this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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If not Threads, what would you suggest to bring the billions of people who are stuck in legacy social media into the Fediverse?
If not Threads, how else can we convince small businesses to have an online presence beyond their Facebook pages?
If not Threads, how else do you want to bring mainstream media out of Twitter?
Why do we need to bring billions of people here again?
Because 90% of everything is crap, so the only way to make this better than the alternatives is to have larger absolute numbers and hope that we can find enough of the non-crappy 10%.
I'll be honest with you: the only thing that the Fediverse has over the alternatives is the ethical superiority, but if I were just looking for quality content, this would be the last place I would be looking for.
If you are after larger numbers of people, why are you here and not on legacy social media where the numbers mean those platforms are better in your opinion?
Doesn't "the only thing that the Fediverse has over the alternatives is the ethical superiority" answer that?
I am here because I want it to succeed, not because it has.
Not sure what you mean by ethical superiority? There's some pretty horrible and unethical instances on the fediverse... And I disagree with you that mass numbers of people means success
I am talking about the ethos of open source and decentralized systems, not the general ethics or the values of particular people or instances that are here.
It's not so much about "attracting mass numbers of people", but becoming more than just a point for fringe groups. IOW, can we make it minimally interesting for normies? Can we go beyond the "techie/anime-manga/pretentious college student/socially awkward/neurodivergent" demographic? Could we perhaps make the Fediverse a place that can be attractive for, e.g, photographers? Car Enthusiasts? Fashionistas? Wood workers? Amateur triathletes?
IMO, reddit's value was never in the large communities. Aside from /r/soccer, none of the subreddits I joined had more than 500k subscribers. But the thing is: the reason that Reddit managed to have so many interesting communities in the long tail was because they managed to attract such a large number of people that even those in far tail end could still find like-minded people.
I think some of us here might just have a different definition of "success" when it comes to content on the internet. Personally, I don't agree that,
Eternal September
Can you elaborate?
Not the OP, but Eternal September references the massive culture impact on Usenet when ISPs started lowering the barrier to joining the then somewhat exclusive forum-esque part of the internet.
Gatekeeping the fediverse while also wanting it to stay alive and to not be "EEE" my meta won't work unfortunately.
I agree, but it's a hard pill to swallow that Meta is the best partner to grow the fediverse. There are real lessons to learn from Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (look at XMPP and Google), not to mention privacy concerns and content moderation issues that seem to be a "feature" for Meta products vs bugs.
I'm not sure what Zuck is up to, but for whatever it's worth I think the best think the fediverse can do is be somewhat reactive to Meta's movements.
If instances start getting overwhelmed with content, then block.
If Meta starts showing signs of EEE, then instances can block.
And us users can move to instances that we feel match our personal stances on things - hate Facebook like the plague? Look at one of the defederated/blocking instances. Do you miss interacting with a larger audience? Stay on instances that are embracing (or withholding judgment) the Meta federation.
It's a complex topic to be sure, and the only way we'll know the right way to deal with it is with the benefit of hindsight in a few years
Just thinking about all the meta bots and shills meta could bring to the table gets me excited. Mmmm astroturf
Well it looks like they're at the first E, there, buddy. Look at what they've already done to the internet, to your country, to the world. You want to give them the benefit of the doubt?
I used to have a 5-digit Slashdot ID, I am familiar with Eternal September. ;)
What I wanted to understand from OP is: what makes them think that the Fediverse (in general) in some type of enlightened vanguard that we should be "afraid" of the masses?
I don't need or want those assholes here. Why do i want small business here? Why do i want facebook idiot grammas here? What would the point be? Fuck threads
Seconded. There’s no need to have them here. The toxicity of FB, “fake news”, and the trolling that goes with it can stay the hell away from the fediverse. There’s enough to deal with here with issues from places like hexbear, CSAM, and whatever else, we don’t need knuckledraggers posting “only ‘60s kids will get this” BS along with “each upvote is a prayer for trump” or some shit.
Plus this thread is more than toxic enough as it is.
Who hurt you?
You did, honestly. Having to read useless copycat comments (like the reply you just farted out) on Reddit everyday is why i left them. Not all of them are drooling wankers without a shred of imagination, but the loudest ones definitely were.
To think for a second that they should remake this place in their image angers me.
Ignorance and arrogance anger me.
You anger me.
They can join a proper instance instead of a gigantic corporate-controlled one.
There are not enough instances for that.
Slow, steady and sustainable growth through having a quality product.
Slow growth is incompatible with anything that requires network effects.
And if we are talking about quality alone, then the Fediverse products are already lagging behind Bluesky and Nostr, and the current user base is so reactionary that trend will be that we'll keep losing ground.
In what way is slow growth incompatible with anything that requires network effects?
Because this will only become interesting once we have a critical mass. 50k MAU is far from if. If we grow 10% YoY, we will certainly lose out to someone else who is willing to grow faster.
Makes some sense, but market ownership doesn't only go up, it goes down too. Services absolutely have downturns as well, and that's what we're really relying on. Like, reddits troubles the past year, for instance.
Also, note, we still have user-facing issues to resolve. This platform in its current form has a limited appeal to non-techy people. That won't change until the front-end gets more development and features. As it stands, average non-techy user pokes around a little bit and goes "ehhhh", and it's not necessarily due to a lack of content. That's just a singular factor.
For all "Reddit's troubles" last year, they still managed to have revenue growth of 21% to more than $800 million.
I really disagree. Yeah, there are many issues to solve, but content is king and we simply don't have it. The current experience with Lemmy can be summarized as:
It's only appealing for the terminally online. There is nothing for normies to be minimally curious about. The reason that, e.g, my wife, still has Facebook installed and never cared about installing a Lemmy client is not because of "technical challenges" but Facebook has groups that she likes to follow and nothing interesting to her here.
Your assessment of Lemmy content seems to indicate you follow news and Fediverse communities.
Truly diverse content will come with the users, the users make the content, not the content making the users. You need something with the polish, simplicity and ease-of-use the average public expects though.
Fediverse communities, yes. "News", not at all.
See how fast the number of active users drop.
So we agree that we need to have more users, no?
Need more cat pics communities.
Yes, I think we can agree on that. Our disagreement involves what will bring them, I do not think more content alone would be sufficient.
I have actual data that support the idea that more content can create a virtuous cycle. People loved to complain about alien.top "spamming their feed", but when the mirror bots were active, the numbers of "organic participation" and subscriber count was increasing faster than the most popular communities on the bigger instances. I kept quiet about it to avoid "inverse Streisand effect" (like the haters pontificating about "these communities are only bots" and spoiling for those who actually didn't care about interacting with it).
Sounds like a correlation. Note, I'm not saying content quantity has no impact. I said several comments ago it is a factor. So, that it means I think it is a factor. It's just one though.
And don't get me wrong, it's an important one too. But not the most important imo. It is, however, one we can influence, so that's nice.
Why should I care about any of that? Let them come one by one if they're so inclined.
If not Threads, how do we turn this FOSS venture free of corporate interference into a new avenue for a mega corporation to harvest all of our data for profit?
If not Threads, how will we ever ruin this place by turning it into Reddit?
If not Threads, who will I shill for?
I don't want any of those things
Right, you are so above all of this. You bring so much fun to the Fediverse and the rest of the world has nothing to offer you.
Leave them there, they fucking suck.
Hate to break out it to you, but the majority of people here suck too
Exhibit A 👆
This was in reference to produced works of science fiction in an environment that rewarded and encouraged schlock. To apply it to people is ignorant, and to tout it as some sort of actual law is disingenuous.
And to interpret my comment literally is utterly stupid.
My point is: this group here may have itself in high regard, but if you get out of the circle jerk you'll realize that the amount of pettiness, short-sightedness, egocentrism and plain meanness that you can find from people on Lemmy is not different from the average person on Facebook.