Seems like a bad idea to let just any instance publish posts on behalf of an identity.

Make it so you can browse without an account. I'd like to look before committing to signing up (as many other people likely will, too)

@crispius @MikeImBack Oh NEAT

@julian I’m glad that you are not affected by them. I don’t evaluate the fediverse in terms of what is more or less crappy. I evaulate what aspects adversely affect my experience as a user and consider if the overall benefits outweigh the negatives. Those bots make me more reluctant to post and be an active user, but they are not the only problem.

@mathew @rolle let me clarify... i do not care so much about followers as about reaching and connecting with the right people. building a big follower base is a big task and not everyone can do it. finding and joining a community of like-minded people (think lemmy c/community or even just a small group of friends that follow each other on mastodon or share the same server) is comparatively easier and interacting within this group is much more manageable for most people. creating such small groups and being able to find them is, however, only possible if a big group of people share the same platform for doing that. that is why federation is important. having 100 small isolated mastodon servers with one weird person on each of them does not help. having 100 weird people on 100 federated servers following the same hashtag or being included within the same community/group of any kind does.