We're now observing the emergence of local instances, e.g. https://toot.berlin/ Interesting potential, but it seems to suggest the weakness of the community == instance == administrative policy == source of identity model. There are *many* possible communities I might participate in simultaneously, and even be interested in seeing, e.g., the local TL for that particular community.

Why should my identity and social graph position be tied to one, though?

@puellavulnerata

Fragmenting your social presence might be a feature, as a unified identity really tends to serve advertisers more than users.

The idea of jumping on to a fanatical sports instance while watching the game, or a local city instance to see what's happening when trying to figure out what to do for the evening sounds pretty good.

@krypteia @puellavulnerata Right, I also believe human identity tends to be a fragmented thing and this better matches to that than facebook-style "this is me". Just the UI could be less fragmented. As a start software that could aggregate feeds (notifications, local timeline) over multiple instances and select where to post instead of a different tabs open would be nice. And an (opt-in) way to make it possible for people to find different instances of you.
@orionwl @krypteia it isn't fragmented, it's intersectional - if, say, I want to participate in $city and in $hobby, and I say something about an IRL meetup for $hobby in $city, where should I post it if I split my identity like that? If I get to know someone in one context, where's the discovery to let me see the rest of this person and to let them see the rest of me?
@puellavulnerata @krypteia Good points. Yes, I think discovery is an important thing that is currently missing for that case. If someone you follow creates an account on a new instance you might want to follow it automatically. As for intersectional posts, yeah crossposting is annoying as long as federation doesn't de-duplicate.

@orionwl @puellavulnerata

I guess my point is that giving users more control over what they share in what contexts is a huge win.

Maybe tools could make it easier to link identities, but I kinda like the fact that someone that disagrees with your political tweet doesn't get to automatically 'discover' where your going to be having a beer later that evening.

@krypteia @puellavulnerata Right - doing that without thinking of privacy effects would nix some of the benefits that federation brings in the first place. Though in your specific case that might be better solved with private (group) communication instead of permanent public communication that could be linked later on.