cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/12944261
The psychology of this problem is that users are too lazy to maintain multiple accounts when all they have is Lemmy’s stock web client. So they choose one of the big nodes: lemmy.world, sh.itjust.works, lemm.ee, lemmy.ca, etc.
These Cloudflare-centralized nodes are able to greedily exploit the #networkEffect because due to lack of multi-account software. If there were some well-made 3rd party client apps for Lemmy that would be designed for multiple accounts, then more users would be willing to create accounts in more decentralized parts of the fedi.
Mastodon somewhat proves this because the client-side tooling is in place to make it convenient to have 6 or Mastodon accounts. And Mastodon nodes are better balanced.
Self-hosting is a different scenario than the way most users reach the fedi. Self-hosters certainly have fewer reasons to have multiple accounts. But obviously the one unescapable reason is privacy. If all activity is under the same account, doxxing risk is pegged.
Another reason a self hoster would want multiple accts is followship. Someone might want to follow you because they love your French posts about oil painting, for example, but since you do everything with the same account they also have to see posts in English about politics, religion, phones, movies, etc, they may not want all the other noise. Compartmentalisation improves followship.