I'm torn on defederation. In theory I like it; a user can join an instance that moderates to the level that they agree with. Beehaw is a pretty good example of this because a lot of users like having a slightly more restrictive community in order to maintain a certain vibe.

But there is a more pragmatic side of me that thinks that the average user isn't super informed about this stuff, and are naturally going to gravitate to the larger instances. No doubt there were more trolls coming from lemmy.world, but there are far more regular users that have no idea what's going on.

I think Beehaw's decision is understandable though, especially given the lack of moderation tools. They've already mentioned that they are willing to (re?)federate in the future when trolls/bots are easier to deal with.

I mean, there's a lot of content here already.

Yeah it's not the same endless dopamine drip feed conveyor belt that is Reddit, but there's plenty of content to engage with.

Oh absolutely--that's really the only reason I was able to stay on reddit. I do miss some of those smaller communities, but have resorted to actual forums now (if applicable), or just going without.

Shoutouts to the fiberglassflyrodders.com forums

Yeah--I constantly read about how people liked reddit back in the day, or liked digg, but don't connect it to the fact that the reason why they were better back in the day was because they were smaller and more intimate (for lack of a better word).

I'm excited for the fediverse to grow, but for me it's already reached that critical mass for it to be engaging