I've thought about this as I was someone who jumped onto Mastodon as soon as Twitter went dark side. I think the reason it never became a go-to for me like Lemmy has, is the fundamental difference in how I used Reddit and Twitter.
With Reddit, while I curated my feed by following subs, I was really looking for something to cover me when I was idle for a time, and wanted to scroll. I am not too choosy about what I want to see, just surprise me.
Twitter was strictly a service that I used to follow organizations and individuals. I never went to trending or anything like that. My follows were just accounts I gained interest in somewhere else. Mastodon failed because probably less than 10% of the accounts I followed even tried the service. There was nothing to see.
I’ve noticed that issue with Mastodon; there are a number of accounts I followed or interacted with on Twitter only because that was the most readily available means for me to contact some brand via social media. (And without using something like Facebook which I basically don’t use.) I never used Twitter to get the news or find out trends or anything like that. (Heck, I barely even used Twitter, period.) Getting these more “mainstream” organizations and users to adopt Mastodon has been slow, unfortunately.
That said, I’ve ended up using Mastodon much more than I ever used Twitter, even pre-Musk Twitter. I only really used Twitter heavily when I wanted to follow particular topics, which I didusing hashtags. So I basically ended up using Mastodon similarly – not as an “everything” site but as a way to reach different social circles of interest to me, by joining a few different instances and following various hashtags. And there are very vibrant communities there.
When the Twitter migration happened, a lot of folks got overenthusiastic about the idea of the fediverse and started setting up their own Mastodon instances, despite having little to no experience with selfhosting before.
A lot of such instances have since shut down as they realised the amount of efforts that actually needs into hosting such a platform, especially instances with open registrations. However, a large number of them did survive and are now thriving.
Has the growth rate slowed? Sure, just like it is expected happen after a sudden influx. But it is false to say that Mastodon growth has stalled. Instead, the phrase I would use is 'stabilized'. Mastodon growth has stabilized into a healthy level as user growth is now happening more organically. Some stats below:
For example I use two accounts on different servers with very different content. Personally I really like that separation.
Yeah, same here; I also have multiple Mastodon accounts. Ironically, the “everything” nature of Twitter was something that made me not use it much, because I have multiple interests some of which are quite disparate (for example, videogames, and some professional field), and so I was never really comfortable with those streams mixing readily.
With Mastodon I can easily keep them separate but also have the option to cross-post whenever I want.
So...this whole evidence point out by the author amounts to personal experience, and not even a kind of personal experience that is good for evidence. Smaller instances closing down isn't the same as large instances closing down when it comes to adoption. Heck, there's a recent report that shows the opposite of what is said here, with proper data to back it up.
Fantastic article, thank you for sharing. I think it really hits the nail on the head as far as the exclusionary culture goes - members of the Fediverse want the Fediverse to grow, but by-and-large they want the Fediverse to grow full of people just like them - and, unfortunately, most people just like them are already here.
Once the technical kinks are worked out (easier said than done, I know), it's the user experience that has to be improved, and the overall onboarding experience must be tuned for people who don't know or care what a Fediverse is besides "that place where I can see the reddit and twitter type posts". Yes, maybe the community will change and we'll hit our own "eternal September" moment, but it'll be better overall for the internet to have social media decentralized. This could very well be our Web 3.0 turning point but we have to accept the bad with the good if we want that sort of future.
Unfortunately, there's noone who would respond to that. Everyone knows about ux problems yet noone knows how to approach them. Those who can help, usually do so with pull request -- and even if not merged right away, they give base for future attempts.
Open source needs quality contributions to move further. However if one cannot solve any "good first issue" by themselves, tossing $5 into the donation bin allows devs to hire those who can solve those.
Once critical mass of contributions is achieved, you get wikipedia, vlc, blender etc: dominant players with no close proprietary rivals
It is the same reason I don't have an email at my own domain. It is difficult to setup my own and people who run small operations can only give hobby level commitments.
Social media happened because not everyone wanted to build a website. They just wanted an easy place to post and view content.
These tendencies will always bias towards a few other entities handling most of the traffic. Email, social media, and other online experiences like chat.
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