I feel like it's really just more important that not all users are on the same instance, and that not all communities are on the same instance. Sure, it would be better if there were a bunch of separate "tech" communities that aggregate together. But each of those communities need moderation.
I honestly think that we will see this over time. People will want their own version of a community and create it.
The big number is the "karma" value. Upvotes minus downvotes. I'm not sure why the small number doesn't have a letter next to it. For me, it's how long it's been since the comment or post.
There's been so many threads I've read on lemmy where pretty much everyone was able to voice disagreement in some way, but the discourse refrained from being toxic. That seemed so very rare on Reddit. I wonder if this is due to the lack of the total karma metric or something.
Almost like it's impossible that was the least bit sarcastic.
But in a federated alternative, no one party is responsible for hosting everything. Altogether it's a lot of data, yes. But it's not like Google has the whole of the internet stored on its servers.
Proposed with a giant flaccid dong.