I've been trying it out for the last week. I have my own opinions, but I'd like to hear others and see if we have common ideas on what is good/bad/indifferent about the Lemmy ecosystem.
Effective? No. Considering the purpose of all internet communities is to grow and have diversity, it's not effective. Aside from the currently low number of users, the fact that you can have the same community in different instances means a community will never grow large enough. Add to that the "you're literally killing children if you're a centrist" people and all the tankies, and what you have here is a leftist circlejerk that will remain small and irelevant enough to suit its need to be an echo chamber without any actual diversity. So maybe it's effective from that point of view? Idk.
Aside from the currently low number of users, the fact that you can have the same community in different instances means a community will never grow large enough.
Isn't !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com an example of a community which grew large enough to become the reference?
Not sure. I can't remember right now why I blocked dbzer0 completely, but my filters are blocking this instance. Which I guess is another side of the same coin: defederation (and allowing entire instances to be blocked) also contributes to fragmentation of communities. I had no idea the largest piracy community is on dbzer0, so I would subscribe to another piracy community on another instance, and thus split the memberships even more.