yo

  • 2 Posts
  • 99 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: June 21st, 2023
  • hitagi@ani.socialtoFediverse@lemmy.world•*Permanently Deleted*English
    2·
    3 months ago

    I don’t think the Fediverse will surpass mainstream social media by any means. I genuinely don’t believe there will be a day where any Fediverse platform will reach even a tenth of the userbase of its mainstream counterpart.

    The current trend of Fediverse platforms seems to operate in this way: “make X ActivityPub compatible” where X is any existing or emerging mainstream platform. A good example is Loops which, I feel is completely disconnected from the TikTok userbase that it attempts to capture. TikTok is very popular precisely because of its addictive algorithm and I’m not sure if the ethics of Loops will follow in that direction.

    Although the Fediverse population is small, I think it’s pretty resilient at least. We’re all here because of a shared ideal of “social media” that isn’t owned by a single entity. Unless users outside the Fediverse share the same ideal, it is unlikely they’ll stick around.

    The three problems listed on your post have pretty much been the same for the past three years and I don’t think anyone has made a good solution for it (otherwise, it would have blown up by now). There are so many suggestions like making a quiz or choosing a random instance but we all know those come with their own flaws. I don’t know how many years it will take for us to solve this problem but I’m always happy to see new attempts at solving them. The funny thing though is that some of these solutions rely on centralization…

    However, in my opinion, I think we are approaching the Fediverse wrong. The current expectation is it to eventually replace mainstream social media (it won’t). There is an obsession with a grand narrative or even a utopia.

    In my opinion, the “new” problem of the Fediverse should be this:

    “How do you build a platform with decentralization first in mind?”

    If we start thinking about this question, then problems like “choosing a server” should be irrelevant. I think about this question almost every day and I’m always on the look out for new platforms (both Fediverse and non-Fediverse) that hopefully aren’t just “X but ActivityPub”. I hope there will be more effort put into developing a platform where choosing an instance isn’t thought to be a hindrance but is actually part of the experience. A platform where we aren’t actively trying to “hide” decentralization.

    The question might sound stupid for some but just try to think about how we’re always chasing after mainstream social media and never really coming up with something original and unique where features are designed around decentralized interactions first.

    I don’t have the answers to this problem but I hope we can change the way we think about the Fediverse.

  • hitagi@ani.socialtoFediverse@lemmy.world•*Permanently Deleted*English
    271·
    2 years ago

    I think the irony here is that the user-friendliness experience of Bluesky stems from it being a centralized service (in practice). I seriously doubt most people who signed up for Bluesky even understand what “decentralized social media” means.

    I’m not saying Lemmy (and the greater Fediverse) can’t improve, but it’s clear that the biggest barrier for most people is the decentralized aspect itself – the core of the Fediverse – which is something one shouldn’t really “hide”.

    As long as the state of social media usership demands centralized practices, then the Fediverse will forever be at a disadvantage in gaining mass adoption in my opinion.