Some people might find the answer to be obvious (yes) but I’ve rarely found it so. In fact, this is a question I often find in the linux community (regarding linux going mainstream, not lemmy) and people are pretty split upon it.
On one hand, you may get benefits like more activity, more content, more people to interact with, a greater chance you’ll find someone to talk to on some specific subject.
On the other, you could run into an eternal September like reddit, where Lemmy would lose its culture, and have far more spam and moderation issues.
I don’t know, what do you think?
I think it’s important for Lemmy, as well as other efforts such as Mastodon, to become mainstream because we need social media platforms that are answerable to regular people as opposed to corporate interests.
For better or worse, social media has become an invaluable tool and an integral part of our society. It’s a way for people to get news and to discuss it with their peers as well as a tool for education.
Commercial platforms have the most users, and are increasingly being used for political organization. This is a natural development, since organizing always begins where the people are. However, we must remember who owns these platforms and whose interests they ultimately represent. These are not neutral and unbiased channels that allow for the free flow of information. The content on these sites is carefully curated. Views and opinions that are unpalatable to the owners of these platforms are often suppressed, and sometimes outright banned.
Some examples include Facebook banning antifascist pages and Twitter banning left-wing accounts during the midterm elections in US. When the content that the user produce does not fit with the interests of the platform it gets removed and communities end up being destroyed. This is clearly a problem for any meaningful organizing.
Another problem is that user data constitutes a significant source of revenue for corporate social media platforms. The information collected about the users is referred to as metadata, and it can reveal a lot more about the individual than most people realize. It’s possible for the owners of the platforms to identify users based on the address of the device they’re using, see their location, who they interact with, and so on. This creates a comprehensive profile of the person along with the network of individuals whom they interact with.
This information is shared with the affiliates of the platform as well as government entities. A recent RCMP leak showed how this kind of information is used to spy on Canadian citizens.
It’s clear that commercial platforms do not respect user privacy, nor are the users in control of their content. While it’s important to participate on such platforms in order to agitate, educate, and recruit comrades, they should not be seen as a safe space for people on the left to organize.
Open source platforms provide an alternative to corporate social media. These platforms are developed on a non-profit basis and are hosted by volunteers across the globe. A growing number of such platforms are available today and millions of people are using them already.
All these platforms are developed in the open, and the developers themselves are often left-wing activists (as is the case with Mastodon and Lemmy). These platforms explicitly avoid tracking users and collecting their data. Not only are these platforms better at respecting user privacy, they also tend to provide a better user experience without annoying ads and popups.
Another interesting aspect of the Fediverse is that it promotes collaboration. Traditional commercial platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube have no incentive to allow users to move data between them. They directly compete for users in a zero sum game and go out of their way to make it difficult to share content across them. This is the reason we often see screenshots from one site being posted on another.
On the other hand, a federated network that’s developed in the open and largely hosted non-profit results in a positive-sum game environment. Users joining any of the platforms on the network help grow the entire network.
Having many different sites hosted by individuals was the way the internet was intended to work in the first place, it’s actually quite impressive how corporations took the open network of the internet and managed to turn it into a series of walled gardens. Marxist theory states that in order to be free, the workers must own the means of production. This idea is directly applicable in the context of social media. Only when we own the platforms that we use will we be free to post our thoughts and ideas without having to worry about them being censored by corporate interests.
It’s time for us to get serious about owning our tools and start using communication platforms built by the people and for the people. This is the only way to guard against corporate threats to worker organization.
I’m not entirely sure that social media sites should be considered the biggest risk. CDN’s (Content Delivery Networks) can track you all across the internet. Mastodon was using a CDN. I contend that the https is designed to authenticate the correctness of the metadata sites are collecting on you and not to make your daily browsing more secure.
CDNs are such an important pice of the Internet backbone, isn’t there a way to ensure that tracking doesn’t happen or at least minimize it? The same goes for ISPs, it would be quite hard to have the Internet without them.
I would imagine the only way to do this is through alternative internet protocols. Tor, I2P, FreeNet, ZeroNet, GNUnet, Yggdrasil, etc.
Maybe something like IPFS could be used in place of conventional CDNs?
Creative minds will always find a way to track you. There needs to be serious consequences or the invisible people doing it will keep doing it.
CDNs are also an important problem, but I do think that public forums being privately owned is the biggest danger we face right now.
While I agree with everything you said, there are some big hurdles standing in the way of mainstream adoption.
I personally find the fediverse to be a superior alternative and the answer to a call of saving the internet, taking it back to it’s origins, and pushing forward with modernity to make all the right moves, and for that reason deeply wish they had been invented in the early 2000s, before corporations took over the internet.
Yes, Mastodon had a huge momentum with millions of subscribers because of high profile users getting pissed with twitter, but Mastodon has since stagnated in user registration and all of the high profile users has since returned to Twitter because of audience reach.
Another problem is the content. Since these platforms are mainly used by leftist political users, and not oriented towards content creators, there is no incentive for ‘commoners’ to adopt the services.
Then comes the final issue, which is monetary gain by users. The primary attraction of the various platforms is the monetary gains potential for creators.
Twitter is especially big with artists (and businesses + high profiles/politicians), as twitter is a humanizing platform that, like Mastodon, lets you shout into the void and have people interact with you, your identity, and your opinion. The big names on Twitter can talk directly to their listeners (and profit from it as a secondary mechanic to fame). And the listeners can always keep up with their people of interest. I feel Mastodon cannot achieve the same results for various reasons (albeit, I would say Mastodon already today have replaced the utility of Facebook, and while facebook have shifted away from the personal stream/pages to focus on ‘marketplace’ and ‘groups’ to try maintain relevance; groups itself is a poor imitation of a single-flow forum like Reddit, and frankly, ‘marketplace’ sucks). So, to the issues I have with Mastodon:
- Media is not displayed correctly, media is cut visibly. This is a big problem for attracting artists.
- There is a lack of #tag culture (this should be empathized when posting), making it difficult to find content.
- There is a lack of algorithmic methods to highlight your media content and target your audience/reach your audience to grow a following. I know this may sound like a bad thing, and it could be, but it’s also important to pull in the content creators, which are dearly needed for a platform to grow.
- There is a lack of daily events/challenges such as “daily pixel art” or similar communities.
- Politicians, governments, non-leftist business are outright banned on the main flow which - honestly, I personally agree with, but has a big damaging effect on the adoption of the network. It’s one thing to regulate fascism and other extremes and ensure content is clean, but to outright ban people simply for existing is not helpful when they are needed to pull in users.
- The users just aren’t there to make it worthwhile. I create a lot of visuals like aquarium photos, ascii art, and pixel art. And as much as I desire and tried to use Mastodon, I just couldn’t attract a single view/like since the platform just isn’t used that way, nor have the userbase interested in such content, forcing me back to Twitter. Nowadays all I do on Mastodon is post leftist rhetorics because that’s what trends, and follow you around lol.
- I love the simplicity of the Mastodon mobile app. It genuinely plays on the strengths of the platform in the way of keeping up with friends and people of interest, but I can’t seem to figure out how to access the local and federated flow. Which essentially makes it really bad in the ways of exposition for creators, especially since #tags are not practiced - and there is just nothing to see.
- The behavior of some users on the fediverse is, for a lack of a better word, toxic. It was with much regret to see a user like Wil Wheaton leave because of the behavior of some users. It has cost the fediverse a lot. This type of behavior needs to go away. We’re not far-right fascists and such behavior should not be tolerated, anywhere.
Reddit is kinda crap. In my opinion it is a poor imitation of traditional forums. Where sub-forums are user-moderated forum sections, and we essentially just got rid of the categorical organization entity, making it more streamlined and always “latest news”. Yes, I know the goal of reddit is to be a news aggregator, and for that design, it’s fantastic. But, the downside is how reddit grew to replace traditional forums in the mind of the public. Which has lead to information management essentially being lost. This is especially noticeable in hobby subs. Granted, the whole reason for reddit’s success is the constant flow of new information, the ‘user attention’, which is the entire goal of a platform selling ads. People won’t move back to traditional forums, I understand that, but, when you go to a hobby forum, for say, guppies, every day 80% of all new posts are “is she pregnant?”, which literally can only be answered with YES. Guppies mate nonstop and any female exposed to a male carry his semen for up to 12 months. She is 99% likely to be pregnant within the year, even if she is moved to an isolated tank. …so yeah, my point is that, Reddit is not a good replacement for traditional forums, but has become one (shared with Facebook groups), and that is why Lemmy is actually the better platform. Lemmy allows users to host instances with specific interests, and has better moderation tools, the weakness of such a system is the lack of a central point. i.e. multiple instances with the same content topic could weaken the user growth potential.
YouTube…let’s face it. It’s big because it’s profitable. PeerTube cannot compete. If content creators can’t generate an income from PeerTube, then YouTube will always remain the primary platform. I don’t know what can be done about this, I also don’t like how PeerTube works. I mean, it doesn’t feel as streamlined as YouTube. In the case of PeerTube, it is not a replacement, and can’t be, both because of the federated nature and split between instances, and because of the lack of monetization available for its content creators - as, unlike other platforms, meaningful content creation for this particular platform is incredibly time consuming.
CMS/Blogging… well I mean, it doesn’t really matter. I like that writefreely exists, I’ve even paid a few months subscription for write.as as I like the project a lot. Sure, a lot could be done to enhance the experience, and help curate content and reach your reader base on-platform. But blogging is itself a medium that, what is needed, is not another platform (Wordpress is also available on the fediverse), what is missing, is a platform like Medium. The curation of meaningful content for your reader experience.
Instagram… Honestly, I don’t even know what justifies the existence of this platform. What can be done on instagram, could as easily be done on Twitter. The main draw people have to instagram, I suppose, is the ability to generate followers and become an “influencer” and make profits. Instagram in and off itself has no real meaning as there is no way to manage image flow or truly utilize it for exposure. It’s not really about image sharing either. Sure, it sets a standard, but you can’t share real experiences, because people don’t actually care about those experiences, unless you’re “important”, which, again, Twitter serves better to channel communication. So what has potential, is just… a gimmick without purpose, that people pretend has purpose, because, uh. Reasons. Whatever it is instagram set out to do, I feel pixelfed could be used as a functional base; as it is integrated to the fediverse, and the flow could therefore be integrated with your wider fediverse communication. But, do we really need pixelfed? Pixelfed suffers from the same indexing and exposure issue as the rest of the fediverse (which, ones addressed, would make it a proper instagram replacement, and do whatever it is instagram does, but better), but for now, it is difficult to curate content, and without an app it just can’t move out of the box where it sits.
Tiktok - same stupidity as instagram. We don’t need it. It has no purpose other than spam to generate followers to become an influencer, to make profits. If anything, it’s a flow that you can “scroll” to avoid boredom. I understand that people want this kind of passive pass-time, but why can’t we just all pick up a game or read something? So much more productive. A combination of both TikTok and Instagram into “pixelfed”, and a way to curate content and sync your fediverse accounts though, that could be a remedy of utility.
Pinterest is a great resource for hobbyists looking for inspiration or to find people on other platforms through their shared image links. Pinterest is an odd one, because it’s also a really good platform to promote your content and resources. In and off itself, it is essentially a haven for aristry in a way that works just… better. Than instagram ever could. For the purpose both of self promotion and for image sharing. But, I don’t see how this would help the fediverse. It does not need to be part of the fediverse, as I can’t see how it would be integrated without actually defeating the point of integration (to promote your fediverse stuff). It could easily be part of pixelfeds structure to service both Pinterest, TikTok, and instagram. To be a unique multi-purpose platform for collecting, viewing, and sharing graphical media - this way, Mastodon and PeerTube would not have to directly cater to content producers, as they would sync their content through this platform.
…ran out of letters. apparently there’s a 10k limit.
to continue…
Facebook is dying, there is no denying that. They’re currently trying their best to stay relevant, but they have nothing to offer. The stream died the moment they added the algorithmic display of the flow and people have since moved to other services for that. Photo sharing they outcompeted themselves with through Instagram, and groups is as said, a poor imitation of reddit. What people use though, is marketplace. What people also use though, is Messenger/Whatsapp. In an ideal world, Matrix would be tied to the fediverse as the protocol for instant messaging. Another huge hurdle that maintains facebooks relevance is “Facebook limited” - which, in may third world countries without net neutrality, is the primary “internet” used by users. In these places, Facebook pays the private ISPs to provide Facebook for free, which allows people to use Facebook as a form of ‘internet’ through pages, marketplace, messenger, etc as their daily driver. In these places, Facebook has monopoly of information on the “internet” through their local languages, because it is the only thing people have access to without paying ISP subscription rates that often cost an entire months salary. Facebooks relevance is because they can afford to keep forcing these people to use their platform as their internet, and in turn, profit from corporations promoting and marketing their products through Facebook. Here is for hoping facebooks virtual reality nonsense won’t get anywhere, but tech nerds are sure to promote it, and there is no competition for it, yet. Which will allow Facebook to dominate the ‘metaverse’.
Anyway. I’ve kinda gotten off the rail somewhere here. I don’t know what I originally set out to discuss, other than my desire for the fediverse to fix many of the issues our corporate internet currently has. To reclaim the global network of people, and make us come together, in a way that is not filtered by the wealthy and powerful.
I think it’s going to be a long fight to reclaim public spaces from corporate control, but it’s good to see the beginnings of this happening today. We might not see corporations dethroned in the near future, but we can aim to have our own spaces that aren’t privately owned and that gives us a beachhead to operate from. We have to take a long view of things to win this fight.
Yeah, I agree with everything you’re saying. I don’t really expect fediverse to displace commercial platforms any time soon, and the fact that it’s much easier for content creator to monetize their content.
That said, I think fediverse is now big enough that it’s not going anywhere. It’s also worth noting that open source has a very different dynamic from commercial platforms. Projects can survive with little or no commercial incentive because they’re developed by people who themselves benefit from their work. Projects can also be easily forked and taken in different directions by different groups of users if there is a disagreement regarding the direction of the platform. Even when projects become abandoned, they can be picked up again by new teams as long as there is an interested community of users around them. All of that makes open source far more resilient than commercial platforms. If a company runs out of money then it folds and the platform goes away. Fediverse just needs to have a big enough user base to be self sustaining, and I think we’re well past that point already.
I would also argue that a lot of things that make commercial platforms attractive are actually negatives. A lot of the viral content is often just sponsored advertisements in disguise. Prominent content creators end up shilling for companies while disguising it as being educational content. Veritasium running propaganda for self driving car companies is a good recent example of that. I think any solutions that focus on fast growth will end up creating similar problems in the fediverse as well.
For a YouTube alternative, there is LBRY, though I don’t know much about how well it really pays, particularly in comparison to YouTube. That said, creators can post paid content, and I think users can setup a monthly tip to the channel, or even tip a creator’s video if they want.
Don’t know if the devs have set up any kind of payment system based on views though.
I think LBRY is a very good answer to the current limitations of PeerTube, and there is a payment system based on views, activity, and production. Even viewers get paid for viewing. But the SEC pretty much killed it a few months back. It’s losing nearly all of its momentum and I’m not sure how they intend to recover. They’ve also had problems with payouts (I never got my 50 free LBC from the beta test, and when I brought it up to the admins, they deleted the offer).
This was incredibly well put. Whole-heartedly agree
it’s actually quite impressive how corporations took the open network of the internet and managed to turn it into a series of walled gardens
I don’t think it’s that impressive when you consider:
- walled gardens drive revenue
- revenue becomes capital to create next piece of software
- next piece of software is then naturally walled, to further drive revenue
And slowly the cycle takes over [most] of the web.
Yeah, the web has become just a handful of corporate websites and that really needs to change going forward.
I want to be more popular than it is now but not mainstream. Just big enough that there’s a passionate community but not big enough that anyone has the urge to sell out.
Same. I’d love for us to grow, but never at the expense of it becoming overwhelming. I’d much rather have a bunch of smaller, community / interest focused, interconnected instances, than a giant one that values growth above all.
Our goal for this instance at least is just for it to be an enjoyable experience.
Would it actually be that bad having a giant commercial-centric instance, ie. something closer to Reddit than Lemmy. I mean imagine if Reddit could federate with Lemmy right now, then you could still choose the instance you want, but subscribe to the mainstream sphere that you also want to follow.
Someone could start one, but I doubt many would use it, as most ppl don’t like seeing ads.
I think you’re right, It’s probably hard to find a business model around federation. Maybe it could work for enterprice on premise setups, similar to how Matrix is used in German healthcare. But I don’t see how that would map to Lemmy in particular.
IMO the only funding that federation needs, is for developers, not really hosting costs. Most instances can be run on $5-10 dollar a month VPS’s.
Wikipedia has the best model (or at least used to, nowadays they have far more funding than they could ever need, and their requests are just annoying), where they do yearly funding drives. When our NLNet funding runs out, we will most likely have to do something similar in order to continue working on lemmy full-time.
Its a sad state of affairs, because most fediverse projects have < 3 developers, yet we all make less in donations than the average youtuber with a patreon. Eventually I think it’ll be a good idea to have yearly campaigns where we share all the fediverse projects that need funding, along with their liberapay / OpenCollective accounts. We all would prefer to stay donation funded, to remain free of any business or political entanglements.
Right, it’s a shame that there isn’t a better culture for supporting developers like there are for other things online. Maybe it’s because you rarely see the actual person(s) behind the software, as you do with say influencers or streamers.
Maybe platforms like Open Collective can help making open software more financially viable. I also like the trend of big corporations sponsoring the software they build upon, like for example Blender: https://fund.blender.org/
Babel (a web compiler) also wrote a relevant blog post some month ago Babel is used by millions, so why are we running out of money?
Short answer: yes, but I don’t think it happen will any time soon.
Long answer: I think the Fediverse in general is growing at a really healthy rate right now. It maintains an active community, but it isn’t large enough for it to fall apart under pressure yet. So it has time for its culture to ferment, and for devs to work out the kinks that come with federation. And hopefully: for fedi implementations to move beyond what the old platforms offered.
Whenever it attracts a larger audience, the culture of fedi will be probably be immovable the same way the early internet’s was (if not more so, due to its decentralized nature actively flying in the face of the ad business and walled gardens which are largely the culprit for the situation we find ourselves in).
I.e., fedi could be a return to normal for the internet, which reminds people what made it cool to begin with. For that reason, fedi’s honeymoon phase would probably last much longer if that happened.
That being said: I kinda want to see more PeerTubers. That’s the only popular implementation I’ve seen that doesn’t have a blossoming community yet.
Sorry if I too broadly expanded the scope of your question lol :p
That being said: I kinda want to see more PeerTubers. That’s the only popular implementation I’ve seen that doesn’t have a blossoming community yet.
Yeah, PeerTube is rather lacking there, but it’s also due to the “limitations” in practicality. Even more mainstream/popular platforms (Odysee, DTube, BitChute, etc) struggle to tackle the massive monopoly that YouTube has, but at least they offer a very easy experience compared to PeerTube. You either have to run an instance yourself (which isn’t neither trivial nor cheap) or register an account on an instance with a pretty limiting quota. Instances with unlimited quotas are few and none of them have a properly good watching experience.
It’s a shame, I’d love to see PT flourish, but the reality is that video hosting/streaming is tricky and expensive which severely limits the growth of platforms like it.
For peertube, there is also the lack of any easy way for creators to make money, due to the lack of built in ads, or equivalent of youtube premium. Money is incentive.
Also true. The best it has is a little customizable sponsor/donate button, which is neat but far from a good solution.
I don’t think Lemmy itself can have a culture. Specific servers can, like lemmy.ml, or even multiple servers forming some kind of a community, but as long as Lemmy is federated and dcentralized then it becoming popular is not going to hurt our community. People can always go form there own community and establish their own server.
Lemmy.ml as an instance, yes, but not too much.
Lemmy as a federation, yes yes yes, as much as possible. I don’t think there is something I would consider “too big”. But maybe I would prefer it not to grow too fast in order for it to have time to react and adapt to a diversification of culture and even usages.
lemmy is resistant to an eternal september situation due to the inherent mechanics of the fediverse. this may also be a reason why lemmy and the fediverse can’t become mainstream.
personally i want federated services to be mainstream to save the internet from the corporate stronghold it is currently suffering. a single company being the gatekeeper of all flow of information is a dangerous dictatorship.
Federation does put us in an odd situation in regards to the eternal September phenomenon. I don’t think it prevents it completely - if say lemmy.ml were overrun, and it’s original users migrated to a new instance, they would never be able to quite recreate lemmy as it is today.
even if lemmy.ml is overrun it doesn’t really matter since you can migrate your content to another instance. as long as that functionality is made obvious and easy, i think it could be pretty safe.
i mean, currently. the lemmy.ml network is specifically intended for leftist discussions. if you want to discuss a more focused hobby, such a practice would be better achieved on a lemmy instance specifically for said hobby. and then federate the other networks for communication.
I just want more content
Same lol
Same
same
What matters isn’t whether or not our Lemmy instance grows, but rather the nature of this user growth and whether or not this can be steered by the community with its current personnel and resources; while we should avoid sudden, explosive growth that slips beyond the ability of our existing means to manage and control it we should never turn away a steady growth of the usership in more easily digested bites.
As socialists and communists our agenda is to raise the consciousness and organisation of the masses to the highest level possible. This extends to not only their consciousness of class, but also to raising their technical, academic and professional skills. Lemmygrad could serve as a great forum space for stimulating all of that, provided it continues to grow at a steady rate while safeguarding its standards, politics and culture. I think achieving this is feasible provided the tools and mod base are available to:-
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Enforce and even refine the existing standards and culture of communities on this platform
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Integrate both user and mod feedback mechanisms at the community level to prevent the emergence of mod cliques with no accountability to users and means to filter out those mods whose values and actions are unsuitable for the community they’ve been given authority to oversee.
As things currently stand, Reddit already functions as the home for casual demographics that go there simply out of a sheer hunger for content. These people have no incentive to come here, as we’re in absolutely no shape at all to compete with Reddit on the basis of content. Moreover, the Lemmy interface is too similar to it to truly distinguish itself and compete with it on that basis either. Therefore, we shouldn’t be concerned about an influx of reddit people to this platform.
We should intentionally be more discerning in terms of who should be welcomed and tolerated here, so as to foster a genuine alternative that caters specifically to people who share our own political sensibilities and view it as a space where that expression is valued rather than derided. As more dedicated users trickle in over time they’ll supplement the platform with increased capabilities that enable it to position itself more and more as the space for socialists and communists to come to instead of the Reddit cesspit.
This seems a little specific to only lemmygrad though no?
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as an open source federated service it doesn’t matter what we want. People will use it if they wanna use it
I think in the future people will care much more about free software and privacy, so it’s inevitabile that federated platforms like Lemmy will be mainstream. Reply: I would like enought people to have more quality contents so that I can drop Reddit. Also more people means more interest and at the end a bettet software.
well you where right! 🎉
Yeah, seems like new Reddit’s policy is making the process faster
Yeah, this is what I’m waiting for on Lemmy and Aether. Just enough activity across just enough topics that I can finally drop Reddit.
Only problem, with some of these federated and P2P protocols, is that, for the time being, the kinds of people who leave mainstream social media tend to be fascists, qanon nuts, or straight up delusional to the point of likely needing medical intervention.
Pretty glad I discovered Lemmy though. Everyone here seems fairly sane.
It would be daunting if Lemmy got a userbase as big as Reddit, with all the problems that come with it.
On a content level however, there should be enough ways to filter out the stuff you don’t wanna see… but even with the possibility to downvote, more moderation would be in order and a clear consensus of where Lemmy wants to position itself and to what degree less popular opinions should be tolerated. This is a thought process that has to be finished before this place gets flooded with an overwhelming wave of new users (which is rather unlikely anyway).
In regards to moderation, some form of democracy should be implemented for each community mod team. Of course, this should be built in a way as to prevent, or at the very least limit, voter fraud and hostile takeovers.
There could be limits set on the protocol level, like only allowing users to vote in elections on their homeserver (or allowing the homeserver admins to choose which servers’ users they’ll allow?). Each community could also vote (or the mods internally vote) on the requirements for voting, like: amount of time subscribed, activity level within the community, age of account, etc.
Perhaps each community could even choose the type of election/voting system. They could be for a set term, until they get voted out, or a constant approval vote where they lose their position if they piss off enough people.
Hell, if you wanted to go even further, an impeachment process could be included. Or maybe every mod action is publically available to be appealed by the community if need be and if enough actions are overturned they lose their position.
I’m really into governance structures, so people might not care for something like this, but I’ve spent some time writing out ideas for a Reddit alternative with heavy emphasis on governance, both community and site wide. Mainly for the purposes of preventing authoritarian behavior by mods and site admins alike. It’d be pretty cool to see Lemmy adopt things like this.
I would say that Lemmy already has a kind of democracy built in, which is that users can pick an instance based on their preferences, and also relatively easily change instances. Or use multiple accounts, anonymous or not. Communities can also be moderated from other users. But in the end, the server admin always has total control over the server, that cant be changed. The main influence that users have is the decision which instance they use (and where they create communities).
More advanced tools like the ones you suggest also sound useful, but seems like a lot of work to implement that. Maybe it would make more sense to some type of plugin system for this logic, so that instance admins can choose their preferred way of moderation.
More views and supporter, yes. More popular, no - the answer why is simple because the more people are on a platform, the more it gets infiltrated with people you do not want. Such people abuse the platform for their purposes. I am not going into details, but I think we all know what I mean.
I rather like less people with productive discussions than lots of comments that are not helpful.
I think that it could use maybe 5 times the current active user base. I find that I run in a lot of the same circles as some active users and it ends up being a surprise when I’m having a dialogue with someone other than those people.
Well, hi (｡･∀･)ﾉﾞI don’t think we’ve interacted before
It needs user interaction to sustain itself. It doesn’t need to mainstream to the extent that it’s mentioned on the television news every other day, but a large user base would be nice.
I think that the more people that move to the Fediverse the better. As it gets popular Lemmy will be more and more populated with instances that can be curated to the user’s wants. Don’t like how one instance is running things? Move to another. Don’t like how one community does things? Move to another. The more popular Lemmy is, the more options Users will have.
Key is more people, not more corporations. We don’t want META to connect with the fediverse!
I don’t understand that. If you don’t like corporations joining the fediverse then just join an instance that is defederated from them or better yet just block them. Corporations are going to join the fediverse and that’s ok because one of the major parts of the fediverse is you can choose to affiliate with corporations or not, you’re not subject to them.
You gotta think big picture. Meta joins fediverse -> lots of Facebook users can now interact with fediverse users (yay) -> Meta now builds proprietary code that only works on Facebook for the fediverse -> users en masse joins Facebook fediverse -> Meta declares other fediverse instances sub par and incompatible with Facebook -> Meta cuts off from fediverse completely -> fediverse becomes irrelevant.
That’s giving to much credit to Facebook tho. Not everyone is just going to jump ship and join the Facebook fediverse.
They will if they have a better UX, computational resources, brand recognition, and can sign you up with your current Instagram account. Which seems to be the case.
Will everyone join? No. I’d rather go back to Reddit than to sign up for it.
Will the vast majority of people join? Yes.
The new Threads app had something like 10M users in 7h. The whole of Lemmy is 2M users.
