• Kichae@lemmy.ca
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    12 hours ago

    Of course. But if you care about one topic or community over all others, you should join the site that is focused on that topic. The Local timeline is the heart of the platform, and “it doesn’t matter where your account lives” ia how the fediverse dies.

    • Steve
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      10 hours ago

      I you want to follow topics, that’s what Lemmy is built for.
      Mastodon is designed around following individuals, rather than topics.

      • Kichae@lemmy.ca
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        9 hours ago

        No, Lemmy is for if you want to run a user-led forum-like website where users create and maintain discussion groups for you.

        Mastodon is what you use when you want a small microblogging website.

        The optimal way to use either platform is to build social websites that are focused on some commonality among users, may that be interest based, region based, identity based, or whatever kind of community you want to foster.

        Lemmy allows you that community to create self-moderated subspaces to discuss topics through the community’s lens. Mastodon allows that community to engage in slow-rolling threaded chats among members.

        Federation allows those users to also reach out to and engage with other communities that are not your home base, whether in a microblog format, or in a compartmentalized form.

        The current usage model is a simulacrum of closed, corporate, centralized platforms, and it’s not working. Lemmy is full of people who who’t stop whining about how thet can’t homogenize and blend communities from different servers. Early on, many people wanted this merging to be automatic, as if c/News on lemmy.ca and c/News on ttrpg.network are just splintered shadows of r/News or something. Mastodon is a revolving door of people who can’t find people discussing their topics of interest and then bouncing.

        Local matters. The fediverse is a local-first space. Ignoring that keeps all of it an also-ran.