Wow. I respect your opinion, which was obviously carefully considered, and I completely disagree with your perspective about instances being a dead end.
As instances are currently structured, they are tied to web domain, and actually owned by somebody somewhere. That somebody has a level of commitment having setup hosting and configured the server itself, and likely to want to not lose their toys. If that somebody refuses to enforce order in their instance, they can be defederated. Thus, bad actors incur risk. There is power in this structure.
This is all public. Somebody owns it. It goes back to real people, who can have real consequences if they do bad things.
There’s a lot of people out there doing bad things. I don’t see a lot of that here.
I’ve seen a lot of crappy ways to organize people on the internet.
This one seems to work alright. For now.
I’ve read your posts and believe I understand your stance. I fundamentally disagree.
This thing that you call a barrier to entry … I call it commitment and willinness to place your nuts on the line. These things are the basis of polite society. When they are allowed to work, they truly do so, and communities result. People with skin in the game act better. Instances provide governance in a natural, oganic way (despite your claim that its unnatural) that fallls directly from the structure.
You’ve made other points about needing fealty to an instance of people you don’t know up front and trusting your admins.
Yup. You are joining a social group. This is the natural order of things. Don’t like it, or want to tinker? Spin up your own.
It’s interesting to clearly understand your point, find you to be reasonable, and entirely disagree. :)