Hehe, the actual "old internet" resembles the fediverse of today, it's what we thought the internet was supposed to be back then. Once corporations found the internet, we got the bullshit we have today.
More instances will need to spin up. People aren't used to having choice so it'll confuse them at first. Same thing with Linux distributions, people aren't used to having choice so they don't know how to go about comparing what's on offer. They'll accept making choices at the food market, but are too confused when it comes to OS's and social media, lol.
Sure, but it'll be the same story all over again. The big platform will be ruined and the alternative option will be smaller and therefore not as good (since user base directly contributes to quality when it comes to community-based platforms; it's the users who post all the content, so fewer users = less content).
Email is often drawn as something similar to the fediverse. ... but if you've ever tried to run a small Mailserver, you'll quickly find that "the big corps" have created a walled garden that'll keep the "small fish" out.
It's all based on what the big players view as your "reputation". This is based on proprietary metrics (usually how many emails you send), but your reputation will determine if the email is delivered or not.
... but the point is that one big corps consolidate and reach the size (in terms of traffic/content) like Hotmail, Gmail, yahoo, etc - they will not hesitate to squeeze out the smaller fediverse fish to force them into paying to use the bigger pond.
Well if instances keep defederating each other, it does matter. Plus there's the question of stability. Sure, you could make your account on some tiny niche instance, but what if the guy running it decides he's had enough and terminates it? What happens to your account, your post history?
If you care about your account and your post history, you're free to run you own instance. People are also working on mechanisms to sync community subscriptions between accounts, which would at least help the UX navigating multiple accounts. Lemmy also has an API that I'm sure users will be looking to create services to backup your content as well, if something like that doesn't already exist.
As for defederation, I'm only aware of these major reasons and all of them are legitimate:
Nazis
NSFL/CP
Sourcing illegal content (illegal from the defederating hosts side, and this really lends to the above two as well)
I've been pondering this very reason. It's compelling for me to make my own instance so I have my own little slice of fediverse to call my own, and have access to the greater picture of it too.
Reddit became part of the shitty second season / crappy sequel era of the internet.
Also, can we not call the fediverse "Lemmy"? It's.a disservice to what we all are vying for here and sets us up to land right back into the same bullshit.
Interaction was on non-Web-based systems, mostly distributed
This was mostly pre-2000s and tended to go into decline in the 1990s or 2000s as Web-based platforms focusing on ease of use picked up users. Many of these were distributed.
Usenet (decline as a discussion forum dating to maybe late 1990s, though lots of pirated information is still transferred via it)
IRC was great back then. The other day I jumped on Undernet because I was feeling nostalgic. It's still running but didn't have much activity. The fact that it still exists made me smile.
Yeah, I did more-or-less the same on each of the Big Three networks. Not that they're Reddit alternatives, but I thought that I'd at least take another look. They are still churning away, but the userbase is far smaller than it used to be.
I need like a crash course on how this all works. I was so used to subreddits and I'm finding myself lost. I'd love to be a pilot of gardening/brewing/MTG subreddit style thing here but again, I need a crash course