What did he say to popularize this?

You don't know what you get though, even without an AI driven "engagement" algorithm. If the pace of new videos being uploaded is fast enough there will be no shortage of hours to mindlessly scroll (if that's your goal). It gives everyone an equal chance to be discovered, and from there more popular videos will have their own tabs so you can see what other people like too. The short video format is plenty addictive without pushing for maximum retention, because there's no reason to - other platforms do it to increase your screen time so they can show you more ads. That's all it is. All it ever was. They don't give a shit about you or your enjoyment(YouTube dislikes?), in fact, one method of raising engagement is to make you angry, they do this a lot. It works, it's a lesson they learned from the effectiveness of rage baits.

It's honestly frustrating how so many people want the same old shit algorithmiclly based feed when we've finally gotten rid of the fucking disease.

All I get when I search that instance is Mullvad VPN. Can an admins also block specific communities within an allowed instance?

I think it was lemmy.dbzer0 (?) something along those lines. However when I use the tool to see defederated instances this one doesn't show up, however I can't find it when I search for it either.

Lemm.ee definitely looks interesting, however when I tried to sign up I just got some message that "Toastify is awesome". I'm assuming it's some sarcasm? Because when I refreshed the page all I got is error 503.

I'll give it another shot tomorrow. Thanks for sharing!

Thank you! That explains a little. Follow up question: If the new instance has defederated or "blocked" some community that I am following on this instance, will I still be able to follow them if I import the saved file?

No. Just because you've been asigned a label for some behavior doesn't mean it goes away or that anything has changed. You're just more aware and are equipped with information to help you navigate through life more efficiently. However, what medication does to you is entirely different, as it is also very subjective.