I agree with the whole thing but remember that the Fediverse as it grows it will face the same challenges as any other social media does when it grows. I 100% agree that it’s important that social media has to be decentralized and away from corporations but as people join the Fediverse, corporations will pick up on that and I’m sure we will end up with private companies doing apps for the Fediverse that will contain algorithms and all that kind of stuff. (I mean you can already see threads which is federated with the Fediverse).
Having the Fediverse doesn’t guarantee that everything will be nice and good (though it’s a very important step) but the same that happens with e-mail nowadays with google that we are all almost using the same platform even though it is a decentralized system and it’s not open source.
The Fediverse is decentralized AND open source nowadays but that doesn’t mean it’s how it will always be. I hope people remembers in the future that it’s important to support the open source platforms we have in the early days and they don’t jump ships when a private company opens a new fancy app. Let’s remember the lessons we just learned and remember, we currently have a decentralized AND open source social media because we have a lot of people doing hard work on it, let’s support them and educate people about the importance of the topic.
It’s still very early on, but a theme discussed in the video is worth repeating here: if the Fediverse is so great (ethical, devoid of advertising or toxic, addictive algorithms, with the goal of genuinely connecting people) why is it that the general public has not heard of it?
The futurology.today instance I’m an admin/mod of has the added benefit of being a direct sibling of r/futurology on Reddit which has 21 million users (I, and the other Mods also mod it).
Despite over a year promoting it on the subreddit, 3/4 of the instances users are from the fediverse, not Reddit.
Maybe the fediverse needs some breakthrough with usability, discovery and appeal?
Its bizarre that finding and subscribing to other instances is still so painful and backwards.
Why can’t we have new account types already subscribed to a ‘top 100 instances’ ? Instant improvement.
We’ve kinda been hibernating since July 2023, with the userbase rapidly declining from that peak and then remaining nearly constant for the entirety of 2024. Honestly it’s quite impressive that we held such a steady monthly user count for the past year.
But now with all the publicity around the fediverse, we are beginning to pick up some organic momentum again. We’ve grown by about 2k active users in January (~5% growth). Keep that up for a few more months and it will start to become noticeable with more activity, which should hopefully start a positive feedback loop.
Regarding finding and subscribing to communities on other instances, I’m pretty sure this tool addresses that problem fairly effectively.
You may want to add your instance to that.
Keep that up for a few more months
I’m not confident that the internet’s attention span is that long, unfortunately
That’s fair, but also reddit will continue to make unpopular decisions, and we are already the default alternative. Just have to wait and see
I mean, I feel it’s a misunderstanding of what users actually use social media for.
Just of top of your head, can you list three reasons they want to join the Fediverse for a “normal” Reddit user? Because I struggle to name one, nevermind three. There’s all the technical reasons, ethical stuff, etc. But that’s all something that enthusiasts would consider, and it goes against how the vast vast majority of users use social media where the more centralized the better as it multiplicatively expands the pool of content and interactions to have everyone centralized.
The Fediverse shows this, in fact! Note how resistant users are to spread over instances, in fact being always after centralizing on the bigger ones. But this isn’t a bad thing really, as it’s simply the nature of social media. Of course far less necessary on federated stuff, but there’s also no reason not to (again, from the perspective of someone wanting to use social media, not advocate).
It’s not an easy thing to do to get users here. The place inherently doesn’t appeal to those it would need to appeal to.
The fediverse offers a noncommercial alternative and that can be a draw. A “normal” Reddit user might not want to join us, but there will be users fed up with all the ads on Reddit, some of Reddits policies, tolerance of nazis and abuse and so on. Mastodon always was in the shadow of Twitter, a nice, but blew up when Musk started to destroy it. It offered a way out and that is worthwhile. And if Zuckerberg is starting to transform Instagram into a rightwing horror show, Pixelfed is there as an alternative. And if you want out of YouTube, PeerTube is working and ready for you.
Just of top of your head, can you list three reasons they want to join the Fediverse for a “normal” Reddit user?
I agree, there is no reason for most of them to. Why leave a place full of conversation to join somewhere where there is hardly any?
That said, many people want to to abandon traditional social media sites like Twitter/X and Facebook - Bluesky has been a huge beneficiary.
If it did things differently, there is every reason to think the fediverse could benefit from that transition. This trend of turning against the old social media , especially as it has aligned itself with the far right, is only going to accelerate.
I agree with you, but I feel that you’re glossing over the bigger point. In my view, you’re right about the way most social media users behave, but that behavior is also bound to slowly change as people get a better grip on how it is effecting them in a negative way. We as a society are learning the hard way about how toxic social media can be.
Most people are dumb and they don’t have time to consider whether something is better or worse, especially something as new as social media. But when they start to notice other people (like us!) doing something differently and having a better experience, they eventually catch on and change their behavior.
It’s like how it took a long time for people to stop smoking cigarettes, but once the tide turned it happened within a couple generations. Or wearing seat belts, or any other new, cool technology/product that people eventually started to understand better and adapt to after a few generations. Social media is like that, and we are simply the early adopters of a more humane and healthy form of social media. It takes a long time, but people will eventually start to understand how corporate social media is an unhealthy and exploitative habit, and this decentralized, community driven model is a much better experience.
This is an amazing article and makes me want to do so much more than I’ve already been doing to help put the Fediverse out there for people.
Yeah, drop the name of fediverse platforms in discussions with your friends, share links directly to content on here, share articles about it, but don’t be obnoxious about it - you’re also a part of it, and if people associate obnoxious behavior with the fediverse, they might be less inclined to join it.
they might be less inclined to join it.
“I use Arch btw”
