I guess the real question here is: is this a bad thing, or just a different thing?

Those are two different communities. The same as they would be on Reddit. Literally different names.

Communities are hosted on one a synced with others. So technology will be the same on all servers as long as they haven't defederated each other.

It's not a bug, it's a feature. Think of it like this:

• Instances: define some ToS and Code of Conduct
• Communities: define a theme and a sub-Code of Conduct

By having multiple instances, you aren't bound by a single ToS or Code of Conduct, you can pick whatever instance you want that matches the content you want to post to a community.

For example, the same "Technology" community could be on:

• an instance directed to kids
• an instance that allows visual examples of medical procedures
• an instance that discusses weapons technology

Having the community limited to a single instance, would never allow the different discussions each combination of instance:topic would allow, even if the topic is technically the same in all cases.

Forcing communities from multiple instances to merge, would also break the ToS of some of them.

So the logical solution is for the user to decide which instance:communities they want to follow and participate in, respecting the particular ToS and Code of Conduct of each.

On Reddit, the r/Technology community needs to follow a single set of ToS and Code of a Conduct. If you try to discuss something that meets the topic but is not allowed, then you will get banned, possibly from all of Reddit.

I don't think anything is necessarily wrong with fragmentation. What is wrong with smaller communities?
One problem with Reddit was that larger communities resulted in the lowest common denominator replies. And that dynamic got worse over time, to the point where real people began to sound like repetitive bots or meme-posting bots. Nothing wrong if you like that kind of community but it is nice to also have ones that are much better curated.
I particularly enjoyed the subs where I didn't dare post because I was obviously the most ignorant person there and most of the replies were informed and intelligent. r/Technology was the exact opposite of that.

Overall it feels like the days of massively centralized social media are over. Twitter and Reddit won't disappear but the fragmentation has already happened. Maybe it will be for the better.

The fragmentation is not inherent to how Lemmy works - the exact same fragmentation can and does happen on Reddit. Just a random example: https://imgur.com/inXBMMA

On Reddit, it usually works out in the end in one way or another. Either mods decide to team up and combine their communities, or the users just naturally pick one community as the "winner".

On Reddit you also have multiple subreddits on technology. Especially when Reddit was just starting out several people started technology subreddits. It is just that you only visited the one most popular with the most users and most content. Which built up over quite some time. I think it is weird to expect Lemmy instances to be exactly like Reddit is now, when you consider Reddit is 17(!) years old.

While there will be a few instances which are very niche because they get defederated from anyone else and they may have a technology community as well, for the bigger, federated instances there will be the one big technology community again.

Currently people all over the fediverse start new communities without checking if they already exist. This won’t go on indefinitely…

Possibly unpopular opinion: Fragmentation is good, as it means there are options for leaving a community behind. Fragmentation and competition are synonyms, and generally competition is good.

Lemmy definitely won't kill reddit the same way mastodon won't kill twitter, but I don't want it to. I just want it them to be successful enough to be a viable alternative when someone like Spez or Elon think they don't need to listen to their users.

Give it time. Big communities will form, and unlike Reddit, there will be more competition between them. You won’t just have one group of mods squatting over “Apple” or “Android” because they registered it first.

Honestly, this is like "the old days" where there were lots of small forums across the web. The big difference now is that you can be a member on one of them and subscribe to others hosted elsewhere, and there are sites like lemmyverse.net to find them. We used to have to find forums ourselves, through word of mouth, search engines, etc.

There's still forums today, but not as many any more. IMO Lemmy/kbin are a great replacement for 'traditional' forum systems. Lemmy even has a theme that looks just like phpBB.

And you wont even see most of it if Beehaw keeps defederating

Where your account is hosted and which communities you subscribe to doesn't have to overlap at all. For instance, I'm on VLemmy but almost all of my subbed communities are on Beehaw.

I also think it may be a feature rather than a bug to have multiple communities for each topic. Each individual community can build its own sense of identity, guidelines, and norms. I'm personally feeling refreshed by the smaller volume of posts and comments in a way that encourages me to engage. Reddit had become very passive for me due to the sheer size of everything.

Ah yes, /r/technology, the only technology subreddit on reddit. There certainly has never existed a https://www.reddit.com/r/technews/, or / https://www.reddit.com/r/technewstoday/ or a bunch of more technology subreddits. No. Of course there ever only was /r/technology. No fragmentation whatsoever on reddit.

If the choice is tolerating trolls and jerks vs. dealing with communities that are fragmented and harder to find, I’ll choose fragmentation every time.

I just wanna say what’s on my mind (trite though it may be) without all the pedantry, trolling, and hostility. I’m not a mean person IRL, I don’t put up with jerks IRL, and I want the same thing online. Everything else is a distant second. I like Beehaw.

By the same token, I support anyone who disagrees, and I encourage them to find an instance that’s a better match. I just want everyone to be happy and feel comfortable expressing themselves. I hope people find an instance that suits them; they shouldn’t feel like they need to change to suit the instance.

The thing you getting wrong is if you go to /r/technology you are only seeing one subreddit on Reddit. It is not all Technology forums on the internet nor is it even all the Tech stuff on Reddit. You never see it all. The world is big, you never will. You just though you were because Reddit is well known, and the Technology sub-reddit is well known to you. You made a choice just to use that subreddit still and Reddit has no interest in federating with other sites. At least on the Fediverse you can see most things on the Fediverse if you choose.

On Reddit there can be multiple tech subs too, and I bet there are. Usually one of them just becomes dominant.

One feature that might help with this is something similar to multi-reddits, where users can categorize communities into their own "meta communities".

I think you got things the right way, however keep in mind that there isn't any standard yet. There is indeed multiple communities for the same subjects on Reddit, you just have a principal one. Since things are pretty new on here you haven't major subs emerging. It will eventually be the case I think !

I just visit the top Lemmy instances, sort by local category, and follow the ones I like on each instance. It doesn't matter if I follow 4 different channels called !technology cause I'll just get them all in my feed. I'm following self hosting on both lemmy.ml and lemmy.world and I get posts from both. I couldn't care less where it comes from, as long as I'm following I'm good to go.

There are many sites and list of large Lemmy servers right now. Just check out beehaw, lemmy.ml, lemmy.world, sh.itjust.works, etc.

Eventually Lemmy will be split up into two sides like Mastodon has; the side that wants to be fragmented, broken, and blocks almost every instance, and the free side, that talks with everyone.

On Reddit, you also have r/memes and r/meme (and many other similar ones). I think there are r/woo(oooo)sh subs with between 2-6 os. But in both cases one has vastly more users than the other(s), and most people probably only know about the most popular one.

So yea, over time one of these tech communities on Lemmy will probably be much bigger than the others, and grow faster because it's the biggest and thus most attractive.

I LOVE this approach though. I want tech news, or politics, or whatever, but I want to be able to decide what my experience engaging with those posts is like. If an instance isn’t seriously discussing something in the comments, or moderation isn’t what I want, then I can go to another instance where it is. Beehaw is already a fantastic example of this, and why I strongly prefer this instance over others—I really don’t like the type of comments that seem to gain popularity elsewhere, like on lemmy.ml.