> Stop trying to make social networks succeed, stop dreaming of a universal network. Instead, invest in your own communities. Help them make long-term, custom and sustainable solutions. Try to achieve small and local successes instead of pursuing an imaginary universal one. It will make you happier.

I appreciate the realist point of view in this paragraph and the two that precede it.

I’d like to go a step further and propose that we should deemphasize the explicit desire to develop communities online for what feels like the sake of having an online community. Online communities should be derivatives of offline identities, roles, interests etc, more often than not. But as more people seem to find “themselves” in a digital landscape that isn’t inherently social as much as it is social under certain contexts, the lines are being blurred, or disregarded entirely.

I used to be indifferent to federated networks, but I now understand the appeal of them when it comes down to being able to engage with predefined communities.

There is a lot to be said about the number one issue that newcomers confront being “which instance do I join?”.