I get it that things can have unfortunate names, but I’ve seen a lot of people proudly claim lemmy is “federated” or a “federation”. Isn’t a federation actually against what people want out of the fediverse?

Like, a federation in governments is about a bunch of otherwise self-governing states under a centralized government. Like the US, that’s a federation.

isn’t the whole point of the fediverse that it’s anti-centralization? Then why do people call it a federation positively? That sounds like the last thing I’d want it to be.

I think a confederation would work, but that’s not what I see people going for. Is that what it’s actually intended to be and people just call it the wrong thing?

Imo Reddit is more of a federation than the fediverse, since the subreddits are self-governing communities until the admins demand them to change something.