"Should"? That's really only for you to determine. I get why you want to try them out one by one, like using Piefed and Lemmy in parallel. It gives you a chance to weigh pros and cons of different services, or different ways to interact with them.
Vutuv... again, it's your choice, but for me, LinkedIn turned me completely off professional networking. I'm going to wait that one out to be sure it isn't flooded with the same icky performance measuring jargon before I even consider joining. Also, Vutuv looks vibe coded, so another big nope for me.
I think you're being generous counting Matrix in the Fediverse, though. It may be decentralised, but unless there are some bridges I'm not aware of, it doesn't really communicate with any fediverse services?
I think we're basically in agreement. The energy expenditure is real, but it adds no real value to the product. In a very real way, it is make believe — even more so than real money.
I dont want to sound too jaded, but people will sign up for anything without reading the TOS. It'll be fine, just try to give them the best possible first impression so they stick around.
The practical thing that trips up most people is the wealth of possible servers to register with. Give your friends a leg up and give them a signup link to a reliable, friendly instance you think will fit them (probably one you're already on).
Just give people a low-friction way in, let them get a feel of the fediverse/a specific, local feed. In my experience over-evangelising the nuts and bolts only turns them off the whole concept.
I think we often try to sell the fediverse too hard on the technical and idealist perspectives. Yes, federation is great and, yes, isn't it lovely that there is no manipulative algorithm, or no billionaire can buy it out and build it into his failed space exploration empire?
But the majority of internet users don't care about those things. Even for those that do, it'll be way down their priority list.
That's the key point, isn't it? OP's question isn't really as hypothetical as it's phrased; you definitely can go on Amazon or eBay and find cheaper, Chinese knockoff parts.
But will they perform to the same standards as top name brands? Very unlikely.
Why a vote to switch up an existing community? The admins have proposed the [AI] tag to mitigate slop projects.
You said you wanted a community to post vibe coded projects, go ahead and set it up. I don't see why it needs to be foisted onto c/self hosted, unless you have some vested interest in boosting sloppy mcslopface projects.
The better alternative would be if all sites just had RSS feeds... but yeah, since we can't have nice things, this is the way to keep tabs on site updates!
Mbin, PieFed, Lemmy... They're all part of the same federated network. If an admin or mod of some server does something you don't approve of, you block their instance and jog on.
A better solution would be to get used to an algorithm-free feed. Having "sensational" BS blasted at you at all times is addictive, shortens your attention span, and is the reason Mastodon didn't go for those algorithms.
"Should"? That's really only for you to determine. I get why you want to try them out one by one, like using Piefed and Lemmy in parallel. It gives you a chance to weigh pros and cons of different services, or different ways to interact with them.
Vutuv... again, it's your choice, but for me, LinkedIn turned me completely off professional networking. I'm going to wait that one out to be sure it isn't flooded with the same icky performance measuring jargon before I even consider joining. Also, Vutuv looks vibe coded, so another big nope for me.
I think you're being generous counting Matrix in the Fediverse, though. It may be decentralised, but unless there are some bridges I'm not aware of, it doesn't really communicate with any fediverse services?