For the Instagram people, if they’re also using Threads, poke them to enable ActivityPub. Several medium/large instances defederate, but it’s an entry point for them.

Also, don’t be forceful and try not to pass a sense of superiority. Apply pressure when you see opportunities, such as if they complain of a platform, how a given alternative solves that, but know your boundaries. And all the while, be patient, for it could be a years-worth endeavor.

Not familiar with moderation capabilities on PieFed, but something that can aid when moderating is having RSS tracking your communities. Even if the post gets deleted, if the RSS reader fetched the post in the time frame before that, it gets stored in your reader’s (preferably persistent) cache.

Besides, and related to “not being a platform”, it helps break the idea of everyone having to share the same space with everyone. If two groups can’t have a healthy relationship, it is healthier for them to cut ties with each other. Meanwhile, the oligarchic platforms being as big and with barely any internal borders makes for the toxic environment of places like Reddit and Twitter that predates recent polemics.

Something though, I think it’d be better to have a cut-off of MAU or some other relevance metric, as otherwise smaller instances defederating from major ones may sneakily make the major one seem more isolated than it really is.

A bit scarier than the previous one at first glance, but the single line explanation including everything needed to understand makes it easier to read.

If Wafrn has hardcoded search links, maybe follow a tag from Mastodon with RSS, and set links to redirect to your instance’s search?

Reminds a bit of Scott Pilgrim maybe? Been some years since I read the comic so I may be misremembering though.

It loads for me if I open in a new tab, but not through my instance’s link preview.

To @mangobanana@discuss.online, if you make a community, either the pottery one if you feel like making a second one or any other community, feel free to post about the newly made community to either/both !communitypromo@lemmy.ca and !newcommunities@lemmy.world.

The more people follow a given community, the more it propagates whenever a post is made, and the more it propagates, the higher is the chance of someone feeling like interacting with the community or even following. And making the post to either/both communities helps giving an initial boost, though persistence in keeping posting until it gains traction should still be needed.

An analyst I follow says if you can’t see logic in a move, chances are you aren’t looking with the right premise. Trying to go by that, at least to me, the only premise that matches their behavior is that they want to destroy their own brand.

But if that’s the case, the whys still evade me. Are they “burning books” so the only truth is of the AI they’re formally feeding? Or perhaps being an open forum, it is a problem with Wiston Smiths about for a while trying to rewrite history? Or perhaps it’s a way to tarnish the image of something that despite its flaws, used to work minimally? Or is management of the company a bunch of trend-chasers in damage control mode?

As for the first tip, checking your instance, I think you could start by checking https://piefed.social/home/top/all, as then you also get the most commented stuff, meaning more stuff to consume: https://piefed.social/home/top/all

What I’d do early on is to check the frontpage for a given instance, where all posts appear, and block what I don’t like and subscribe to what I do.

Also, since you’re on PieFed, you should have access to microblogging too, meaning you have access to Fedi Bridge, meaning you have access to some contents from Bluesky too. Just need to follow the bot and if needed, allow it to follow back at you: @bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy

Also also, you can have your RSS feeds as posts in your timeline through @birb@rss-parrot.net

And there’s communities and profiles made specifically for discoverability, like !communitypromo@lemmy.ca and !newcommunities@lemmy.world. !lemmydirectory@lemmy.dbzer0.com is also a good place to find posts.

As for not getting too involved for a sake of privacy, not much to be done on that front other than just following stuff, preferably with RSS and without liking/commenting to avoid fingerprinting as much as possible.

Community mention:

!autodidacticism@reddthat.com

Had to look it up because I removed the bookmark of the post, and amusingly, the results 2 & 3 are both local versions of the post in other instances hehe

A relay project was made a while back that I think is interesting to bump:

https://quokk.au/c/fediverse/p/850460/introducing-threadirator-a-threadiverse-community-federator

Incredible! 👏

About this:

I didn’t see a specific minipainting community with more than 1 member.

Might be worth crossposting to that too, so it gives more visibility to it and so more people may join in.

God I hope the fediverse gets bigger than it is now

Haven’t checked your post history so saying that generically, but hope must be accompanied by action. So to those that have the same feeling, I invite to look for ways they can help.

Maybe a good middle ground would be to make posts answering questions others might have but that weren’t asked yet?

Maybe to dye something red? Like “you red it”? 🤭

Most frictionless places to push for I think would be in sites like linktr.ee and in the bio of services that aren’t direct competitors. Though also of minimal benefit if you’re not a public figure (journalist, artist, developer, someone actively posting whatever, etc.)