It's that live now for Piefed.social ?

I'm not a programmer so I can't speak to how hard this is, but I think it would be a big asset to building user base if there was a neutral sign up website that wasn't a specific instance. It would basically choose an instance for you automatically and skip that part. I figure there could be some list of general purpose instances compiled that are all fair game and the site would try to spread the load across instances.

Average user doesn't care about federation, and all of that complexity is a big turn off. I know because I almost didn't sign up myself because of that. Having to pick a team just to get in the door feels kinda bad.

Yep. I agree with this. Re-creating Reddit at the same scale just brings all the same problems. I like that federation means smaller more localised communities that can be connected (or not). I get that it’s not what everyone wants or is used to, and that’s okay.

I honestly found that one funny, and I don't mind the funny comments either.

Still I get what you are saying about the problems.

feels like there was a missed opportunity there

Personally I'd prefer to avoid reddit-ification, it had become very bad in the last few years

it kinda shrank after lemmy.ee went down, because they moved scattered to piefed,,,etc. and also blocking people too.

Agreed, so much is stacked against us, these numbers show we are serious about making alternative communities.

That said, it is unfortunate that this only applies to very general spaces or some specific communities. If your interest is even a little too niche, the dedicated communities often feel like a graveyard unfortunately.

its probably due to self-censorship because subs, and reddit is ready to ban you at the moments notice for saying something they think its violating the rules(misconstruing) and not do actually violating by being vitrolitic, or bigotic. you have to be careful what you say on reddit.