>I understood I could follow people from other instances, but only if the instance was somehow connected to the other instance. [...] How do I pick an instance without ever running into the risk that interesting person X joins in the future and doesn't pick an instance disconnected from the group of instances I'm in?
In practice this is not a problem. You can pick any popular instance and it will work with everyone. All instances are connected with each other by default, instances are generally only explicitly "defederated" when they're havens for trolls, racists, etc. Besides, if you're trying to follow someone and the instance is defederated (something I've never run into, by the way), your admin is just a quick message away. Mastodon instances are small and the admins have a low workload, they're typically quite accessible.
>Basically I just use twitter for news: I follow some big names and organizations and just read from the firehose of news coming out. I probably have a lower than 1/10000 read to write ratio.
>Am I trying to use Mastodon like Twitter in a way it wasn't designed for?
The only reason this might be the "wrong" approach is the general lack of big name organizations posting news. Most instances are hostile to companies settling in - Mastodon is for people, not brands. That being said, brands could run their own instances and be federated with anyone who wants to follow them.
That aside, there's no wrong way to use Mastodon. Use it however you want.
Isn't the whole point of decentralization to prevent censorship? Forced decentralization as a tool of suppressing speech doesn't seem like much of an improvement over Twitter. Is there some counterbalance to this?
It reduces failure risks of a centralized system. This is mitigated by using federated systems (like email) or decentralizing your centralized service (Twitter may be a centralized service, but their servers are, hopefully, decentralized so that an outage in one city doesn't impact them globally).
It reduces the risk of centralized control. If Twitter doesn't like you, you're out. If Facebook doesn't like your fake name, you're out. With Mastodon you could still be booted by a server (censorship), but you can always go to another server and continue there. Or even host your own. It's censorship resistant, not censorship proof.
It allows for local control which may be more suited to your community. Yes, this may mean censorship. But if I'm running a service that is aimed at or includes kids, I should be able to block content not intended for them. Is this censorship? Kind of, my users can't get to the content through me. And my users can't post the content through me. But they are certainly free to use other services that don't include those controls. And a decentralized system like Mastodon is better for this than Twitter. Twitter blocks a user? They have no practical recourse, they're out of the system. mastodon.jtsummers.blah blocks a user? They go to mastodon.gfodor.blah which has laxer policies.
The point of decentralization is to decentralize. Twitter is a monolithic company who doesn't listen to its users very much and is primarily interested in you as a monetizable set of eyeballs; Mastodon is... whoever feels like running a Mastodon instance for themselves, their friends, and whoever else.
If you want to be absolutely uncensored you are free to join one of the several instances that claim they are focused on "free speech". But everyone else who runs a Mastodon instance is free to block those servers from federating with them when it turns out that "free speech" mostly consists of behaving like Cartman from "South Park".
Unlike Twitter, if you don't like the moderation of one instance, you can move to another.
Or host your own. Your instance, your rules.
Of course, other instances are still free to block you.
The probably more important part is that it allows instances to follow national laws better and conform to their culture (see: Japan) instead of having to conform to Silicon Valley culture.
The thing is that most people don't want completely uncensored social media. Most people stay away from 4chan. Reddit remains much more popular than voat. Assholes are creative and persistent so you have to keep them away.
Voat is also much newer than Reddit, so it's at a natural disadvantage. If users strongly preferred well-moderated social networks, someone would open a Twitter clone (or Mastodon instance) where the mods actually care about harassment, and sip away Twitter's unhappy users. But sadly all the people I'm following are still only on Twitter, even if they keep complaining about it.
Mostly, that not every instance has the same policy.
You can always join a place where the credo is "we connect with everybody", while people who want a very filtered experience can join places that are a lot more nonchalant about blocking other instances. A lot of people probably do (and want to be in a place that does) something in the middle.
You could even have multiple accounts on different instances that you use in different contexts. Most mobile clients support this more or less well, though the default web UI does not.
Sorry, was referring to "defederation", as mentioned by the OP. It sounded like there was a mechanism for some kind of permabanning of the server from the federated network.
Defederation is on an instance-by-instance basis. Given servers A, B, and C, if A disconnects from C, A-B and B-C are still linked. It's entirely possible (and as far as I'm concerned, except) that there will be instances dedicated to all sorts of horrible stuff. Taken to the extreme, they could split into disconnected networks where the far-left {A, B, C} federation is entirely distinct from the far-right {D, E, F} collective. There's no central banlist, though. A clean split like I described is exceedingly unlikely (unless {D, E, F} is a tiny group of real-life friends who only talk to each other and no one else).
In practice this is not a problem. You can pick any popular instance and it will work with everyone. All instances are connected with each other by default, instances are generally only explicitly "defederated" when they're havens for trolls, racists, etc. Besides, if you're trying to follow someone and the instance is defederated (something I've never run into, by the way), your admin is just a quick message away. Mastodon instances are small and the admins have a low workload, they're typically quite accessible.
>Basically I just use twitter for news: I follow some big names and organizations and just read from the firehose of news coming out. I probably have a lower than 1/10000 read to write ratio.
>Am I trying to use Mastodon like Twitter in a way it wasn't designed for?
The only reason this might be the "wrong" approach is the general lack of big name organizations posting news. Most instances are hostile to companies settling in - Mastodon is for people, not brands. That being said, brands could run their own instances and be federated with anyone who wants to follow them.
That aside, there's no wrong way to use Mastodon. Use it however you want.