IMHO these are fundamentally different concepts. Popular social media is made popular by pushing curated 'engaging' content, rather than organic content, to monetize gullible users. It has become an entertainment venue, giving their audience a steady stream of what they want them to see, even if by force. Popular "Social Media" has rapidly devolved into a real-life MST3K. Users feel betrayed that the sites no longer feel like the social experience/experiment they wanted.... but are users really wanting to leave, or just switch to voice outrage?
Alternatively, the fediverse doesn't appeal to those wanting force fed entertainment, or seeking viral fame amongst family/friends, and outraged users will complain it doesn't function like so-and-so site, or work 'their way'. It is more technical and takes more proactive actions to engage with others, which is a positive thing.
Users think they can switch from Coke to Pepsi, but the fediverse is more of a mixed drink with some extra bourbon.
Could it / should it replace popular social media? Probably not, unless more mindsets change over what a social media experience should be... but it can fill a growing gap as this happens (which will in-turn improve features & development).
I would say, if in theory a social media achieved a small community, informative and positive culture which avoided spreading misinformation or cultivating harmful stereotypes of those they disagree with via the mechanisms of that social media, that it should be more standardized and more widely accepted. Largely because that is just more healthy in general. Not that Lemmy will necessarily be that in practice in the long run.
I think you're on to something. I'm all in on the Fediverse. I still have some legacy stuff on traditional social, but I spend most of my time here. Though I have to admit I love me some LinkedIn.
It is the solution, the problem is that it’s too complicated for your good ol’ Joe. they just want to quickly sign up, doomscroll through the algorithm and maybe contribute a little as well. One of social media’s key perks/flaws is its centralization.
“Servers? Instances? Is this a place to connect with my friends or a goddamn server room?”
I agree. It's been fun and challenging to learn even just as a user. I work in tech and it is a lot of concepts to grasp and understand. So much potential though!
People said that about reddit, I don't think Lemmy is anywhere near being too complex for the average user. More that social medias generally favor simplicity because simplicity is easy to control, modify, and generally nudge from a developer side trying to guarantee a very specific use case that generates money, rather than just naturally occurring social systems.
Let's be real, humans have been dealing with social networks far more complex, systems more complex, for almost all of human history. The sheer volume of people, no, but the actual processes of interaction, yes.
“Servers? Instances? Is this a place to connect with my friends or a goddamn server room?”
That's not a property of of federation (see email and websites) it's just because early adopters are a little wired. In any new social phenomenon, it takes a second wave of adopters (first wave of followers) to bridge the wierdos from the masses.
Cue this classic study in leadership: https://youtu.be/hO8MwBZl-Vc be the first one to follow the wierdos and show the masses it's cool.
But couldn't it be made easier? Who cares which server a community or a user is registered on. I register where a friend sent me the link to and from there on it shouldn't matter and could be handled in the background.
The big sites are also not one central instance. They have several distributed instances all managed by the same company.
Future instance owners and moderators don't want users and communities to be able to migrate seamlessly. Mastodon has the same fatal flaw. They want to keep your history and relationships hostage so you can't leave. This is the only thing turns signup to Lemmy and Mastodon into an important decision you don't want to get wrong. That's why you have to read and read and read before signing up and be a Lemmy expert before choosing the right instance for you.
Of course by this time 99% of users have gone back to Reddit. And the 1% that stays still feels like a huge wave.
Also many elitists are happy signup is clunky, it filters out the rif raf and the common Joe. It creates an exclusive space where everyone uses Linux, loves anime and don't like sports.
A place with no cultural relevance ree from eternal September.
And while you can't directly transfer the history (the debate over how/whether to do this has gone on for literally years), you can export an archive you can keep locally, and there are tools out there to parse it and convert it to some other form (static website, whatever). Someone's probably written an importer by now, though I'd have to look.
Future instance owners and moderators don’t want users and communities to be able to migrate seamlessly. Mastodon has the same fatal flaw
This is misrepresentative for a few ways.
For one, you can in fact migrate your mastadon account, fairly easily in fact.
For another thing, instance owners and moderators don't really get to choose whether migration is possible, the code contributors do. I suppose instance owners could start forking their own version of lemmy to make that harder, but ultimately there will always be folks willing to host the "best" version, and so people will just leave
If you move you lose your history and relationships behind. There is no migration, same as Mastodon. On purpose so as not to disempower instance owners
We are still missing basic tools, like the ability to import full history from one instance to another. To import posts and comments, not just followers and those we follow, or lists (which often isn't functional as on my current instance). Frankly we should be able to import history from non-fediverse social media too, if one has output files from them. Nobody I'm aware of has built a single tool to help them navigate those histories, let alone import them.
Some people are working on that. Calckey will soon be able to import posts from twitter (can alerady import from mastodon). Pixelfed can already import from instagram right now!!
Kbin and lemmy are very late in that regard. You can’t even migrate your social graph.
I'm unable to do that on pixel.infosec.exchange which is the pixelfed instance I'm on. Is there some trick to it or is it just not universally available yet?
This kind of import is something that I would absolutely love to see, but some backend stuff has to be figured out. Unfortunately, importing and creating thousands and thousands of posts can absolutely hammer a server, and it gets amplified if everybody's doing it at the same time.
I had some ideas for a tool a while back that could import your posts first, help you sift through what your "Greatest Hits" were in terms of big life events or lots of conversation, and help you import those into another platform. The downside is, though, that you still wouldn't be able to reconstruct the threads for people who haven't moved over to the fediverse yet.
Fediverse will go through what Linux went through. Be seen by businesses as an existential threat. Then face FUD and EEE campaign.
One day, likely earlier than Linux witnessed the rise of RedHat, Google, Facebook as prominent businesses that became poster children for Linux, new or existing businesses could be built around and/or on fediverse. They may as well come together to form an ActivityPub foundation similar to the Linux Foundation for all we know.
Email went through similar trajectory too. SMTP, IMAP, pop are are open protocols. Yet we have a sort of oligopoly on email.
Similar to how Windows did not die away because Linux came along, existing social networks may remain in existence. The availability of fediverse as an alternative would keep them busy
I doubt it, not just because current social media sites are insanely popular, but also because there's a learning curve to using the Fediverse, and most people would likely find it complicated.
That's just because they haven't been taught about it yet. Once it catches on more (Twitter and Reddit refugees, Meta app) it'll become more widely understood and more people will start using it. Once you understand the point of the Fediverse, using it isn't a whole lot harder than any other social media.
I don't know you overestimate people, I think if the Fediverse will succeed its gotta be dumbed down a lot more for people and made seemless so it works without them having to think about the various instances as much.
They don't really HAVE to think about the various instances imo. They just need to join one, that's it. Following users/communities from other instances isn't hard to wrap your head around, you just follow them. badda-bing badda-boom. The @instance.whatever bit of their username barely matters. You just say "that's like a URL to find that user on a different instance than the one you chose". People arent as stupid as you might think, they just need someone patient enough to explain.
I mean yeah, that's me. I'm just a regular guy, but since reddit decided to screw up in the worst ways possible, I need an alternative. I don't fully understand the fediverse but I'm going to make an attempt to use kbin and see how it goes.
There is a powerful network effect to overcome here, and I don't think "being federated" is enough to overcome it for most people. Reddit and tumblr and discord offered us "what if all your forums/blogs/chatrooms were in one place" which is massively convenient, and why people flocked to those platforms. Thats a transformative user experience. being federated is transformative, but the change to the user experience -- beyond a larger barrier to entry -- is minimal. The point of mastodon is that its functionally equivalent to twitter without being centralized. But there are no decentralized places left on the internet, beyond those holdouts who are either very attached to their old technology or want to maintain their unilateral control over their platform, and who are unlikely to federate.
I think it could replace reddit in the long term but the others I'm not so sure about. Twitter and YouTube still mostly function so people won't leave but without 3rd party tools and the lack of trust users have in reddit to develop those tools on their own that leaves them in a very bad position.
I'm hoping it'll be more like craft beer and become it's own market that overlaps with more mainstream options but still has a solid base of users\customers that keep it separate.
As long as a hardware will be sold with microsoft/google/twitter/facebook by default, no chance fediverse replace all these well-established applications. BUT it's not a problem for me : i use what i like, open-source, and i let other use what they want.
I don't think so. I think corporations will always want their hand in a pot and will have their things. I think we've seen there's always going to be people who don't want anything to do with that - digg to reddit, twitter to mastedon, reddit to here. And I wouldn't be surprised in a few years if this platform and similar ones face a crisis of identity like that. Small, independent communities are great and can gain value as more people join. But once enough people join other interests can overtake the original goal. What we've learned is that no platform or protocol is forever.
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