this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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I think alternative social media needs to be decentralized. There's just no other way it can be sustainable. Cohost was centralized - of course it couldn't stand a chance. Never mind all the other issues, which are obviously equally important.
For me, the fact that we are having this conversation on the social web is solid evidence pointing in the opposite direction of your concerns. I counted contributors from eight different websites and at least three different software platforms only in this comment section of twelve comments.
Alternative social media platforms have never looked so healthy!
I love everything that Fedi stands for, I wouldn’t still be here if I didn’t.
But it’s hard to shake the feeling that I’m mostly posting out into the void. I’m not optimistic about Fedi’s future, I think at this rate Bluesky is going to win even though they’re clearly only paying lip service to federation. Maybe if they can demonstrate that their federation works I’d consider trying a third party server, but it’s clearly not ready yet, and leaves a sour taste in my mouth as yet another corporate thing pretending not to be.
Ever since I swore off Reddit after the API fiasco, and ever since I left the one Discord server where I used to feel like I fit in, it’s felt harder and harder to find alternative places where I can talk about my most niche interests, because nowhere else is big enough for it to be likely I’ll find anyone else who also wants to talk about those same things.
I don't think Fedi will ever be that for me. The one thing I can say for Cohost is that at the rate it was going, I was able to find a lot more posts relating to my hobbies and fandoms, and I kinda regret that I didn't post more and lurk less.
It just sucks to feel like there’s nowhere else on today’s dying internet to go that will suit my needs.
I'm amazed at how fast this place has grown since the first time I saw a Lemmy instance (way before Reddit API drama), or since the first time I snooked around Mastodon (before Twitter exodus) for that matter. So I guess I'm inherently optimistic by the fact that where newer users might see little activity as a bad sign, I see a little activity as a huge improvement on what the status quo was not so long ago.
On a technical side, open source projects also tend not to benefit from growing too fast. It seems to me Fediverse platforms currently have a healthy activity level for the stage of completion they are in. Lemmy certainly grew faster than it could handle for a while, and arguably Mastodon suffered from the same.
The main reason I'm hopeful about the social web is, however, that it makes no sense any more to create a new platform that does not support it. No matter what kind of social networking site you're making, proprietary or open, you're going to want to make it ActivityPub enabled, simply because it gives you a user base right off the bat.
And furthermore, it encourages the development of new platforms, precisely because you don't need to establish yourself with a whole bunch of users. According to fedidb my platform of choice, PieFed, has 124 active users right now. It would not have been a very interesting corner of the old web.
I don't think the established user base here is going anywere, and I think future developments will feed into the ecosystem. So I'm pretty hopeful. But it is going to take time before all sorts of niche communities have made themselves a federated home.
Bluesky and Threads will fight it out over microblogging, while Mastodon will stick around as a smaller less corporate alternative. A year from now people on both platforms can probably follow my Mastodon handle anyway, so I don't really care all that much.
The only problem of excessive optimism is that you might end up alone in a hill which is not worth fighting for.
As a whole, ActivityPub servers have been losing users since its peak in 2022. We were given all the opportunity in the world to build on that momentum with the Reddit fiasco, but were absolutely afraid to grow. Until today, the discourse reeks of elitism with the "I don't redditors here".
Meanwhile, Bluesky has focused on building a product that can be used by the masses, without acting pretentious about who they wanted to be there. They were already getting a.sunstantial crowd from Mastodon, now they are taking the Brazilians we well.
The momentum is not in our favor, and our reactionary, anti-growth culture is not helping.
I'm mostly going to talk about Lemmy here as you mention the Reddit fiasco.
We were not afraid to grow, the instances did not even exist when Reddit disabled the API. LW, lemm.ee, sh.itjust.works were all created around the time of the Reddit announcement.
New joiners getting welcome by people on Lemmy
Which examples do you have of what you stated above?
BlueSky got 8 millions from investors, expecting Lemmy, Mbin or Piefed so have the same level of development is unrealistic: https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/05/bluesky-announces-its-8m-seed-round-first-paid-service-custom-domains/
For every "welcome" post, you can find 10 other comments that amount to "I left Reddit because their users are toxic/suck/stupid".
One of the biggest complaints about the Reddit mirrors is "if I wanted to see Reddit content, I'd go to Reddit".
Go check the posts about Fediverser, see how many people are opposed to it on the grounds of "I don't want to bring more people here".
So now you understand why it matters to value the work of developers?
I provided examples, you did not, but okay.
The biggest complaints about mirrors were that they were posted by bots which
I had a look at the most recent one, most of its discussion derailed about the correct usage of downvotes: https://lemmy.world/post/18249058
I had a look at another one (https://aussie.zone/post/12244073 ), it just seemed like the admins didn't want to have to manage additional software. They are still struggling with federation (https://aussie.zone/post/13429731 ), so that's probably on their priority
Older posts from a year ago aren't probably reflective on how people feel about the topic today, a lot of the people left and joined in the meantime
I never denied that having massive financial investment would improve software.
What I said is that it is unrealistic to expect the Lemmy userbase to raise the same amount than investors looking for the next Twitter (and I stand by that point).
Thinking about it, it's interesting that no other company tried to create a new Reddit, in the same way BlueSky did for Twitter. Probably because forums are less profitable than microblogging.
Fedi's daily active users actually went up for the last two months after hitting a low of just under 1,000,000. That's a lot of people, and on a platform that likely has the ability to carry on like a cockroach in a nuclear winter.
AFAIK, the increased users on fedidb are from Threads.
Threads doesn't show up as an instance (https://fedidb.org/software/mastodon) nor as a software of its own
Yeah, it's weird. It is showing on popular accounts, though.
Weird indeed
@rglullis @cabbage I feel like it's only a matter of time until they have their own Elon Musk moment. Then their users will have to make some tough choices again.
What are you basing these feelings on?
Feel free to have a look at [email protected] for active communities which might benefit your posts.
You can also join [email protected] where we discuss "posting into the void" issues
Very true!