So, I completely switched to FOSS federated social networks toward the middle of 2020. I love the Fediverse, but nobody I know IRL seems to care at all about it in any capacity, so I’m basically just screaming into a void full of other FOSSheads. How do I reconcile this? How do we get our IRL peeps on the Fediverse?
I’ve been wishing for a long time that “popular amongst the masses” sites had to be federated as that way anyone would be able to stay where they are and still follow you. But seeing FB, Google, and others shut down their XMPP that’s not going to happen unless legilstated I guess.
Maybe this is only my problem but my IRL are not FOSSheads or even really passionate about tech like I am, so I realised I could not rely on them following me in the Fediverse, and I’ve built up new followers and online frioends wuith those who share interests similar to mine. Certainly Mastodon has been my most successful with my follower count soon over takling my Twitter follower count, and I get way more engagement on Mastodon. Obviously follower count groiwes also with me engaging with others.
I have seen a few of my IRL coming across this last month but it seems that was due to privacy issues more than FOSS and tech. So it may be worth promoting to IRL the no ads, privacy, etc advantages.
Where a few more IRL went to is MeWe, which is not federated at all, although is privacy respecting. Because it has a centralised interest based group directory it is easy to be found, and I have a bit over 40,000 followers in one of my groups there. It’s not the ideal but it has pulled quite a few people away from Facebook itself.