This is third place I am posting this to, but whatever:
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:
I read the first half and skimmed the rest. The primary complaints seem to be that the fediverse isn’t centralized, monolithic, stupid easy to use, and just like every corporate controlled network.
Ok. Cool. Fine with me. I wouldn’t call it failure if it is what it set out to be.
The biggest failure i can foresee is too many “centrists” end up making it boring. “Centrists” in the American sense, which is pretty far right. I’d really actually like to see socialist ideas, countries Ava people represented, so I can learn beyond my own propagandized education about it. We barely touched the surface in uni.
So I read the whole thing, and it sounds like highly opinionated ramblings of one individual I never heard of, with a catchy headline to rank high in current search trends.
This "here is why" bullshit was first used by Buzzfeed and other cringe clickbait generators and should be avoided like the plague.
Yeah, decentralized is the default state of internet, you can always be disconnected from the WAN like some countries decided to do for their citizens. It wasn’t this connected in the first place, it was very volatile as servers can go down for whatever reason, that’s exactly why early servers have all those mirror options.(so you bookmark several address and visit another if the main one is down.)
And finding good community was a hassle but worth it. It’s the same for fediverse but now we have good protocols and search function/engine.
While I can see this take being more in line with a casual user who just wants things to work like they are used to on their old platform, I want to point out that the issues with Twitter and Reddit are because of centralization. Because eventually money becomes more important and one company controlling everything will do what brings them more money at the cost of user experience. Fediverse is an attempt at removing that control from a single entity and putting it on the users, giving them a choice.
It has its problems for sure, but I think over time it will get better. I'm keeping an eye on bluesky waiting to get access and see how they are handling decentralization while keeping things consistent.
The most interesting thing to me is the scaling issue it seems like we need something like a torrent distribution method as the transport layer rather than sending out 400 connections.
i've been thinking similar things or use some other P2P model like those used by crypto nodes/i2p/tor. and maybe blockchain can serve a different purpose in order to bring validity to instances so as to not have bad actors fuck with the data as well as giving us a way to collectively boot them from federating should their reputation tank... dunno, not an expert in this area at all.
Oh, you said the word "blockchain", prepare for downvotes.
It's really annoying, blockchains have been working on solving some of the same problems the Fediverse is trying to solve for over ten years now. There are some perfectly good technical advances and solutions to be taken from them. But it's become a magical curse word now.
Oh I know, lol. What's that line from Apollo 13? Something along the lines of "I don't care what it was designed to do, I care what it can do." Regardless, no intention to start a heated debate over buzz words... don't really care what the solution is as long as it addresses the overarching problem.
Quick TLDR from ChatGPT for those who don’t want to go through it all:
The article discusses the decline in active user numbers on the Mastodon social media platform and explores potential reasons behind it. The author shares personal experiences and observations from using Mastodon and highlights several issues. Firstly, they argue that Mastodon does not offer a unique selling point compared to other platforms like Twitter, which are more feature-rich. The author also states that decentralization, a key aspect of Mastodon, is not a selling point for the majority of users who prioritize functionality and convenience over ideological considerations. They further criticize the user experience on Mastodon, particularly in terms of finding and following other users, and argue that decentralization hampers the platform's usability. Additionally, the article discusses the perspective of existing Mastodon users, who may be resistant to change and less attuned to the challenges faced by new users. Lastly, the author mentions the scalability issues of Mastodon and the lack of sustainable funding models due to the platform's aversion to advertising and corporate funding. Overall, the article suggests that Mastodon's shortcomings and its resistance to change may have contributed to its declining user numbers.
I’m not under the impression that the Fediverse is directly competing with mainstream social media. At least within the spaces that I belong to. I’m just tired of all the clickbait ragebait easy engagement posts online
If someone stays in Twitter and Reddit just because Mastodon and Lemmy are “difficult” I do not want those people here theycabn stay on their comfort zone.
Yeah, the "difficult" part, I don't understand. I'm 56 and figured out /kbin and Mastodon and how federation works within a few hours. So far, so good.
I was around for the early days of Fark, Digg, Twitter and Reddit. New sites are rough around the edges. That's just the way it is. Things will get sorted in due time.
True, but I do like to sometimes have discussions on non-techie topics, such as hobbies like frisbee golf or gardening. We need to get a healthy amount of normies over, to fill that void.
it sent out about 700,000 kill messages to inform other instances that it had federated with that it was going offline for good, and to delete all record of it from their databases. Around 25% of these were returned undelivered because the instances had simply dropped offline.
It's amusing that the person complaining about these instances "failing" linked to a site that itself has "failed" and is now "for sale".
There are always "the sky is falling" posts by people that feel everything they are no longer in love or becomes slightly difficult with is "failing". I don't understand why these people always think others are going to care about their opinions on the subject at all. It makes me wonder if these people yell "I'M LEAVING" every time they exit a room.
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