Fediverse

Instances are servers that host communities.

Instances are servers that host user accounts.

Federated instances allow users from one instance to view and post in communities on other (federated) instances. If the instances are defederated there is no connection whatsoever being made between the users and communities.

Now, there are communities that have very strict and often very political moderation policies. Technically only the instance administrator has the power/authority to override communities, but only on the instance they administrate.

This can become an issue, especially when people who get moderated run to the admin demanding to talk with who is in charge. The netKarens get really mad if the admins back up the community, so they'll start these instance crusades demanding defederation and such.

So as a result there are some natural divisions across the major instances based on how the admins tend to back up community rules.

So for a rough examples: .ml communities have zero tolerance for American Liberalism. Lemmy.world allows communities to be heavy handed against criticism of NATO or Israel. Blahaj.zone has zero tolerance for transphobes gatekeeping. My instance, sh.itjust.works, allows for combat footage and communities dedicated to documenting(harassing) the .ml instance, their admins and the lemmy devs (who admin .ml).

The average user need only pay attention to the communities they post in. The instance of the user is mostly irrelevant, nevermind the butthurt individuals who want a worse and fragmented Fediverse.