I really don't like the idea of topic-specific instances being the standard way to handle group discussions in Mastodon. I don't want to juggle 15 different identities and 15 different sets of credentials just because I'm interested in 15 different things. Early adopters may put up with that kind of hassle, but a mass audience never will. And having to set up and maintain a whole instance just to host a group means that few groups will ever be formed.
I feel like there has to be a better way.
@jalefkowit there is, but it's still pretty bad
gnu social has groups you can invoke via bangtags (as i like to call them)
so if you're interested in biking, you "join" the biking group, and then you just use it's bangtag: !biking
if you "join" the group, it'll appear in your timeline by default
@jalefkowit now, joining the group seems silly and unnecessary if you want to just post to it, but there's a simple reason for it!
federation is dumb
basically groups are treated like rss feeds (like users), so you have to "join" (read: follow) them to be able to be subbed to all their posts
