At the moment the internet is flawed, do you think the fediverse is the solution?
do you think the fediverse could replace popular social media
3 years ago by Bicyclejohn to c/fediverse
phillycodehound 2 points 3 years ago
And maybe it's a good thing it's not dumbed down. Keeps the cruft out! LOL
Alkalyon 48 points 3 years ago
I expect good and insightful conversations to be moved here.
Reddit is about to become like twitter and facebook where it's ad-ridden, toxicity cesspool.
People will leave to keep having the actual forum experience and will eventually move here as it looks like a very good alternative.
IniNew 26 points 3 years ago
Sometimes I feel like my reddit experience was so different from a lot of people's. I unsubbed from all the default subs and built a specific homepage for the things I found interesting. Unfortunately for me, that means the communities were (relatively speaking) smaller than the popular ones, but still large enough to have frequent engagement. Going to be hard to replicate that, I think.
fruitywelsh 4 points 3 years ago
My approach as well, it took me a long time to realize why I got weird looks saying I browsed reddit at work. My page was opensource,computer, tech, stuff with some other hobbies.My friends was just porn lol
realcaseyrollins 4 points 3 years ago
@Alkalyon @Bicyclejohn #Reddit was already toxic, but I guess now people will begin to recognize its toxicity.
strypey 7 points 3 years ago
@realcaseyrollins
> Reddit was already toxic, but I guess now people will begin to recognize its toxicity
... just like Titter.
albinanigans 4 points 3 years ago
Yup, that part.
We been knew about Twitter but for a lot of us, Musk taking the wheel was the push we needed to find greener, less toxic pastures.
tookmyname 28 points 3 years ago
No. And that’s fine. I don’t expect underground music to replace top 40. And there’s a place for both.
Wintermute 11 points 3 years ago
To some extent this is a feature, not a problem though. I know it's elitist, but in a lot of ways the internet was a much nicer place when it was just a bunch of tech nerds.
Stumblinbear 7 points 3 years ago
I hope you don't mean nicer as in "friendlier," because the internet has always been a hellscape
Wintermute 9 points 3 years ago
No, I didn't. Maybe "more interesting" would have been a better phrasing. The signal to noise ratio is so much worse now than it was 20 years ago.
SkyNTP 9 points 3 years ago
“Servers? Instances? Is this a place to connect with my friends or a goddamn server room?”
That's not a property of of federation (see email and websites) it's just because early adopters are a little wired. In any new social phenomenon, it takes a second wave of adopters (first wave of followers) to bridge the wierdos from the masses.
Cue this classic study in leadership: https://youtu.be/hO8MwBZl-Vc be the first one to follow the wierdos and show the masses it's cool.
gredo 8 points 3 years ago
But couldn't it be made easier? Who cares which server a community or a user is registered on. I register where a friend sent me the link to and from there on it shouldn't matter and could be handled in the background.
The big sites are also not one central instance. They have several distributed instances all managed by the same company.
interdimensionalmeme 9 points 3 years ago
Future instance owners and moderators don't want users and communities to be able to migrate seamlessly. Mastodon has the same fatal flaw. They want to keep your history and relationships hostage so you can't leave. This is the only thing turns signup to Lemmy and Mastodon into an important decision you don't want to get wrong. That's why you have to read and read and read before signing up and be a Lemmy expert before choosing the right instance for you.
Of course by this time 99% of users have gone back to Reddit. And the 1% that stays still feels like a huge wave.
Also many elitists are happy signup is clunky, it filters out the rif raf and the common Joe. It creates an exclusive space where everyone uses Linux, loves anime and don't like sports.
A place with no cultural relevance ree from eternal September.
KelsonV 5 points 3 years ago
Mastodon has the same fatal flaw. They want to keep your history and relationships hostage so you can’t leave.
You can migrate your relationships to a new Mastodon server.
And while you can't directly transfer the history (the debate over how/whether to do this has gone on for literally years), you can export an archive you can keep locally, and there are tools out there to parse it and convert it to some other form (static website, whatever). Someone's probably written an importer by now, though I'd have to look.
bitsplease 5 points 3 years ago
Future instance owners and moderators don’t want users and communities to be able to migrate seamlessly. Mastodon has the same fatal flaw
This is misrepresentative for a few ways.
For one, you can in fact migrate your mastadon account, fairly easily in fact.
For another thing, instance owners and moderators don't really get to choose whether migration is possible, the code contributors do. I suppose instance owners could start forking their own version of lemmy to make that harder, but ultimately there will always be folks willing to host the "best" version, and so people will just leave
Umbrias 3 points 3 years ago
People said that about reddit, I don't think Lemmy is anywhere near being too complex for the average user. More that social medias generally favor simplicity because simplicity is easy to control, modify, and generally nudge from a developer side trying to guarantee a very specific use case that generates money, rather than just naturally occurring social systems.
Let's be real, humans have been dealing with social networks far more complex, systems more complex, for almost all of human history. The sheer volume of people, no, but the actual processes of interaction, yes.
deadsuperhero 25 points 3 years ago
The various people who work on the fediverse are all doing it for fundamentally different goals, solving different problems, and building different things for different people. It just so happens that, more often than not, a lot of our stuff works together now thanks to the hard efforts put forward by people who cared about interoperability.
I personally believe that the fediverse will kill traditional social media platforms. Because if you can just communicate around a walled garden, what's the point or value in staying in one?
I think we still have a long way to go in terms of usability and design. Those things, along with marketing, remain pretty steep barriers to adoption by people who are unfamiliar with it. There are also a lot of capital-H Hard problems that need to be sorted out down the road, like better filtering and moderation tools, and more robust controls for privacy. I have a feeling we'll get there, but only through hard work and collaboration.
I guess a different way of understanding things is that, the fediverse might not kill the competition outright, but it has the potential to outlast them as something better. And hopefully someday, it'll be as ubiquitous and ordinary as email.
777 3 points 3 years ago
Because if you can just communicate around a walled garden, what’s the point or value in staying in one?
Because people are happy with that garden and don't think about others. Please remember that your average internet user doesn't really know what an API is, or understand about open standards, they just want to find some content that matches their interests, upvote and share said content with their friends who are also inside that garden.
This average user isn't a bad person, stupid or naiive, they just have other things going on in their lives and the internet is a small part of it. They use it, take what they want from it and move on, and there are so many more of those people than you.
People who switch from iOS to Android report losing friends who were on iMessage and are unwilling to move to something platform agnostic such as Signal or WhatsApp. I wouldn't underestimate the walled garden effect.
skullgiver 20 points 3 years ago
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skullgiver 4 points 3 years ago path: 0 32388 32591 32742, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 0
BurningnnTree 3 points 3 years ago
Great insight. I agree that the fediverse will never be anywhere near as big as mainstream social media, but I'm hoping it will continue to grow and be recognized as a valid alternative.
Personally I think of the fediverse as like diet social media. Just like how people switch from Coke to Diet Coke to avoid sugar, people can switch from Twitter to Mastodon to avoid recommendation algorithms and overly-stimulating content. At least that's why I joined the fediverse. I know most people love algorithms and endless content (hence why Tik Tok is so huge) but for those of us who want something less stimulating, I'm glad that the fediverse exists as an alternative. As long as the fediverse is big enough to be enjoyable, but not so big that it becomes super addictive, that's good enough for me.
jursed 2 points 3 years ago
yeah I definetly agree. specifically because of the lack of algorithms or profit motives it won't be " addictive " nor as easy as traditional social media to find what I'm most likely to engage in. but it also means ragebait is less likely to be pushed to me, and for that, its actually quite fine...
im quite sick of the "few big websites" that the internet has become. I miss when there were a greater variety of forums, blogs and places to hang out, only supported through people's passions. and it seems to me federation goes back to those old times.
jezebelley 19 points 3 years ago
You have to remember that the vast majority of people are, for lack of a better word, pretty dumb. You say the word “fediverse” and their eyes cross.
iNeedScissors67 16 points 3 years ago
I mean yeah, that's me. I'm just a regular guy, but since reddit decided to screw up in the worst ways possible, I need an alternative. I don't fully understand the fediverse but I'm going to make an attempt to use kbin and see how it goes.
DeadGemini 8 points 3 years ago
That's just because they haven't been taught about it yet. Once it catches on more (Twitter and Reddit refugees, Meta app) it'll become more widely understood and more people will start using it. Once you understand the point of the Fediverse, using it isn't a whole lot harder than any other social media.
Banana 4 points 3 years ago
I don't know you overestimate people, I think if the Fediverse will succeed its gotta be dumbed down a lot more for people and made seemless so it works without them having to think about the various instances as much.
DeadGemini 2 points 3 years ago
They don't really HAVE to think about the various instances imo. They just need to join one, that's it. Following users/communities from other instances isn't hard to wrap your head around, you just follow them. badda-bing badda-boom. The @instance.whatever bit of their username barely matters. You just say "that's like a URL to find that user on a different instance than the one you chose". People arent as stupid as you might think, they just need someone patient enough to explain.
phillycodehound 3 points 3 years ago
that's putting it lightly. But remember Twitter wasn't mainstream for a while. And tbh it still isn't.
that_one_guy 7 points 3 years ago
I mean, tweets are pretty regularly cited on the news. Not sure how much more mainstream Twitter could become.
nathanpc 18 points 3 years ago
For most of the users currently online it's extremely difficult to understand the concept of federation and how everything works, so I doubt it'll ever be as prevalent as "the big social media platforms", but for technically-inclined users, it'll definitely have at least moderate success.
Gevian 10 points 3 years ago
I believe that's the point: Coming from Reddit, I don't understand what Mastodon (yes, I thought it is something similar!), Fediverse, Lemmy.ml and feddit are, have in common or where the differences are.
And furthermore: Why should I care?
I think it will be hard to convince a significant number of people to come here and STAY.
I hope I'm wrong. I just created my first community :-)
vipaal 18 points 3 years ago
Fediverse will go through what Linux went through. Be seen by businesses as an existential threat. Then face FUD and EEE campaign.
One day, likely earlier than Linux witnessed the rise of RedHat, Google, Facebook as prominent businesses that became poster children for Linux, new or existing businesses could be built around and/or on fediverse. They may as well come together to form an ActivityPub foundation similar to the Linux Foundation for all we know.
Email went through similar trajectory too. SMTP, IMAP, pop are are open protocols. Yet we have a sort of oligopoly on email.
Similar to how Windows did not die away because Linux came along, existing social networks may remain in existence. The availability of fediverse as an alternative would keep them busy
wizzy 16 points 3 years ago
IMHO these are fundamentally different concepts. Popular social media is made popular by pushing curated 'engaging' content, rather than organic content, to monetize gullible users. It has become an entertainment venue, giving their audience a steady stream of what they want them to see, even if by force. Popular "Social Media" has rapidly devolved into a real-life MST3K. Users feel betrayed that the sites no longer feel like the social experience/experiment they wanted.... but are users really wanting to leave, or just switch to voice outrage?
Alternatively, the fediverse doesn't appeal to those wanting force fed entertainment, or seeking viral fame amongst family/friends, and outraged users will complain it doesn't function like so-and-so site, or work 'their way'. It is more technical and takes more proactive actions to engage with others, which is a positive thing.
Users think they can switch from Coke to Pepsi, but the fediverse is more of a mixed drink with some extra bourbon.
Could it / should it replace popular social media? Probably not, unless more mindsets change over what a social media experience should be... but it can fill a growing gap as this happens (which will in-turn improve features & development).
Umbrias 4 points 3 years ago
I would say, if in theory a social media achieved a small community, informative and positive culture which avoided spreading misinformation or cultivating harmful stereotypes of those they disagree with via the mechanisms of that social media, that it should be more standardized and more widely accepted. Largely because that is just more healthy in general. Not that Lemmy will necessarily be that in practice in the long run.
matthieu_xyz 15 points 3 years ago
@Bicyclejohn I don’t know about "replace", but popular social media could JOIN the fediverse.
I don’t blame new users to be late on news. But to make a quick recap, the people interested in implementing ActivityPub include:
- Meta (insta/twt replacement)
- Tumblr
- Wordpress.com
- Medium (currently only running mastodon)
- Discourse
- Flarum
Last time I check those were a few popular social media.
Discourse and Flarum in particular are relevant to Lemmy
aka_quant_noir 10 points 3 years ago
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We are still missing basic tools, like the ability to import full history from one instance to another. To import posts and comments, not just followers and those we follow, or lists (which often isn't functional as on my current instance). Frankly we should be able to import history from non-fediverse social media too, if one has output files from them. Nobody I'm aware of has built a single tool to help them navigate those histories, let alone import them.
matthieu_xyz 5 points 3 years ago
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Some people are working on that. Calckey will soon be able to import posts from twitter (can alerady import from mastodon). Pixelfed can already import from instagram right now!!
Kbin and lemmy are very late in that regard. You can’t even migrate your social graph.
aka_quant_noir 2 points 3 years ago
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I'm unable to do that on pixel.infosec.exchange which is the pixelfed instance I'm on. Is there some trick to it or is it just not universally available yet?
kainoa 1 point 3 years ago
@aka_quant_noir@cinematheque.social @matthieu_xyz@piaille.fr @Bicyclejohn@lemmy.ml it's a brand new feature in pixelfed -- I'm not sure if it's even in a stable version yet.
deadsuperhero 3 points 3 years ago
This kind of import is something that I would absolutely love to see, but some backend stuff has to be figured out. Unfortunately, importing and creating thousands and thousands of posts can absolutely hammer a server, and it gets amplified if everybody's doing it at the same time.
I had some ideas for a tool a while back that could import your posts first, help you sift through what your "Greatest Hits" were in terms of big life events or lots of conversation, and help you import those into another platform. The downside is, though, that you still wouldn't be able to reconstruct the threads for people who haven't moved over to the fediverse yet.
fouc 14 points 3 years ago
Unlikely. When users left Digg for Reddit the internet was smaller and the users more technically minded. And even then it was essentially just creating a new account. You need an one stop solution for users to migrate and federation by definition isn't that. As a result discovery (and growth) is still hard even for Mastodon that's been around for a while and it's a relatively mature platform.
shreddy_scientist 14 points 3 years ago
It's more closely related to the initial intentions of the internet than most other social platforms. Ideally it could get things going back in the right direction again iif nothing else!
noahm 13 points 3 years ago
No. Fediverse is great by design, but is too complicated at the moment (maybe it's just how platforms are set up at the moment).
The design is not too intuitive in looking at other posts from different instances/servers.
For example going to this post:
- Clicking
!freemediaheckyeah@lemmy.fmhy.ml
in the sidebar directs me to
lemmy.fmhy.ml/c/freemediaheckyeah
(different instance) - Clicking
FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH@lemmy.fmhy.ml
at the top of the post directs me to
lemmy.ml/c/freemediaheckyeah@lemmy.fmhy.ml
(same instance)
clovis 1 point 3 years ago
It seems you are confusing Lemmy (which is one of the federated software powering the fediverse) with the fediverse as a whole. There is a lot of other soft running, like mastodon for most well known or peertube, providing other services, with others UIs :)
Bicyclejohn 5 points 3 years ago
For me it almost has. While I'll be part of the protest I still use reddit
GospelofJohnny 3 points 3 years ago
Same here. I never used twitter, but joined Mastodon and have enjoyed it. I’ll use lemmy and expect (hope!) that it will get polished and streamlined enough to take over Reddit
GospelofJohnny 2 points 3 years ago
I know peertube, but what is matrix?
duckweed 12 points 3 years ago
@Bicyclejohn I hope fediverse helps us return to small blogs and forums that we had before facebook and twitter took over. no more monopolies
stanleytweedle 12 points 3 years ago
I'm hoping it'll be more like craft beer and become it's own market that overlaps with more mainstream options but still has a solid base of users\customers that keep it separate.
grime 12 points 3 years ago
No, marketing rules the world. In tech, it seems to me that the average person does not give much thought to their software at all. They will use defaults or the products they know about the most (Chrome).
I do not think replacing centralized social media should be our goal though. I believe the Fediverse needs more diversity of content. Right now, I see a lot of people from the FOSS community. People should be able to see a good variety of subjects being discussed or shared. FOSS is great but it should not be the only thing we see.
Phantom_Engineer 11 points 3 years ago
Long term, the Fediverse is the way forward, but social media has staying power even if it dimishes from what it was. It will ages before the Fediverse replaces centralized social media, but I think it will slowly happen.
jlh 8 points 3 years ago
I saw a comparison here between the Fediverse and other federated services like emails and POTS. I think there are a lot of similarities, but if that's true, the Fediverse still has a long way to go before it matures like traditional federated services like email. Things like spamlists and increased interoperability will be needed eventually.
At least in the short-term, I think Lemmy has a good base here to take over from Reddit, and the increased focus will help the Fediverse mature further. Lemmy won't be another Voat.
Phantom_Engineer 4 points 3 years ago
Oh yeah, definitely not. FOSS combined with federation means that even if the main instance and dev team are toast, someone else could pick up where they left off and run with it. Lemmy doesn't necessarily need Lemmy.ml to function, which you couldn't say about voat (or Reddit, for that matter.)
corsicanguppy 11 points 3 years ago
Before we had the fediverse - long before it - we had Usenet: people conversing globally in email-shaped units. It was shared and synched.
It was awesome. Questions answered, points debated, everything you wanted.
I don't think the fediverse is a magical solution, but it does have a familiar feel to it. Not as good when it comes to spelling, but "it's just the web," so the rules are maybe different.
This is fine.
cambionn 11 points 3 years ago
Would be cool and technically possible, but I doubt it will happen.
Big Tech throwing millions into marketing and vendor lock-ins vs OpenSource projects that are decentralised and often running on donations and goodwill. That's a very touch battle to win, especially when most people care more about ease of use and amount of possible followers than about privacy and decentralisation.
Mastodon grew, but only took a tiny slice of Twitter and half of Mastodon are bots or people who crosspost to both. I expect the same to happen to Lemmy/Reddit, and any other SNS that goes this direction.
I'm content with a stable and active niche group of SNSs. Hopefully the open source and decentralisation aspects can prevent it from dying and going to the next SNS as the big ones tend to do. Which cóúld be as people can make newer applications that work with the old ones as long as it all runs on ActivityPup. I feel it's the most realistic way of thinking.
But maybe I'm just too pessimistic. Even the biggest people in tech stuggle to predict the future of it. So who knows.
rysiek 4 points 3 years ago
Mastodon grew, but only took a tiny slice of Twitter
Growth is not the only, nor even main, metric to measure success of fedi. Fedi is not a VC-funded startup that needs to grow exponentially to remain viable (consider how that worked for Twitter and Reddit…).
Building a resilient, safe, longterm-viable communities is the metric to measure fedi by. That takes more time, than hooking people on endorphin/noradrenalin high and slick interfaces.
half of Mastodon are bots or people who crosspost to both.
This is false. I follow a couple of thousand people and have an interesting, diverse, funny, and informative timeline. Very few accounts I follow crosspost.
There is no recommendation algorithm so your timeline is what you make of it. It takes a bit more time to curate, but you end up with your own thing that suits you — if you put in the tiny bit of effort required.
cambionn 3 points 3 years ago
I am very well aware about the lack of algoritm and how Mastodon works. But the issue is not for me, I like Mastodon! And I don't like Twitter at all. But it is for Average Joe, who needs to come over in order to replace the place of Big Tech SNSs.
Growth is not the only, nor even main, metric to measure success of fedi.
If the Fediverse just wants to exist stabely, even be mentionable in size, it is not. But to take over from the Big Tech SNSs, it is. People are where other people are. And that's what the topic was about,
This is false. I follow a couple of thousand people and have an interesting, diverse, funny, and informative timeline. Very few accounts I follow crosspost Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Mastodon. I also talk with some i teresting people there. But I still cannot follow any of the local news there without bots that copy Twitter. I also know companies who have accounts on both, and beside of reactions on what people say, their updates are cross-posted (manually). Not everything, but if you want to follow companies and people outside of tech-related scenes yoh already need to be happy if they have a cross-posting Mastodon.
For me, it's enough. But for Average Joe, who wants to commend on their favourite influencers and use it to talk to custoner support of delivery coyriers and stores they buy from, it is not. In fact, customer support is the only reason I have a Twitter account.
That takes more time, than hooking people on endorphin/noradrenalin high and slick interfaces. Sadly, Average Joe just want his endorphin kick 🥲.
satouru 0 points 3 years ago
Building a resilient, safe, longterm-viable communities is the metric to measure fedi by.
100% agree, especially on the resiliency part.
A community with 100 users but will never die is much better than one with a million users but might kick the bucket anytime.
The way the Fediverse works, and assuming that not everyone goes to the same instance, then it will be pretty much guaranteed to exist as long as there are users. And this is huge in terms of community building.
rysiek 1 point 3 years ago
Obviously there are also threats, but they are different threats than those that apply to centralized platforms. One of the threats, in fact, is centralization itself — if people flock to a few gigantic instances, that creates a central point of failure, potentially.
But there are currently ~20k independently run fedi instances. Some had been running for a decade or longer.
As I said, we're here for the long run.
omarciddo 11 points 3 years ago
I don’t want it to. I enjoyed reddit the most when it was mainly a techier and generally thoughtful crowd, large enough to always be interesting but not so big as to be a gluttonous mass of nonsense. The ever-so-slightly higher barrier to entry to the Fediverse compared to other platforms (which spooks mainstream users even though it’s really not that hard) gives me hope that the Fediverse will keep its character for a good while.
quirq 1 point 3 years ago
That's a good take on it actually!
If you consider how many people are using the Matrix network, then Lemmy instances will probably end up fine. Just gotta convert lurkers to active participants (like me, I mostly lurked on reddit, but have been a bit more active on my home instance)
Bicyclejohn -1 points 3 years ago
Should we make it harder to join?
IverCoder 4 points 3 years ago
That would be a bad idea. While only a small percentage of users actively create engaging content, the problem is that those active users will lose the incentive to participate if there's nobody else to engage with, and this will cause them to eventually flock back to the non-Fediverse social media sites.
We should instead streamline Lemmy's sign-up like how Mastodon did it. The easier it is to sign up and the more users there are (even if many are lurkers), the better.
Munrock 10 points 3 years ago
I think the fediverse should replace popular socmedia, but it will never be able to compete financially.
We've already got Bluesky, which is the same thing but controlled (and sponsored) by the usual suspects, poised to snap up any users that bail from twitter. And popular opinion favours Bluesky thanks to the positive coverage it gets compared to fediverse projects.
The fediverse in the form it's in now will never replace twitter while the free market controls the distribution of users. They'll always go to the places controlled by big money.
Landrin201 5 points 3 years ago
I kind of agree.... And also kind of disagree.
I think people will be attracted to places like blue sky because they are more similar to what they are used to and more user friendly. When people were looking to leave Twitter, I remember Mastodon being talked about. When I first looked into it, it was super confusing. I'm literally a software developer, and I was having trouble figuring out what was even going on here.
I understand that different platforms will have different features, and don't expect lemmy to be exactly like reddit or mastodon to be exactly like Twitter. But to get casual users to come to either, they need to be easy to join, easy to use, and easy to understand. I think that starting off by explaining to users what the fediverse is is too confusing.
Frankly, I think the biggest thing right now, by far, is that there needs to be a centralized, or pseudo-centralized, login system. That is the biggest hurdle for all new users, and explaining how to make an account basically requires explaining how the fediverse works-which for most people is just too much information at once. They'll see that, think "this is too confusing," and leave.
Ease of use and adding more features will come with time, more users, and an influx of money from those users to support development. But we need to attract users first, and to do so we need to make the process of joining really clear, concise, and easy. And we need to remove the risk that if your instance gets deleted, so does your account.
wizjenkins 9 points 3 years ago
Not in its current form. Anyone who's tried to start a tech company knows you have to make your solution simple to use. Making software easy to use is actually surprisingly hard, involving experts in user interfaces, a lot of thought on user onboarding and training.
Lemmy as it currently stands is relatively new-user hostile for non-technical users. Content discovery isn't very clear, people are confused about how to find communities to follow, and the mobile apps are barebones.
That's not to say it can't get there, but until you never need to mention that the system is federated, I think a lot of people will be turned off from the complexity of using Lemmy. The community right now is motivated to use Lemmy and I would imagine a little more on the technical side, but getting your parents to use Lemmy or Mastadon would be a challenge currently.
777 5 points 3 years ago
As a migrant from Digg to Reddit back in the paleolithic era, I would have said the same of Reddit, the UI really wasn't good compared to Digg. People got used to it in time.
I also remember a time when it wasn't clear if people would want to shop online, and a debate about whether email could really replace letters, or if people would find it too complicated.
People will come to the fediverse if we give them a reason to.
knighthawk0811 9 points 3 years ago
since there isn't any strong way to collect data or advertise it will always be an underdog compared to big business.
that being said, the fediverse could outlast a few mainstream networks and build lasting strength with that. I'm an ideal setting it could become a defacto network over time.
can we get young people coming here though? that's how we get the tides to turn
strypey 4 points 3 years ago
@knighthawk0811
> since there isn't any strong way to collect data or advertise it will always be an underdog compared to big business
... unless and until democratic governments ban corporations from spying on the people using their platforms, as they bloody well ought to, if they have any respect for the human rights of the citizens. Or pass laws that force the Walled Gardens to federate with similar platforms, like the Digital Markets Act.
strypey 4 points 3 years ago
@knighthawk0811
> can we get young people coming here though
That's a very good question to ask a young person. OTTOMH though...
... anything they have to use at school, they're unlikely to use by choice at home or elsewhere. What would have got me to join the fediverse if it existed when I was a young person? Hearing that someone I respected had joined like Upper Hutt Posse, or Michael Franti, or RATM, or even David Bowie. Pop poets are the vanguard party of the young.
Bicyclejohn 7 points 3 years ago
I for one am a young person, but my peers are too tiktok obsessed. While I use an VPN 24/7 I liek that the fediverse is not banned at school Still use VPN tho
strypey 4 points 3 years ago
@Bicyclejohn
> my peers are too tiktok obsessed
What is it that attracts them to TikTok? The features and user experience, or the pool of people and content they can find there? Or something else?
skullgiver 2 points 3 years ago
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reiver 9 points 3 years ago
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It depends on what you mean by "replace".
The Fediverse may cause centralized social-media networks to join the Fediverse.
There are some hints of that happening now.
Facebook / Meta has created a new social-media network that is part of the Fediverse.
Tumblr and Flickr are said to be joining the Fediverse.
So, some "popular social media" may become one with the Fediverse.
Joker 1 point 3 years ago
Something along these lines seems more realistic to me. There will always be a place for easy, safe walled garden experiences with a low barrier to entry. In the fediverse, that could be a very large, curated instance where a broad group could find what they want without having to figure out how to subscribe to federated communities. Similar to how so many people were introduced to the internet via Prodigy, Compuserve, AOL, etc.
interdimensionalmeme 3 points 3 years ago
If you move you lose your history and relationships behind. There is no migration, same as Mastodon. On purpose so as not to disempower instance owners
interdimensionalmeme 3 points 3 years ago
That is one of the main function of public key cryptography
You can append your digital signature to your messages and it becomes possible to confirm the same person made all the messages
Wintermute 4 points 3 years ago
Is there some backing for the idea that it's intentional? There's not technical reason that we couldn't implement migrations.
interdimensionalmeme 3 points 3 years ago
It's an open source project. Anybody can fork it and create a separate and incompatible network. What they're is, is lack of interest in allowing frictionless for the users. Which would streamline onboarding.
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/12423
This long standing issue, which has been closed before, most be completed before the users can sign-up without worry what their instance owners thinks.
kalanggam 7 points 3 years ago
Personally, I don't think replacement should be the goal. As others have said, a better, more likely outcome is that the Fediverse become a viable alternative to big social media (in the eyes of the public) & an influential part of the ecosystem.
And anyways, the Fediverse is a solution for me - and others, presumably - but it probably won't be the solution for social media influencers, terminally online political provocateurs, people stuck in the endless, algorithmic (and psychologically manipulative) stream of 'content' which Big Social offers, advertisers, etc. As long as people have those sorts of relationships to social media and as long as capitalism and consumerism exist, big social media platforms will always be around to capitalize on that and fill that niche.
Plus, the barrier to entry for the Fediverse is technical skill, which has impeded its accessibility to the broader public. While making the Fediverse more accessible and cultivating that technical skill and know-how in the public are both things I support, I appreciate the more intentional social media communities which are forming around here and are able to grow sustainably quite possibly because it's harder for the average person to wrap their head around. It reminds me a lot of the older days of the internet.
The best thing for that, IMO, is for the Fediverse to continually exist in its decentralized state and provide unique examples of how social media could be, for it to keep growing slowly, for average people to come here of their own volition, see how things are here, and decide on their own that they want to be part of it.
Pickled-Pizza 2 points 3 years ago
I’m new to the fediverse. My biggest gripe about big social media, is that the signal to noise ratio (SNR) is very low. My hope is that since this isn’t a solution for the folks you mentioned, that the SNR will be much higher here.
gunnervi 7 points 3 years ago
There is a powerful network effect to overcome here, and I don't think "being federated" is enough to overcome it for most people. Reddit and tumblr and discord offered us "what if all your forums/blogs/chatrooms were in one place" which is massively convenient, and why people flocked to those platforms. Thats a transformative user experience. being federated is transformative, but the change to the user experience -- beyond a larger barrier to entry -- is minimal. The point of mastodon is that its functionally equivalent to twitter without being centralized. But there are no decentralized places left on the internet, beyond those holdouts who are either very attached to their old technology or want to maintain their unilateral control over their platform, and who are unlikely to federate.
phillycodehound 7 points 3 years ago
I think you're on to something. I'm all in on the Fediverse. I still have some legacy stuff on traditional social, but I spend most of my time here. Though I have to admit I love me some LinkedIn.
phillycodehound 1 point 3 years ago
My business community. I run an agency and I still need to stay there for that. It's still pretty decent for what I use it for.
albinanigans 6 points 3 years ago
I really doubt it; the corp stuff is here to stay as long as they can make money off of it. But at least now, people are aware of how vast the Internet can be-- and there are options besides the corp stuff.
Rumblestiltskin 3 points 3 years ago
People are always convinced by nice corporate marketing. That will never change.
this 6 points 3 years ago
I think its going to split and fracture, at least for the forseeable future. Just like how people who want too be free from corporate influence moved permanently from twitter to mastodon, so to will users who want to be free from corporate influence be drawn here. Those who don't care, or who buy into corporate propaganda will stay until and unless they can't tolerate it anymore, and even them they may just move to a different corporate platform.
Garrathian 6 points 3 years ago
No I don't think it will. I would be shocked if Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, LinkedIn, etc etc ever truly went away. If people remain dedicated to improving and promoting the fediverse it could carve out it's own space in the social media landscape. And once that happens you never know what the future holds. But I'd be surprised if it took over everything in the space
ilikenoodlez 5 points 3 years ago
No it turns the problem from your account being owned by a company looking to turn a profit to random people on the internet. If we had a way of downloading our accounts and transferring instances then maybe.
RoosterBoy 8 points 3 years ago
You can just host your own instance.
RoosterBoy 0 points 3 years ago
I'm not responding to OP, I'm responding to the person I responded to.
mrmanager 4 points 3 years ago
Yes but people run these instances to get users and help the community grow. A company is trying to make money from it.
It's a big difference because people hosting instances have no intention of making any money from it. It's the open source mentality of sharing because it feels good to contribute.
borlax 5 points 3 years ago
I don’t think it will replace it, but I do think that it will create a place for a niche group of conscious folks to build a community without the capitalistic aspects of life that have ruined a vast portion of the internet.
We just need to be sure to keep perspective and be ready to support and our server admins/developers. The lack of big tech funding is what could potentially hurt us here in the fediverse. Nothing is free and it’s on us to pay our own way before advertising starts to creep in.
couragethebravedog 5 points 3 years ago
No. While it's not that complicated it is still more complicated than current social media. People won't like that.
tookmyname 5 points 3 years ago
I’d say if it become popular, but not too popular, that would be ideal.
That said,I found it to be pretty easy.
myself33 4 points 3 years ago
As long as a hardware will be sold with microsoft/google/twitter/facebook by default, no chance fediverse replace all these well-established applications. BUT it's not a problem for me : i use what i like, open-source, and i let other use what they want.
wusterion 4 points 3 years ago
I don’t believe that it will replace it but that is maybe a good thing. I’d be Ok with fediverse staying in niche with active user base, because once it’s mainstream it’s gonna attract corporations to enshittificate it like they did it with Twitter or Reddit.
And I’d be cautious with “Internet is flawed”, it’s for us more conscious users but for vast majority of people Internet unfortunately is fine.
tasbir49 4 points 3 years ago
For the general user, I don't really think so. Not unless a couple big companies run their own instances and search engines bring up specific instances to join. The barrier to entry is relatively complex compared to something that just "works"
itchy_lizard 4 points 3 years ago
It looks like they're going to merge
realcaseyrollins 2 points 3 years ago
@itchy_lizard @Bicyclejohn Is #Meta joining the #Fediverse proof that they couldn't beat us?
kjr 6 points 3 years ago
@realcaseyrollins @itchy_lizard @Bicyclejohn
In my opinion it is almost the opposite.
"Meta opted to use the open, decentralized social networking protocol ActivityPub(Opens in a new window) for this project, which is already used by Mastodon. That doesn't guarantee interoperability between the two competing services, but could certainly make it easier for Mastodon accounts to migrate to Project 92. The reverse is also possible, but it seems unlikely Meta would want to make it easy for accounts to migrate away from its ecosystem."
realcaseyrollins 3 points 3 years ago
path: 0 32675 32676 34631 34780, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0
lemann 1 point 3 years ago
To me it seems like a power move to funnel and consolidate people who are interested in the "Fediverse" but don't understand how it works, onto Meta's platform. The cycle of enshittification will likely continue as usual over there on Threads/Project 92.
I wouldn't be surprised if they did things like restricting federation of replies made on Threads/P92, so if you're on an alternative like Mastodon you just see a P92 bot posting a "View full thread on P92" link, similar to how most social networks now force you into a sign-up page if you lurk incognito for too long
0xCAFE 4 points 3 years ago
Yes, I think so. It could. Is it likely to happen? No!
I see a distributed architecture central to have a “public space” online that works in the long term. The communication infrastructure shouldn't be controlled by any single party.
However the way people work and the way capitalism works, it's utterly difficult for something like ActivityPub to become the standard. F**book joining in frightens and encourages me at the same time.
Spellblade 3 points 3 years ago
I think it could replace reddit in the long term but the others I'm not so sure about. Twitter and YouTube still mostly function so people won't leave but without 3rd party tools and the lack of trust users have in reddit to develop those tools on their own that leaves them in a very bad position.
noahm 3 points 3 years ago
No. Fediverse is great by design, but is too complicated at the moment (maybe it's just how platforms are set up at the moment).
The design is not too intuitive in looking at other posts from different instances/servers. For example going to this post
sexy_peach 3 points 3 years ago
For me personally it can. Not sure about everyone else.
pistachio 3 points 3 years ago
The federation aspect of it has to be invisible to the user. The user shouldn't have to pick an instance (unless they want to) and they should see communities from all instances by default. Also we need a discovery algorithm. That's the most needed feature.
anders 2 points 3 years ago
@Bicyclejohn yes
loputozirak 2 points 3 years ago
as popular social media is getting crap the fediverse will grow on users and content
a replacement is a very long term action that involves not only the users so nowadays: no maybe in a far future
LongtimeLurker1999 2 points 3 years ago
I doubt it, not just because current social media sites are insanely popular, but also because there's a learning curve to using the Fediverse, and most people would likely find it complicated.
dball37 2 points 3 years ago
I don't think so. I think corporations will always want their hand in a pot and will have their things. I think we've seen there's always going to be people who don't want anything to do with that - digg to reddit, twitter to mastedon, reddit to here. And I wouldn't be surprised in a few years if this platform and similar ones face a crisis of identity like that. Small, independent communities are great and can gain value as more people join. But once enough people join other interests can overtake the original goal. What we've learned is that no platform or protocol is forever.
sangle_of_flame 2 points 3 years ago
probably not; Popular Social Media is a massive force
Best we can do is continue trucking along while popular social media goes through the Enshittening Cycle, and swoop in and be like "hey, have you heard of Lemmy?"
like I think the growth will be over a long timespan than exponential, unless Social Media really shits the bed
retreat3926 1 point 3 years ago
The issue is that without marketing or any big scale advertising, the fediverse is never going to take off. Because it is not backed by a big corporation with enough capital like Reddit, it won't ever reach the masses, even with all the advertising the recent Reddit API changes have brought to lemmy and the fediverse, even if Fedi were to be 10x better than anything else.
cmdr_nova 4 points 3 years ago
@retreat3926 @Bicyclejohn If that really is the case, then there needs to be a happy medium between intrusive ads that uglify a UI and spammy nonsense that plagues corporate social media. But even then, a lot of people came here to get away from corpo spam, and will not take kindly or lightly to ads suddenly appearing on their feeds (and some instances have and will outright ban it)
retreat3926 1 point 3 years ago
You mean, to get the money to actually advertise the Fediverse? Or to advertise IN the fediverse?
pyska 1 point 3 years ago
Personally, whatever revenue they make up in ads, they should instead ask for it in subscriptions. That would remove the incentive to promote engagement via whatever means necessary (resulting in hatred promotion and false catchy titles, to the detriment of the user), and weed out spammers. Of course, if they do that, user count will plummet. But I really don't like what they are doing now.
Me thinks open source is the future.
mrmanager 2 points 3 years ago
Any instance starting to use ads would likely lose a lot of users. We don't want to look at ads, they are everywhere and they are poison.
I could see a small membership fee as being more acceptable, like a dollar per month. It's not a big deal for a lot of people. But we are not there yet.
retreat3926 1 point 3 years ago
I wasnt referring to adding ads to lemmin, but rather advertise IT outside of lemmy
fediverse
@lemmy.ml
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A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.
go to feed...
fediverse
@lemmy.ml
26130
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A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.
go to feed...
Probably not replace, but certainly it could be a viable and thriving part of the picture. I don't think there's anything wrong with having options.
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