I don't quite get instances. How do they work? I saw some account that listed octodon as an instance? :/

@rogerwhitson the best metaphor I've seen so far is to think of them like email providers—everyone's got their own @whatever.com email but we can all still email each other?

I agree rn that for the most part instances feel pretty arbitrary. I've seen some affinity ones but I wonder how long individual servers will last, depending on moderator interest & $$$ upkeep.

@jeffreymoro I think it's potentially good long term and for the overall network, but yeah, there's a question as to how these individual instances will persist.
@rogerwhitson @jeffreymoro I originally thought, perhaps, we should all be running our instances on our own servers - but we clearly don't do that with email. But as with email, if this model succeeds, some trustworthy instances will emerge.
@scott_bot @jeffreymoro I do like that it is more distributed.
@rogerwhitson @scott_bot I imagine the real test of the tech is if there emerges an easily portable way to hop instances if one isn't being properly maintained, or a new affinity instance opens up—e.g. if Amanda has luck setting up digitalhumanities.club. We can export the folks we follow & our toots, but not those who follow us, which seems like a tricky gap rn.
@jeffreymoro @scott_bot See, I stopped using Slack that much, even though I really liked it when it came out.
@rogerwhitson @scott_bot I've def had a hard time getting past the business-y affect on Slack. The DH one is a great resource & I know plenty of folks who make it work for friend groups but there always felt something a little off about it for me.