

Saved you a click: power = rate of energy use (energy/time)
Saved you a click: power = rate of energy use (energy/time)
Yeah it’s crazy how intense the Lemmy hive mind is about some things. It’s basically a cult
So the way Lemmy works is that a instance will only know about (and have the content of) a community if a user on that instance is subscribed to it. So when you browse All or search, only those communities that someone on the instance is subscribed to are included in the results. On a smaller instance that’s naturally going to be fewer communities.
Now if you search for a specific community by its URL that the instance doesn’t yet know about, it will actually go and fetch it for the first time. What this looks like to the user though is that the search shows no results, then suddenly 5-10 seconds later the results change and the community appears. Which is not a great UX for someone new. So again on an instance with more people it’s a lot more likely that someone else has already searched for and subscribed to what you’re looking for so that you don’t see that issue
I wouldn’t recommend small instances to newbies. New users will likely use the All feed a lot, until they discover the communities they like. And on a small instance the All feed isn’t going to have as many communities in it. Also the experience of searching for communities is worse on a smaller instance.
I think these aren’t problems for experienced users but I don’t think we want to expose newbies to them if we can help it.
Individuals can’t block whole instances yet (apart from via a browser extension), once that feature arrives there will be a lot less call for defederation I expect.
By leaving you are voting with your feet, one could argue it’s one of the most effective ways to fight. Staying means that in many ways you will be continuing to support the broken system