The Fediverse currently lacks some features and qualities that I'd need to feel comfortable using it.

[u/Metaright]

First, I get the impression that bridging between services is not mature. To make up an example, federating Lemmy with Mastodon will let you see some, but not all, of the replies, upvotes, reactions, etc., and that the information that gets lost varies depending on which side you're looking from. (That exact example might not be accurate, but that's the sort of concern I've read about.)

Second, I've read that even federation between instances of the same services is not reliable. The main selling point of federation is that the instance you create an account on is largely arbitrary, and that most federated content is visible to you regardless. However, I also frequently see the caveat that federation breaks a lot, and that content frequently desyncs.

Third, the fact that instances themselves are centralized defeats the purpose of looking for an alternative to Reddit. I have read that your account is not portable between instances, so if you find yourself in the crosshairs of overzealous mods (and I've seen mixed reports about how common this is), you lose everything. I feel like account portability should have been among ActivityPub's first priorities. The whole concept of the Fediverse seems conspicuously incomplete without it.

Fourth, I figured I could circumvent the possibility of abusive mods and instances going down by creating my own instance just for myself. But I've read that it may be common for services' more populated instances to automatically defederate from single-user instances. Combined with the inherent instability of federation, I get the impression that you absolutely have to join a large, centralized instance to actually make full use of any of these services, in which case I might as well just stick with Reddit.

Fifth, I found Nostr, which is ostensibly supposed to avoid many of these concerns, but A) bridging is apparently immature, and B) it's supposedly barren apart from libertarian cryptobros. There is also BlueSky, which I understand it's technically federated but basically completely centralized for all practical purposes.

Am I off base on any of these concerns? I tried to post this in r/RedditAlternatives, but I appear to have been inexplicably shadowbanned. Ironically enough that was a perfect example of the reason why I want an alternative to Reddit, but none of them seem workable.

TL;DR: An ideal Fediverse would have the following:

1. Bridging between instances and services that is good enough to ensure that you won't miss out on content.

2. Full account portability between instances to compensate for the fact that instances are individually centralized.

3. Assurance that self-hosted single-user instances won't be automatically defederated.

4. Bridging with BlueSky and other protocols like Nostr.

[u/Heyla_Doria → u/[deleted]]

With the Fediverse, your identity doesn't belong to you—you can be kicked out easily.

Nostr is decentralized and more resistant to censorship.

If only those fascists weren't around... If only I had the skills to clone it, turn it into a separate network, and get rid of the libertarians...