any particular server over another. Why choose anything other than the pseudo-default Mastodon.social? If I’m forced to choose another server, is that choice actually meaningful? I feel like I’m randomly picking between Hachyderm and TechHub.io and others. One advantage of federation I keep hearing is that servers can block other servers if their users become problematic. My question is this: why would all problematic users congregate on the same server? Isn’t it far more likely that you’ll have to block individual users across numerous servers to keep the platform sane?&lt;p&gt;I do see the potential advantages of federation to prevent the same fate that overcame Twitter and Reddit, but I can’t figure out how to make a user’s server choice actually meaningful. Without solving that piece of the puzzle, I don’t see any practical advantage to federated services.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Stephen304</author><text>Problematic users do tend to congregate on certain servers because they keep getting banned from better moderated ones. Eventually they find the ones that won&amp;#x27;t ban them, and now well moderated instances have an easy target to block them wholesale. That&amp;#x27;s how you end up with instances like explodingheads.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Federated App Problem</title><url>https://plug-world.com/posts/the-federated-app-problem/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sxg</author><text>I agree with the premise of the article. I’m a new Mastodon user trying to give the platform an honest shot, but I can’t understand why I would choose any particular server over another. Why choose anything other than the pseudo-default Mastodon.social? If I’m forced to choose another server, is that choice actually meaningful? I feel like I’m randomly picking between Hachyderm and TechHub.io and others. One advantage of federation I keep hearing is that servers can block other servers if their users become problematic. My question is this: why would all problematic users congregate on the same server? Isn’t it far more likely that you’ll have to block individual users across numerous servers to keep the platform sane?&lt;p&gt;I do see the potential advantages of federation to prevent the same fate that overcame Twitter and Reddit, but I can’t figure out how to make a user’s server choice actually meaningful. Without solving that piece of the puzzle, I don’t see any practical advantage to federated services.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>class4behavior</author><text>The same way people manage to decide whether to buy buns at the bakery on the right rather than the one on the left or donate to the NGO1 rather than NGO2 doing exactly the same, you ought to manage to judge which instance is a better fit or if it even matters in your case.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;why would all problematic users congregate on the same server? Isn’t it far more likely that you’ll have to block individual users across numerous servers to keep the platform sane?&lt;p&gt;Well, exactly. And who&amp;#x27;s doing all the blocking and filtering? What are the rules? And which community is better at reporting and keeping the instance the way you like it? What about your interests? If you join a busy generic instance, of course, you will become disinterested in your local timeline.</text></comment>