Can you do one search on one server, and find any email address that exists anywhere? (not that I know of)
Can you send email regardless of what server the email lives on? (with some exceptions, but mostly yes)
Federation is not infinite or unlimited, so no, there is no "one search to rule them all" within the confines of a single instance. (But then there's no way to access all email, or search all email addresses across mail servers to find someone.) Still if you're on an instance, and go out and find people on the internet that interest you, regardless of how you find them or what instance you are on, you can follow them, and their content will begin to be federated into your feed, on the instance you use.
The server you choose matters, but it's also not something you can't change. (Like getting a new email address.) If you use Gmail, but someone uses a mail server that has been blacklisted because of bad players using a domain name or IP address, you probably can't get email sent from those servers.
But initially, you can either go with the biggest instance, or the first one you see on https://joinmastodon.org/servers that seems fine and then try it out for a while. It's not a single decision you have to make for the rest of your life. It's just something new, and a new way to have access to some people connected to each other through some instances, topics, follows, etc.
I don’t want to run my own server. But perhaps there is a server I want to join. There seems to be no clear way to search for them. You are referring to Mastodon, but the Fediverse is not just Mastodon.
Certainly. I have dipped my toes in a few other Fediverse pools.
Of course, like email / domain names, there's no universal search for picking them. Big ones get network affects or advertise. Small players have to be found organically.
That's a big flippin' list of Fediverse networks. But "a clear way to search" being layered on top of "decentralized" and "anyone could theoretically bring up a server at any time"... there's always going to be friction.
Whether you join any of them... well that's up to you to decide if you're curious enough, you suspect there's value there, etc.
The monetization and network affects of corporate social networks has always lent itself to incentivizing popularity contests and "emotional" content that pulls people in. If you want to escape the bad sides of those, there's also compromises on the independently funded networks.
I think it should be ever so slightly more nuanced than that.
It doesn't matter which instance you join if you're just getting started, and don't know enough to make a meaningful decision about which instance to join.
After a week or a month, you might understand how it works a bit better, and also which communities exist, and might have an informed opinion about which community you resonate with.
hah, point well taken. In hindsight, my use of "actual job" to mean "job that contributes to the economy rather than simply speculating on it or skimming off the top", wasn't very clear.
Heh to be pedantic about language, it could be argued that "came amid" just means "happened at the same time as." In other words "we have more bad news!" Much less so that "this caused that."
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