Tell them it’s like Twitter, reddit, Instagram, and YouTube all in one. You can sign up for whatever type of content you want, just like you would sign up for any of those aforementioned sites, but the difference is that the sites can all communicate with each, and are independently run by non-profits, community groups, and different organizations and individuals, rather than a single centralized entity. You can select an instance of the software that suits various interests or niches, or just join a large instance for a bigger pool of content to start with locally. No wrong choice, as even small instances can communicate with large ones, just pick one you like and suits your values or convenience.

It should be all instances, I believe.

EDIT: DISREGARD MY COMMENTS - This was in fact a bug, and seems to have been fixed with the latest update. Just checked my old account logins and they work now.

I was mainly referring to the flagship instances. I am on a smaller piefed instance as well, and have had no issues. At least with Lemmy, they would give you a reason, but in my case they acted like it was a bug. So draw from that what you will, but that has been my experience, and I am currently unable to register an account on a primary piefed instance, without being given a reason for that being the case.

Congrats to piefed devs! This is a bit more of an accurate user tracker if anyone is interested:

https://fedigraph.fyi/graph/

Edit: see below

It bans users for no reason, and without explanation

Good advice! I definitely planned on utilizing existing implementations or proposals of implementations. That honestly seems like a much better place to have this discussion overall, thanks!

I feel like there is an option to hide posts you have seen already, but not sure how.

Totally fair, and I understand the skepticism. I am not promising anything here, all I can tell you is what my intentions and overall plans are, but you have no reason to take me at my word.

This is a big one I think. Most people I think are under the impression that the fediverse is fully portable and you can just migrate instances without any hiccups, which is not 100% true. Only your followers/following list can migrate, but posts are permanently locked to your instance, which is kind of surprising to learn.

Critical missing feature, for sure!

Fwiw, I have a shoddy foundation that is not worth showing to the public yet. I will be open sourcing and opening up to contributors when it is in some form of an alpha phase, but right now it is solidly pre alpha, so I am not yet developing in the open, but just putting feelers out on what the community wants.

How will this be enforced?