Network effect. Next question.
If people hate fruit on pizza, why is tomato sauce okay?
Olives and peppers are also fine. It’s just pineapple that’s as bad as putting a picture of the Pope in your toilet.
Is mastodon the app that has it? I’m still pretty new to knowing wtf it even is
Mastodon is a FLOSS X/Twitter
Ok so are there any specific apps for the fediverse?
Mastodon, moshidon, jerboa
Thank you
I don’t think the average user thinks much about the platform they’re on, and about who controls it. I think they go to wherever most of their family/friends are.
Also, those platforms are firmly in the mainstream, the alternatives aren’t really - you’d have to actively go search for them. People just aren’t likely to do that, I don’t think.
Most people are like sheep and just follow the herd.
All but you always get those people that swear they’re different.
In my IT program at school, the only people who have heard of the fediverse are the ones I’ve told.
People follow the crowd and centralized media had considerably bigger crowds
Several of these platforms used bots and/or multiple staff accounts to inflate user count/engagement to draw more people in and trigger the network effect.
I don’t think federation vs centralization is the primary differentiator. I think corporate vs non-profit/ad-free/donation-only/volunteerism is. Our marketing budget is goose egg. It’s all word-of-mouth.
Yeah I keep pushing for join-lemmy.org to buy ads on Google and Bing.
I can also see some people being opposed to them spending the donation money on ads, since they’d be giving money to companies that may be in opposition to what we’re doing here (or ideological reasons around the advertising industry in general).
Maybe if there was a separate pool of donations specifically for advertising, then people who want to support that can donate to it? Those who don’t can still donate to the projects themselves
Ads on the street (like at bus stops) could work well too
You can even do it yourself for the price of wheatpaste and printing
That’s a smart idea. Instances can buy ads for their specializelation
Because of network effects.
Building a social network is hard. A typical chicken or egg problem. If you don’t have a user base, nobody is willing to join, and if nobody joins, you don’t have a user base.
It usually requires a bunch of money to build a social network.
The fediverse has a long time to go but I believe it will win sooner or later.
I’d also chalk it up to convenience.
The Fediverse requires effort.
That too.
- Ease of use
The combination of having to choose an instance and then start with an algorithm free blank slate is a tough ask. It literally takes time to sit down and setup your initial “feed”, which is probably a good thing, but not at all what attracts users whimsical curiosities nor what they’ve experienced over their entire existence with social media.
I just browse All. Zero setup beyond picking my instance.
The more people using a social media platform, the more content there is to consume and people to interact with. It’s really hard to move to a new platform when there just isn’t as much stuff to consume as the centralized platforms like Reddit. I’m using Lemmy for ideological reasons, but if you just want to vibe and scroll online, Reddit has way more to offer. That said, the user experience of Reddit is continually degrading. Potentially at some point it will create enough refugees that sites like Lemmy hit an inflection point of users.
To add, e.g. reddit took years to become a great platform and it also degradation takes years, as the alternatives will also take years to build. Although some of the issues will probably follow too unless addressed some way. I don’t think the federation is a silver bullet but I’m hopefull that it’s a big step forward.
100%. Lemmy just happens to have the communities I’m interested in.
I remember trying to move to Mastodon years ago. But the main topics in my feed were furries, transgenders and activists.
Not hating on any of those, but it just wasn’t what I was interested in at the time, so I quit the whole microblogging thing altogether and spent more time on Reddit.
Do you know any regular people? Most people I know have never even heard the word fediverse.
Not to mention “most people” wouldn’t fit in here or feel welcome. Remember Donald Trump won the popular vote and even those who didn’t vote didn’t feel strongly enough about either side to pick one or the other. It’s not just the US, far right candidates keep gaining popularity in parts of Europe. And I think a lot of people aren’t interested in Star Trek or trans rights. The niche communities have very low levels of activity too. The fediverse just isn’t for everyone.
The Fediverse is a confusing concept. I’m a giant nerd and even I don’t really understand how this is supposed to work. Centralized platforms provide a more straightforward user experience. And as others have said, that’s where the content is right now.
It’s no more confusing than using email, and everybody managed to figure that out. You don’t need to know how the nitty gritty of it works. The network effects is a far bigger issue, as you point out, centralized platforms simply have far more content on them.
It’s far more complicated than email, at least I can send an email to any valid address from any other address by default ( mostly ) - Lemmy / Fediverse is like needing multiple email addresses that each one can only email some of the others, and you might not even get the response someone sent you unless the content is literally carried back to you.
I have multiple accounts on multiple instances, and sometimes I come across posts I read with one account, but my comments or the responses to those comments just aren’t there, so you only get a portion of what is out there.
It’s kinda a terrible experience in that way.
The whole point of ActivityPub is that you don’t need multiple accounts on different servers. You can use your Lemmy account to talk to people on Mastodon, browse PixelFed, watch PeerTube. Yes, there is sometimes lag in content propagating, and so on, but it’s clearly not a show stopper. My experience using Lemmy and Mastodon is the opposite of terrible.
You don’t get me. My instance isn’t Federated with lemmy.world and other large instances. I just don’t see the majority of comments or content you do on this account.
And I don’t see that as a problem. I don’t think Fediverse needs to be fully connected the way a centralized platform is. The fact that different instances can choose whom they federate with is a feature not a bug. Fediverse favors creating smaller communities that are more personal, instead of just being one giant cesspool. It’s a different way to interact with people.
Qualifying your analogy with (mostly) kinda makes it fall apart for me. Because the fediverse also works like how you described email (mostly). There might be a few extra exceptions due to relative immaturity of the protocol is all.
Even if people know fediverse, if the content they want doesn’t exist here, they won’t stay.
There are Japanese Twitter refugee to fedi (especially Misskey) several times. A lot of big creator doesn’t stay as they want to get the highest number of engagement to keep their (art) business afloat.
Because I have no clue what the Fediverse is.
Yeah and I wasn’t sure what it mean on account creation to commit to a server fully. I ended up getting a lot of supportive comments when I did ask.
network effects
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Most people don’t care about things. This is kind of a recurring problem. Imagine if people just cared a little bit more. All sorts of problems, like littering, would just go away.
But people are lazy and don’t care. They don’t care that their behavior today will be a problem for them tomorrow.
The big sites are where the content is, and that’s what they want. Suffering a little bit of hardship (fewer memes) in order to bolster a stronger future? Ridiculous.
