It makes it easier to understand what this is and that they are interconnected, but I think I enjoy unique branding/themes more in practice now that I am actually using the fediverse.
I like consistent branding because non-technical people get confused when they have one billion different names for everything when you could just say “join a Mastodon instance”
Absolutely. I think there should be sane defaults, and whoever deviates from them should know why they’re doing it.
I like the different instances having their own branding but i like the option to switch back to the normal theme. I also like when users put their own spin on the services logo instead of using something unrelated.
Yes. Having the OPTION is great.
I do think there does need to be an amount of consistancy in branding so it’s more apparent that these things can talk to eachother.
Something like many Reddit subs do with the snoo, where they took a common, recognizable icon and customized it for their instance would have worked well if there was a similar icon for instances to latch onto, but we’re past that point now.
Some sort of icon/logo representing the fediverse on every site could be useful, or maybe different symbols for microblogging, threadiverse, etc. and the site includes what it has at the top or bottom somewhere, prob too late for that
For a while I was seeing people use the asterism symbol (⁂) around my Mastodon feed. Wonder what happened to that movement.
I mean there’s the Lemmy mouse mascot guy, but yeah instances are already pretty established
