At the moment the internet is flawed, do you think the fediverse is the solution?
No. And that’s fine. I don’t expect underground music to replace top 40. And there’s a place for both.
Very well said
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
“do you think the fediverse could replace popular social media”
Already has for me
For me it almost has. While I’ll be part of the protest I still use reddit
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
Don’t forget matrix and peertube as well!
I know peertube, but what is matrix?
Matrix is federated discord. And it also supports bridges to other networks like signal, WhatsApp etc.
Oh okay, sounds neat. I’ve never really been that into Discord, unfortunately. I’d like to use Peertube more too, but it seems pretty empty rn, and idk anything about making videos!
Yeah, unfortunately, not many content creators put their work there. (AFAIK it’s just Linux people). I have honestly found more use of Matrix as a central hub, that I control, to talk to all other messaging platforms I need to be on. There’s a good collection of bridges that are (hopefully) growing.
Install Element, the most popular client and you will see. It’s quite nice!
@Bicyclejohn I hope fediverse helps us return to small blogs and forums that we had before facebook and twitter took over. no more monopolies
Me too. Lemmy is a step in the right direction (along with the rest of Fediverse).
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.
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.
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, replacing Big Tech SNSs.
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 🥲.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think it could, and I also think it won’t and that it will stay in the relative niche. But that’s a good thing. So it replaces all social media for me but doesn’t bring the general public. Win-win situation
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.
Tumblr and Flickr are said to be joining the Fediverse.
yay! its AOL meets the internet v2.0
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.
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.
[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
Thanks for this insightful post. I agree that the fediverse feels different and that’s ok. It’s exciting to get the chance to build something new and be a part of it starting.
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.
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.
deleted by creator
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.
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.
I think it’s fine. It’s a bit like Linux users. We are maybe one percent of total computer users but we are plenty to create a very good community. :)
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
