I had a random idea I wanted to throw out there and see what people think:
Imagine a federated platform that works kind of like Discord, but in the sense of Lemmy, Pixelfed, Mastodon, etc.—with different instances hosted by different people.
The twist is that none of the instances would be connected to each other.
Each instance would function like a regular Discord server: channels, chats, roles, and all the usual stuff, but the instances themselves wouldn’t federate with each other.
The interesting part is that these instances could still federate with other platforms—like Mastodon, Lemmy, Peertube, Pixelfed, Loops, etc.—just not with each other.
It seems like it could be a way to have smaller, self-contained communities while still integrating with the wider Fediverse in some ways.
My only sticking point is figuring out signup/login mechanics—how would a user navigate multiple isolated instances efficiently without it becoming a nightmare?
Would love to hear thoughts, improvements, or whether anyone thinks this is a terrible idea.
@Teknevra Well that's exactly the reason not to do that.
Federation is honestly kind of stupid. Better to decentralize down to the user level and let users manage their experiences. There is no good reason to double down on centralizing around instances, and this is a fantastic illustration of why centralizing around instances is a dumb idea.
