One of the reasons that I really liked the fediverse before all these features mastodon implemented was that it did feel like an open federated network. It was different, and I really liked how everything posted was public. We have a global, public and personal timeline to view at our leisure.

I liked it better this way. Felt more like a community of people, and that there were more open conversations to read and join... and then leave when we wanted to. You lose that the moment that you start closing things off, start trying to make things more private or for a select few people. Even blocking here was nice, because you didn't have to get notices someone made but they could still follow threads.
But then we got people that didn't want to have conversations. That didn't want to hear opinions they didn't agree with. That wanted to be very selective about who could enter their mentions to talk with them. Could see their posts. And then we got scopes. 
Where did the fediverse that I knew go?