I’ve thought about it a bit and the Fediverse has been around for a while now. There are some really cool applications being made to replace the mainstream ones, but they just aren’t taking off.
Why do you guys think that might be? Ease of use? Addiction to the mainstream platforms? Lack of marketing?
Maybe it boils down to economics. It’s expensive to use the fediverse in terms of time and energy spent finding and creating content (vs say retweeting influencers), interesting users, etc and if users do not value privacy and freedom from corporate control, switching is not worth it. So long as mainstream platforms are perceived as free it will be hard to disrupt.
But the dopamine/serotonin addiction effect you referenced is pretty compelling too.