Gull

Instances are still privately operated and at the whim of their operators, who are technically free to delete and modify posts arbitrarily. They are not public spaces.

Just like every “grassroots” political campaign on Reddit that suddenly arises, and then disappears just as suddenly after failing.

Discord also excels for punitive struggle sessions where someone is chosen to be “it” and is then verbally beaten by a rotating cast for hours.

Communities move to Discord because it is a catchment: you can set up a server for free on a moment’s notice, which gives you a place to hold a decent proportion of your community for continuity. The mod tools are also sufficient for basic use. You’re right that it’s not a replacement for a forum - terrible for archival and search purposes.

The Matrix Code of Conduct actively condones harassment as long as the Matrix people dislike your politics, which makes all the official forums unsafe for technical coordination.

The differences among instances really do matter.

If Stormfront opens an instance tomorrow, would you say it makes no difference because they will all talk to each other anyway? You shouldn’t. The example of Mastodon shows they won’t all talk to each other, often for very good reasons. Like “that instance is literally Stormfront.” You can expect that instance to have Nazi moderation policies, to normalize Nazism and to engage in Nazi brigading.

Imagine an average Redditor lands on one of the main Lemmy instances, where everyone (on penalty of excommunication) holds that Stalin Did Nothing Wrong, that Ukrainian culture and language should be exterminated and submerged in the Russian Empire, and so on. If that Redditor doesn’t really understand that the instances are different in viewpoint and policy, they can reasonably conclude that the Fediverse is dominated by tankies. Meanwhile, despite their faults, Twitter and Reddit still exist and are not so clearly dominated by people who like to promote genocide. What does the average user think?