No Stupid Questions

I think, as others in here have already mentioned – There needs to be either inclusion of Federated services on current search engines, or a new search engine that natively incorporates the Fediverse. Though the issue with the second option there is it basically moves the goal posts a little rather than aims to tackle the core issue.

Yes

It's unpredictable though. Too many influences on that. People, interaction, systematic. Reddit has the size it could remain, or rebound. Lemmy as a project or platform could fuck up.

Lemmy/Fediverse is a sizeable niche now and has a chance to - over time - scale up significantly.

If a simpler/streamlined on boarding for Lemmy and the like gets going then yes. The average computer user enjoyed reddit for just that, simplicity. The average computer user has zero idea about Federation, instances, hosting, etc. and will have little to no desire to learn. The benefits have to outweigh the cons by a significant margin to get people on board yet another social media platform. Meta and Twitter are definitely shooting themselves in the foot and the possibilities for a federated platform are beyond what we can currently imagine. Lemmy and the like are in their infancy so we will see how the growing pains are handled.

Need the money to work out; definitely not the same dynamics. Maybe more of the people who care for their communities.

No, I don't believe it can and I'm thankful for that. We don't need another Reddit.

No, not by a long shot. They suffer the Linux problem because they are built and maintained by groups with narrow, specific, principled goals. Like Linux, fedi-services offer at best a 95% solution for the average user, and introduce a fair bit of friction to general usability. For some people that’s not a problem, they are willing to jump through some usability hoops because they find value in the concepts of decentralization and federated services. But most users just want to shitpost, troll, collect karma, and be with their friends. That place for better or worse is still mainstream services and it likely will be for as long as they exist.

Linux suffers from “works for me”, and “I don’t need that feature” by a lot of developers and maintainers of various distros. We already see that from Lemmy with the dev being clear that he isn’t going to be working on anything but bug fixes and if you want a feature then you have to build it yourself. But even worse was the removal of captchas in 0.18.0 and it took a fair bit of back and forth with the admins of various large instances pointing out that captchas, while not perfect, are really the only thing holding back giant waves of bot signups.

So while lemmy, kbin, mastodon, etc. may work fine for the devs and 10%ers, for the masses it’s just too much friction when Reddit, twitter, etc still exist and they aren’t principled in the same ways such that they will put up with the inconveniences for a solution that only meets most of their needs when one that meets all their needs and has none of those inconveniences works fine still.

I believe that, just like RSS feeds did not become mainstream while Reddit did, the current state of the fediverse will not gain mainstream popularity; however, it'll serve as a stepping stone towards a new federated internet that'll be seamless and intuitive for non-technically-inclined individuals and those who are indifferent to the implications for privacy and digital freedom.

I can only hope so. People understand that email is decentralized and that an @gmail can talk to @aol. They also understand that someone using an iPhone with Verizon can text someone using an Android phone in AT&T. But, they need incentive to leave. I was perfectly aware of reddit, but didn't join until digg updated to V4. Ive know about fediverse, but didn't bother joining until recently. Most people won't leave platforms they are used to.

No and I hope they don’t. At first that’s what I wanted for mastodon / Lemmy but as I’ve been here I’ve realized that having too many people invariably dilutes the quality of content since popularity means shouting over more voices and content which is generic or manipulative (rage bait) or appeals to the least common denominator bubbles up. There’s a critical mass needed for quality and content variety, but too much and it falls apart.

As others have pointed out, I am content with Lemmy being a niche app with engaged users.

I don't think it'll become mainstream and doesn't have to be. Also, I believe folx are becoming more mindful of their digital privacy. The latter will continue to grow. And that is the new trend.

Technocrats are becoming less irrelevant as well because tech advancements expose their data mining trends and their sole purpose with their "products" is profit no matter the cost (often at our detriments).

No, there a lots of tiny bits of things that just make it a difficult experience compared to reddit.

Lemmy: yes

Mastodon: ONLY IF IT CHANGES ITS SHITTY, CLUMSY, UGLY, UNINTUITIVE NAME to something with more of the following features:

1. Two syllables with the accent on the first (trochee)
2. Bright, sharp consonant and sibilant phonemes that pop (instead of dull, wooden, sonorous ones that flop)
3. Has a v or r sound in it to make it sound powerful
4. Bouncy and fun to say, therefore memorable

For example, it might catch on with a name like "Trunky" - I'm sure people who are more creative than me might come up with even better names.