Fediverse

Some counterpoints ...

• Regarding groups in Masto, the problem is more than the lack of an interface level "spec" in the protocol ... mastodon doesn't support groups ... you can't create or post to them natively within mastodon ... they've just created the most basic interface to external groups. So before we get to whether mastodon's interpretation of how to interface with groups is good ... we need mastodon to actually implement an interface. Which is on their roadmap.
• I'm not sure I see your point about "timelines". Communities are just flexible use-empowered timelines, while the mastodon timelines, according to every poll I've seen on them, are mostly not used and not appreciated while of course being inflexible.
• I feel like you're underselling how standardised the web is, especially relative to the amount of complexity a page can have compared to what we've got on mastodon, which is basically plain text. How long ago had the web standardised enough for the basic markdown rendering that most (ie non-mastodon) platforms provide?
• Comparing the fediverse to email feels like your supporting my arguments. That's an old craggly system that we've had plenty of time to learn from.

Otherwise, yes mastodon does render markdown now. It's relatively new and it's to forget about it as you can't write with the same markdown (which is a rather telling choice I think about mastodon's minimalist ethos). But as you say, it's rather limited (I've never tested its limtations myself) ... and that's just a markdown spec. Anything remotely fancy like MFM coming from a *key platform/fork just doesn't work.

And yea, I'm with you on lemmy/masto being limited. Thing is, I'd bet that this isn't a coincidence. I feel like you could argue that ActivityPub is on the vague and ambitious side of things and leaves a lot to the platform/software devs. And so to make something work with that the first generation of platforms had to be rather focused in order to make a working and usable platform. A bit of a "worse is better" scenario. kbin/mbin definitely show promise in broadening the horizons of what the fediverse, as a UI/UX can be. I'm not sure why you advocate joining a misskey fork as they don't have any federated groups interface (they're basically very fancy microblogging platforms).

Where I think this should head is more modularity, where the AcitivityPub server you use is far more generic, and basically handles for you anything the protocol can handle, while your interface into the "data stream" is much more flexible/modular, being provided by composable apps that allow you to view and write posts/content in any format if you want. For example, in this kind of system, lemmy wouldn't be a monolithic platform. Instead it'd be an app for writing and viewing ActivityPub content in the "lemmy" format, that you can load into your generic browser interface/environment, and use whenever you're viewing content others have written using the same app.

From the little I understand, Bonfire (now in beta) has similar-ish ideas.