@alyx as for my opinion: on one hand there was a lot of cringe gold coming from there, but on the other it was full of spambots and most of its users didn't even know what fedi was, let alone interact with people on other instances, so part of me wondered why they federated in the first place (predictably, they became a silo again after about a year or so i believe)

@lottev
I've managed to stay away from fedi for a while, and since I don't make a habit in searching for Gab stuff, I didn't notice.

My mixed feelings stem from the fact that the reason why I discovered fedi was that I had a Gab account when they federated. While I was not actively using it at the time, when I heard they federated, I decided to check things out for a while. See what this Fediverse business was all about. Eventually I moved to other instances.

As for why they federated, the answer to that is very simple. Their phone apps got thrown out of both Apple and Android ecosystems, so they wanted to piggy-back on the fediverse apps available. But we know how well that turned out, so I guess it wasn't worth it for them anymore to continue.

@alyx huh i see, that makes sense

i actually also had a gab account at one point although this was long before they federated. never used it much bc i found the site to be boring, too single-minded in terms of politics

@lottev
Yeah, I had mine really early too. Used it a while, got bored cause it was too empty and, as you say, single-minded. When I heard about the federating news, I thought: maybe there's finally some diversity and more interesting things in general. And this kinda brought me back to try Gab again. Didn't think at the time that I would end up abandoning Gab again for another instance. Not that I really understood what instances were at that time.