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I think it would be pretty difficult for Lemmy/Mastodon/Kbin to become bigger than for-profit counterparts. For-profit businesses can raise loads of funding and spend all that money on lots of engineers to refine their platforms.
But I do think the fediverse is pushing big tech to alter their platforms. E.g. Meta planning to support ActivityPub in Threads.
I think we can... If we think about Disneyland.
Disneyland is a very complicated place with endless things to do and different directions to choose, but you walk in through one simple front door after buying one simple ticket, so it's not as scary to make first approach. Once you're in, you can craft your own adventure, but you have to get in to have the chance.
I know it's somewhat in conflict with a federated future, but for the "mass migration" portion at least, there are just a LOT of choices to make before you've experienced a single benefit out felt delighted by the familiar features of these communities. For that reason, many will be too intimidated to even start.
In the short term it will keep us small and keep certain low effort people out (maybe why energy is fairly ideal here, for now at least). In the long term though, may mean we never gain the mass to threaten the reddits of the world.
Maybe a centralized entry point run by someone else (or the Lemmy devs themselves)? It could explain concepts unique the fediverse and why picking the instance you make your account on is important. From then on, people don’t really need to worry about what instance they’re on (unless the instance they’re on goes on a defederating spree), which removes some of the complexity
Mastodon: No. It's a very shitty alternative to Twitter where the quality depends wholly on the instance you join. The discoverability of federated content is so bad that if you go into that tab, you just see nothing but porn.
Lemmy: Possibly... It feels like a far less astroturfed alternative to Reddit.
It will definitely take a while to catch on to the public (if ever) considering the "complexities" with signing up for an account.
You can't just "Sign in with Google" or something like that, plus there isn't one centralized sign up button you have to pick whichever instance you prefer, which to most is to "complicated".
unfortunately, probably not
it has nothing to do with how the coummnities are ran or what technology/apps we have, the issue is that decentralised networks almost always have worse infrastructures compare to centralised ones. lemmy.world is already lagging quite a bit, and eventually the admins will be overwhelmed by the shear number of users.
Unless federation figures out a way to distribute load or monetize for server cost, I dont think it will become mainstream
Literally all you have to do is join another instance brother, that's how you distribute load. As for monetization, we'll cross that bridge when we get there.
Here I’m referring to automatic load distribution. Expecting users to actively choose a good server requires quite a bit of technical knowledge (how servers work) and effort (search and compare), thats probably not something the general public is willing to do
I don't want lemmy and mastodon specifically traced their centralized counterparts. I only want the average person to have access to and knowledge of their options.
Imo we don't need to replace anything, this is really nice the way it is. Yes some users for more interactions and content definitely of course would be nice for more people to use it.
If the mods don't fuck it up like removing the instance, banning people for some nonsense and people donate so that they can keep their servers up and running
Maybe. Pre-centralization, it was very similar - forum boards run by different people on different servers. A system like Lemmy is basically the same but without the inconvenience of having to make a new account every time, which should make it more accessible in the long run.
What it would need in addition to that is discoverability - if just a few major instances show up high enough in major search engines results it'll be a huge draw. Right now discoverability is kind of abysmal, which worries me a little, but I know people are working on solutions.
Imo what we regular users can do right now that will have an impact is contribute to communities and keep them active, and encourage reddit-based communities to switch over. If we all can prove that this is an effective way to run communities, the people will come.
It's not about what company has the best system and most control, it's about what we as groups of people with shared interests gravitate towards. Lemmy fixes some barriers to running forums and might enable more individuals and small groups to start running their own servers again.
No, and they never have to.
I don't see why not. Mastodon is already pretty mmainstream with more than 13 million accounts.
It might get a huge boost in usage now that Meta released Threads. In the main page, it said that the app will be able to connect to the fediverse and specifically mentioned Mastodon as an example. Maybe someday I’ll be able to stop using reddit altogether. But that day is not today.
If a simpler/streamlined on boarding for Lemmy and the like gets going then yes. The average computer user enjoyed reddit for just that, simplicity. The average computer user has zero idea about Federation, instances, hosting, etc. and will have little to no desire to learn. The benefits have to outweigh the cons by a significant margin to get people on board yet another social media platform. Meta and Twitter are definitely shooting themselves in the foot and the possibilities for a federated platform are beyond what we can currently imagine. Lemmy and the like are in their infancy so we will see how the growing pains are handled.
I think, as others in here have already mentioned – There needs to be either inclusion of Federated services on current search engines, or a new search engine that natively incorporates the Fediverse. Though the issue with the second option there is it basically moves the goal posts a little rather than aims to tackle the core issue.
It's possible but we need to be careful with META, they can mess things up
https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-launch-twitter-like-app-threads-2023-07-04/
https://fabulous.systems/posts/2023/06/meta-is-a-danger-to-the-fediverse/
https://fediversereport.com/meta-plans-on-joining-the-fediverse-the-responses/
Need the money to work out; definitely not the same dynamics. Maybe more of the people who care for their communities.
this kind of setup was mainstream before the VCs decided to try and buy it all out.
problem for them is, you can't really monetize the commons so you can only throw money at things like this while rates are low.
yes, this will be the new mainstream and the protocol will likely endure well beyond many social systems, including this one. However, as its a standard protocol, whatever system you use in the future will be very likely able to host your entire history from here
No, there a lots of tiny bits of things that just make it a difficult experience compared to reddit.
I can only hope so. People understand that email is decentralized and that an @gmail can talk to @aol. They also understand that someone using an iPhone with Verizon can text someone using an Android phone in AT&T. But, they need incentive to leave. I was perfectly aware of reddit, but didn't join until digg updated to V4. Ive know about fediverse, but didn't bother joining until recently. Most people won't leave platforms they are used to.