It’s a little daunting to me that in some cases there are 2 or more communities between the federated alternatives; what’s the best way to corral these? I had thought I could perhaps subscribe to Lemmy instances on kbin; is that correct? If so, how? Thank you in advance.
Edit: Well, this is sort of embarrassing but when I was searching for the other communities, I was accidentally searching threads instead of magazines and of course not finding anything so that’s the answer as to HOW to subscribe [when it comes to kbin]. My point stands, though, that having so many communities is a bit cumbersome. I guess I will let it percolate a bit and see how it feels.
I’m sure my fellow commentors have made good work of answering this question, but I wanted to offer my perspective as well.
The big thing to understand is, perception of a thing is about focus and direction. If you consider the communities to be consumers of content delivered according to a protocol, That protocol affords subscription services, and means of posting. Much of the rest of it is just security (where do you log in and post from?) and consumption format - all these services have enough in common that the content can be moved around among them without too much hassle about the storage and communications format, and the display format is 90% of the difference between e.g., kbin and mastodon.
As it turns out, the walled garden people had to work hard to make those gardens walled, and to keep them that way. The evolution of communications systems favors this kind of unrestricted exchange of information and bespoke methods of presentation for consumption.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, these new communications methodologies do not readily lend themselves to converting private persons and their self expression into corporate mass market products.