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.
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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.
I hope you don’t mean nicer as in “friendlier,” because the internet has always been a hellscape
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.
“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.
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.
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.
Well there’s also techies who don’t (only) use Linux and like (some) sports. More of a Sci-Fi and Comic Book guy than anime here.
Let’s see how this grows.
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
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.
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.
I agree. It’s been fun and challenging to learn even just as a user. I work in tech and it is a lot of concepts to grasp and understand. So much potential though!
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).
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.
“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).
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 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.)
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.
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 prediction.
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 🥲.
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.
Fediverse existed before Google+, then came Google+, then Google pushed it hard (including forcing YouTube users to have Google+ accounts), then Google killed Google+.
Fediverse is still here.
So while yes, it would be nice to have more people out of walled gardens, let’s keep stuff in perspective.
I fail to see how this goes against what you’re qouting from me? Unless you’re agreeing with me? I’m saying that in order to replace the Big Tech SNSs it needs to grow and appeal to the masses (which I’m personally doubting will happen to that degree), as was the question asked. But I also say that it doesn’t need to do so in order to exist stable or even become of a mentionable size.
Big Tech SNSs just get replaced by the next one. Yes, Google+ came and went. But Fediverse did not take over after that (nor was Google+ ever big outside the USA afaik). Just like how MySpace didn’t get replaced by the Fediverse. Big Tech SNSs aren’t forever, but I never argued that they where. But they tend to get replaced with another Big Tech SNS, if not soon to be’s (as Meta wasn’t ás huge back then), who have marketing power. Fediverse might be covered now more than ever, but the gains compared to Big Tech is statistically, still minimal.
And that’s ok! Because I too rather have a small but stable & good place. But it doesn’t make it that the Fediverse takes over the Big Tech SNSs place. That’s all I’m saying.
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. 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)
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 :)
- Clicking
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.
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.
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.
I agree but also, gates are open wide if you ask me. I’m missing some communities here and it’s going to be a long time before there are enough users to make it a worthy replacement for Reddit.
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)
Should we make it harder to join?
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.
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
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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.
