Lemmy claims decentralization, but once you join a community on one instance you’re still subject to that instance’s rules and moderators. Being banned from c/community@instance still means you can’t post there unless you make a new account elsewhere. That isn’t real decentralization, it’s just fragmentation where every instance ends up replicating the same centralized moderation power in a different place. Federated instances don’t stop this, they just scatter the same problem across multiple servers. If the goal is escaping centralized control, the reality is you still get banned, silenced, or cut off the same way, the only “freedom” is signing up somewhere else. That’s not decentralization in practice, it’s decentralization in name only.
Some instances are themed, some are generalist. Because multiple communities can exist around the same topic/theme, the user based ultimately ends up in a community hosted on an instance that fits their needs, because if it didn’t, they would simply move elsewhere.
Which ultimately means that if you get instance banned from an instance that hosts a community you want to use, there’s a good chance you weren’t going to last long in that community anyway…
I like themed instances and would enjoy them more if the All feed were personalized instead of the same for everyone. They are nice for browsing different content, sort of like a multireddit but choosing an instance that fits you best isn’t possible, you would need to analyze your votes compared to other users’ votes on each instance. Also I may not like tomorrow a topic I like today so choosing an instance based on a theme makes no sense to me.
That’s what your subscribed feed is for…
It doesn’t need to be the best fitting instance possible. It just needs to be an instance that lets you use and interact with the fediverse in a way that works with you. That’s why a lot of people use generalist instances. They’re no ones “best fit”, but they are also less likely to be bad fits for folk…