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?
Lack of apps and lack of need for most people. I think instances that fill a niche and provide a service that is better than the non federated service will help.
The content provided on the Fediverse might be a turn of for the average user. Take mastadon for example: Imagine a user who just wants to try mastadon, he joins mstdn.social scrolls around a bit and yikes what is that? Every fifth post is trap hentai and the rest is 50/50 programming and communism. Obviously thats not the whole fediverse… but this is the first impression we give many new users. I think thats one of the problems of decentrelization, the lack of one starting point that is well moderated and conftable for the normal user. If we take a look at modern socialmedia like TikTok for example we notice that content fits everyone and if it doesnt it only takes a few swipes for the algorithm to figure it out. Users who dont care about or dont understand the risks of centrelized networks just dont want to loose this convenience.
To top if off, I think Fediverse related sites are too happy with the technical aspect for most regular social media users. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing. Just puts off people who would already might think getting onto regular social media is too much work.
When I first looked at Mastodon I noped out because they had a bunch of things to choose from and made it seem hard to use with the email style links at the end.
you’re seeing it in the niche communities that you’d expect to be on the cutting edge: tech workers, sex workers, furries… I think in the small intentional ecofocused communities you see a lot of the core constructive energy that you could possibly hope for. To bring down the bigger silos, a more parasitic approach is going to be called for; I am very curious to see how that will develop.
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.
The dominant theory seems to be ease of use/simplicity and the front page of everything having furries, hentai and a bunch of nerd chat.
I think a good way to solve a few of the issues is to have the main instance of each platform market themselves a little harder and not so much on the pods/instances - teach that to the people later after they get in to the atmosphere of the Fediverse. For example, someone goes to Mastodon.social, all they see is that it’s the main instance, and other that the word instance, it looks like a simple Twitter alternative.
Then later if they want to delve a little deeper (the customer), they can learn about instances/pods. From there they can host their own, or search for a new one. (Most of the instance directories could use some simplifying too)
Then to go along with that, each main instance would also have to be moderated quite heavily to keep things clean for when people first join.
That would require easier instance switching (like nomadic identities on Hubzilla). But also the very idea of a “main” instance is counter-productive. The current theme based instances is a better idea to cater to the current niche audiences.
Maybe in the future there could also be more mainstream regional instances. Something similar to your regional/city newspaper, where it is more about local content and localized exchange.
In terms of social media, it comes down to content. I know every time I’ve joined something was because there was enough content that I wanted to look at for me to do daily. Right now, lots of fediverse stuff is about FOSS and tech, which a vast majority of people don’t care too much about. But it is slowly starting to spread, nd facilitating those groups by contributing and allowing to grow will do wonders.
I’d also say if you have friends somewhere, you follow them there. I know that was me for all my mainstream social media joining (other than tumblr, that I got my friends to join and I joined because of the content I found).
But seriously, like the others have said, it’s really taking off and you know its true by how many alternatives there are! Almost every mainstream social network has a fedialt, which, if it wasn’t as popular, wouldn’t exist yet!
It doesn’t have millions in marketing to pay for adverts everywhere. Very few people are aware of it’s existence and the mainstream media are going to ignore you unless you grease a few palms, know what I mean?
So my personal impressions is that mainstream services are garbage, but that mirrors the mainstream culture that consumes them. If most people want to stay on Instagram or Facebook, I would prefer they do, because as we saw when they did the Instagram Boycott on the 20th, we got a lot of new users, but it brought a lot of toxicity over from Instagram and once again somebody who really wasn’t a bad person at all got bullied off the platform by a small, but loud group of people. I came over here to escape the toxicity of the big social media platforms and found something resembling leftist solidarity. I appreciate that most of these services don’t tolerate bigotry to nearly the same extent as the mainstream services, that I would say often amplify hateful things because controversial content gets prioritized by the algorithms. The reason I like the fediverse is quality, not quantity. Mainstreaming these services would require either conforming to the norms of the mainstream internet culture, or somehow getting the mainstream internet culture to conform to our norms here. Both of these tasks seem pointless. Maybe the goal shouldn’t be total market saturation, but sustainability of the communities we have come to love. I think we get a lot of user share, but more than that we get a lot of really great, friendly and welcoming people for the most part. I think the toxic voices tend to get drowned out over time, because we have tools to filter that out and while we may have shitty things that happen from time to time as will any community, a lot of our instances function as a community and really do feel like a home on the internet.
I think that the fediverse has already taken off. It’s not mainstream -perhaps never will be-, but it reached a critical mass and that’s crucial. The content network effect of the commercial social networks is very strong, but don’t forget it also carries drawbacks. Something similar happens with cities: many people want to life there (services, jobs, cultural offer…) but doing so also leads to problems (road traffic congestion, air quality and many more!).
Fediverse has proven it’s viable, is getting more mature and it’s gaining impulse on many different niches. I think these are all good signs. ‘Cities’ are going to exist for a long time (the capital’s machine is very strong), ‘towns’ need to keep working and fitting the needs of the burned migrants (respecting privacy, respecting languages, avoiding harassment…) without repeating the ‘cities’ errors: monetization of free giant services --> tons of adds, massive profilation, lack of privacy, development of addiction thought algorithms…
Let’s see how much the fediverse can grow (technological sovereignty of grass roots, governments…) and where is the equilibrium with the big commercial social networks. I’m sure we are in the beginning of a long and interesting transformation :-)
??? It’s been a month or two, if we’re talking about federated Lemmy.
This stuff takes time. For something like facebook or reddit, they had to be in just the right set of circumstances to capitalize on people’s interest, and they gradually grew for more than a decade, eventually reaching something that at least seems like expononential growth in the past five years. The reach and visibility that those things have built and currently enjoy is orders of magnitude beyond anything the fediverse has.
That said, it is being used, especially on Mastodon. And Lemmy is being used. I don’t think it’s a fair or reasonable metric to expect something to be as big as Facebook, one of the largest companies in the world, over a short timeline and to say it’s not a success if it’s not at that scale.
All the fediverse social networks are just federated alternatives to already existing social networks + federation. This means that the bulk of people won’t adopt them unless they care about federation with a small community over the non-federated network.
Federated solutions won’t rival major social networks unless they are innovating the next features and solutions instead of making alternatives to already existing and dominant networks.
Lots of interesting points have been brought up here but a large amount of it can be chalked up to the fact that if your friends aren’t on a platform already, most people can’t be arsed to switch. Also, 90% of the fediverse are either programmers or people like me who are quite deep into the FOSS rabbit hole, so they can’t get their main content there.
A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.
Fediverse is a portmanteau of “federation” and “universe”. It is a common, informal name for a federation of social network servers whose main purpose is microblogging, the sharing of short, public messages.
Lack of apps and lack of need for most people. I think instances that fill a niche and provide a service that is better than the non federated service will help.
The content provided on the Fediverse might be a turn of for the average user. Take mastadon for example: Imagine a user who just wants to try mastadon, he joins mstdn.social scrolls around a bit and yikes what is that? Every fifth post is trap hentai and the rest is 50/50 programming and communism. Obviously thats not the whole fediverse… but this is the first impression we give many new users. I think thats one of the problems of decentrelization, the lack of one starting point that is well moderated and conftable for the normal user. If we take a look at modern socialmedia like TikTok for example we notice that content fits everyone and if it doesnt it only takes a few swipes for the algorithm to figure it out. Users who dont care about or dont understand the risks of centrelized networks just dont want to loose this convenience.
To top if off, I think Fediverse related sites are too happy with the technical aspect for most regular social media users. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing. Just puts off people who would already might think getting onto regular social media is too much work.
When I first looked at Mastodon I noped out because they had a bunch of things to choose from and made it seem hard to use with the email style links at the end.
you’re seeing it in the niche communities that you’d expect to be on the cutting edge: tech workers, sex workers, furries… I think in the small intentional ecofocused communities you see a lot of the core constructive energy that you could possibly hope for. To bring down the bigger silos, a more parasitic approach is going to be called for; I am very curious to see how that will develop.
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.
The dominant theory seems to be ease of use/simplicity and the front page of everything having furries, hentai and a bunch of nerd chat.
I think a good way to solve a few of the issues is to have the main instance of each platform market themselves a little harder and not so much on the pods/instances - teach that to the people later after they get in to the atmosphere of the Fediverse. For example, someone goes to Mastodon.social, all they see is that it’s the main instance, and other that the word instance, it looks like a simple Twitter alternative.
Then later if they want to delve a little deeper (the customer), they can learn about instances/pods. From there they can host their own, or search for a new one. (Most of the instance directories could use some simplifying too)
Then to go along with that, each main instance would also have to be moderated quite heavily to keep things clean for when people first join.
Thoughts?
That would require easier instance switching (like nomadic identities on Hubzilla). But also the very idea of a “main” instance is counter-productive. The current theme based instances is a better idea to cater to the current niche audiences.
Maybe in the future there could also be more mainstream regional instances. Something similar to your regional/city newspaper, where it is more about local content and localized exchange.
In terms of social media, it comes down to content. I know every time I’ve joined something was because there was enough content that I wanted to look at for me to do daily. Right now, lots of fediverse stuff is about FOSS and tech, which a vast majority of people don’t care too much about. But it is slowly starting to spread, nd facilitating those groups by contributing and allowing to grow will do wonders.
I’d also say if you have friends somewhere, you follow them there. I know that was me for all my mainstream social media joining (other than tumblr, that I got my friends to join and I joined because of the content I found).
But seriously, like the others have said, it’s really taking off and you know its true by how many alternatives there are! Almost every mainstream social network has a fedialt, which, if it wasn’t as popular, wouldn’t exist yet!
It doesn’t have millions in marketing to pay for adverts everywhere. Very few people are aware of it’s existence and the mainstream media are going to ignore you unless you grease a few palms, know what I mean?
I use the fediverse every day and lots of new websites are being made. I see it growing steadily.
So my personal impressions is that mainstream services are garbage, but that mirrors the mainstream culture that consumes them. If most people want to stay on Instagram or Facebook, I would prefer they do, because as we saw when they did the Instagram Boycott on the 20th, we got a lot of new users, but it brought a lot of toxicity over from Instagram and once again somebody who really wasn’t a bad person at all got bullied off the platform by a small, but loud group of people. I came over here to escape the toxicity of the big social media platforms and found something resembling leftist solidarity. I appreciate that most of these services don’t tolerate bigotry to nearly the same extent as the mainstream services, that I would say often amplify hateful things because controversial content gets prioritized by the algorithms. The reason I like the fediverse is quality, not quantity. Mainstreaming these services would require either conforming to the norms of the mainstream internet culture, or somehow getting the mainstream internet culture to conform to our norms here. Both of these tasks seem pointless. Maybe the goal shouldn’t be total market saturation, but sustainability of the communities we have come to love. I think we get a lot of user share, but more than that we get a lot of really great, friendly and welcoming people for the most part. I think the toxic voices tend to get drowned out over time, because we have tools to filter that out and while we may have shitty things that happen from time to time as will any community, a lot of our instances function as a community and really do feel like a home on the internet.
I think that the fediverse has already taken off. It’s not mainstream -perhaps never will be-, but it reached a critical mass and that’s crucial. The content network effect of the commercial social networks is very strong, but don’t forget it also carries drawbacks. Something similar happens with cities: many people want to life there (services, jobs, cultural offer…) but doing so also leads to problems (road traffic congestion, air quality and many more!).
Fediverse has proven it’s viable, is getting more mature and it’s gaining impulse on many different niches. I think these are all good signs. ‘Cities’ are going to exist for a long time (the capital’s machine is very strong), ‘towns’ need to keep working and fitting the needs of the burned migrants (respecting privacy, respecting languages, avoiding harassment…) without repeating the ‘cities’ errors: monetization of free giant services --> tons of adds, massive profilation, lack of privacy, development of addiction thought algorithms…
Let’s see how much the fediverse can grow (technological sovereignty of grass roots, governments…) and where is the equilibrium with the big commercial social networks. I’m sure we are in the beginning of a long and interesting transformation :-)
??? It’s been a month or two, if we’re talking about federated Lemmy.
This stuff takes time. For something like facebook or reddit, they had to be in just the right set of circumstances to capitalize on people’s interest, and they gradually grew for more than a decade, eventually reaching something that at least seems like expononential growth in the past five years. The reach and visibility that those things have built and currently enjoy is orders of magnitude beyond anything the fediverse has.
That said, it is being used, especially on Mastodon. And Lemmy is being used. I don’t think it’s a fair or reasonable metric to expect something to be as big as Facebook, one of the largest companies in the world, over a short timeline and to say it’s not a success if it’s not at that scale.
I think it has taken off. I know more real life peoples on mastodon that I did a year ago. It’s like a nice little opt-out of surveillance capitalism.
Unfortunately I don’t know a single person that uses Mastodon. I envy you.
And it feels more like the close-knit internet days of yore.
All the fediverse social networks are just federated alternatives to already existing social networks + federation. This means that the bulk of people won’t adopt them unless they care about federation with a small community over the non-federated network.
Federated solutions won’t rival major social networks unless they are innovating the next features and solutions instead of making alternatives to already existing and dominant networks.
Lots of interesting points have been brought up here but a large amount of it can be chalked up to the fact that if your friends aren’t on a platform already, most people can’t be arsed to switch. Also, 90% of the fediverse are either programmers or people like me who are quite deep into the FOSS rabbit hole, so they can’t get their main content there.