If its possible to create your own instance and federate with any instance of your choice - are there any apps which include the ability to register your own instance with you as the sole user? Maybe I’m misunderstanding the underlying logic

There does seem to be a lot of pushback around bots recently. It might be worth reaching out to discuss with a wider audience eg. !bots@lemmy.world or similar

Have you considered doing a top community of the week/month/year thing? You could reach out to community mods and alert them they’ve won “Top Community of X period based on <Growth>”. Keep a pinned post detailing current “winners”. It would help advertise this community, and it would encourage other communities to be more competitive/pro-active in appealing to new users.

I feel like Cosmic Osmo is doing something that would best be kept behind closed doors

That’s how doubt works.

1. There’s something you know and you experience something which challenges that knowledge.
2. Now you only believe this thing, less sure in your knowledge so you reach out to others who are more knowledgeable on the topic.
3. Post answer your belief has either returned to fact or you’ve learned something new, abandoned a false belief and grown as a person.

Nothing wrong with reaching out.

Nope, no change to the default settings

Huawei P20 Pro, big screen but old phone at this stage I suppose. Thanks for the quick turn around :)

Not for me. Attempting to scroll down does nothing either

Sure that would work just as well if not better

This doesn’t work for me. Tapping once causes the image to close, not just the overlay.

Edit: Follow up on this. I found that if you zoom in slightly and then tap, the overlay will disappear instead of minimising the image. Not exactly as you described but I believe this was what you were referring to. A workaround for now but certainly not an optimal user experience