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How reddit crushed the biggest protest in its history: Did it, though?
(www.theverge.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I would imagine that instances would really compete on channels/communities/magazines and the mods/admins running those. At a certain point, then, the instances would also tend to have some kind of home field advantage on new users who sign up specifically for that instance's sports communities. Users from other instances can still interact with the most popular communities, but that's what I imagine when people talk about instances that focus on a particular niche.