I don’t really want a definition of what the fediverse should be or was initially envisioned to be. I just want to understand how people actually use it. I started wondering because I felt the talks about its current state and growth stumble in invisible misunderstandings about the basic nature of what we are using or how we are using it.

I came here with the reddit exodus, but the site was mostly utilitarian for me, with my attempts to find community a failure. I saw something forum like and treated it like that, and the same can be said about my use of beehaw. Only recently I adventured in seeing a feed with All displayed, which was definitely not for me, but helped me find some communities to subscribe.

Federation, personally, is an opportunity for different communities to communicate, not necessarily get conjoined. For instance, I have an account in tech.lgbt, although it’s abandoned. In this group x.y, I focused first in the lgbt, as I have being doing since much before I saw myself as queer, because it’s a very good way to make sure the people around are the kind I wish to have around as a start. That’s my home, a place in which I expect visitors to respect the rules if they want to be let in. That’s to say I believe there’s no public / communal space in the fediverse, you are always on someone’s home and should respect that.

The big issue I’d find with the fediverse is that we don’t advertise the outside communities we enjoy enough, mostly expecting something interesting to simply show up on our screens.