This is a follow-up from my previous thread.
The thread discussed the question of why people tend to choose proprietary microblogging platfroms (i.e. Bluesky or Threads) over the free and open source microblogging platform, Mastodon.
The reasons, summarised by @[email protected] are:
- marketing
- not having to pick the instance when registering
- people who have experienced Mastodon’s hermetic culture discouraging others from joining
- algorithms helping discover people and content to follow
- marketing
and I’m saying that as a firm Mastodon user and believer.
Now that we know why people move to proprietary microblogging platforms, we can also produce methods to counter this.
How do we get “normies” to adopt the Fediverse?
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I’ve had more than one person tell me they don’t think microblogging is worth any learning curve whatsoever. They’d rather not use anything than have a single conversation about federation or feed building.
Here’s your answer: “Lemmy wouldn’t really takeoff to replace Reddit until it’s content is search indexable”
I have to say, as something if a social media virgin, I am puzzled by #4. I have never been a Facebook, Instagram or Twitter user. Previous to getting into the Fediverse, the only platform I engaged with that could be considered social media was Reddit, and I left that behind because of the whole brewhaha over third-party clients.
Since finding my way here, I have become an enthusiastic user of Mastodon, Pixelfed and Lemmy. I could not have imagined that it would be easier to acclimate myself and i have not encountered any barriers to entry, or at least I have not recognized any.
Is my experience atypical?
The Fediverse needs a hell of a lot of work before we can even consider mass adoption.
I think I’d be considered a “normie” maybe. I’m not super tech savvy (maybe a bit more than the average person though as I’m a bit of a photoshop wizard and am interested in tech subjects).
What brought me to lemmy was my moral compass. I’ve used reddit since the late 00’s so it was hard to let go but reddit just isn’t what it used to be. I could no longer use Joey, my reddit app of choice so I abandoned it because what they did to Joey and other apps was bullshit.
I still find myself on reddit every now and then when I need information on something specific though. I haven’t found communities on the fediverse that I connect with that are super active (things like houseplants, knitting, chronic pain, my specific city I live in, etc).
I use lemmy now for mindlessly scrolling before bed and news as I only use Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for work so it’s not leisurely for me to get on normie social media. I do find some interesting articles and funny memes and that’s enough for now.
So maybe the key to get a more robust community is through pulling heart strings? Idk my husband still used reddit daily and I guess doesn’t give a shit about the lax morals of the company 🤷🏼♀️
I’ll be open and honest knowing whenever bringing the subject up generates anger. “Normies” aren’t gonna join somewhere where 99% of the conversations revolve around using Linux. Jump into any thread and someone’s talking about it. Doesn’t even need to be a tech thread. As soon as someone goes against the grain immediate backlash. It’s not welcoming at all.
I said since I got here that the actual sign up process IS the hardest part. For exactly the reasons you said.
Each instance has it’s own personality. As much as EVERY user here will hate to hear this, you need to centralize the decentralized. Have a single point of entry. Signup at Lemmy.com
Now you’re [email protected]. and you’re told that you have 6 months to pick an instance. And here’s a guide to all known instances, with a wiki style explaination of what each instance’s personality is. With an expandable list of each federated and defederated instance.
Now once they switch to their new “home” all their comments stay in their comment history. Everything in their profile comes with them. EVERY instance in the fediverse needs to adhere to a set of protocols. So that when they move instances, the only thing that changes is if you look at a post they made last week, it no longer shows [email protected] it now shows [email protected]. and if in 2 years you move again now it says [email protected] even for posts you made 2 years prior. It always lists your current account. Even if you move to Mbin. Now it says [email protected]
It’s a learn, and grow as you go situation.
Oh, and if an instance ever shuts down, those profiles aren’t lost. They revert back to Lemmy.com, and the 6 month rule is back in effect.
But you have to anticipate the user. Not control the user. And right now the user understands centralized. So centralize the decentralized, and THEN teach them slowly how it works. I understand today leaps and bounds more than I did 4 months ago. I’m still not sure Lemmy.World is my final home. I’m trying out piefed. I’m probably going to try out Mbin. And I’m sure I’ll discover new things. But on day 1, I was like “…do what now? What’s an instance? What’s decentralized?”
And NOW I can see that the Nintendo account I follow on Mastodon for the past year isn’t really Nintendo. It’s [email protected] and EVERY post gets auto “boosted”. A year ago I thought that was literally Nintendo. I was surprised they were not only OBSESSIVELY active, but that they had a Mastodon account at all.
You gotta remember, this is how most people will walk into the fediverse on day 1. Not knowing how shit works, and if it doesn’t work for them, they’re out. You can teach them later. But also right now the fediverse as a whole is fragmented as shit. There’s decentralized, and then theres disjointed.
You’ll notice that I post regularly to THIS community. With constant questions. I’M taking the active approach to learning. The average user won’t know that they’re stupid. They’ll think the fediverse is stupid because it doesn’t work the way they’re used to. Most people don’t have the self reflection I have, nor the constant curiousity. If I don’t know a thing, it bothers me. If most people don’t know how a smoke alarm works, they fon’t give a shit. Whereas I watch a youtube video for almost an hour. Did you know there’s actually several different types of smoke detection? And that one type is very much more prone to false positives, and worse, lack of positive positives due to light? See, most people will find that boring, not give a shit, and move on. So YOU gotta teach them with annoying popups. “Hey, the fediverse is actually self hosted, and right now you’re on the instance of Lemmy.com! Whats that mean? Well…” blah blah blah, you guys already know this part, but that’s the message they should get on day 1. Teach them they need to understand what an instance is, and how to pick an instance that works for them. Then they can migrate there. If that instance is ever no longer good enough, they can migrate elsewhere. Even to Mbin, even to piefed, wherever! One account, all the fediverse.
And here’s the best part. They can go to fediverse.com and log in regardless of which instance they’re on. Just type user is [email protected] password is ********* and login.
And now all the decentralized is centralized. Without losing the benefits of being decentralized. Because it IS still decentralized. But most drivers aren’t mechanics. They use the service, but they don’t need to know the ins and outs. They just need to be able to use it, without it being confusing for THEM.
The hardest thing I’ve noticed is that linux user types don’t grasp is that just because THEY understand something as easy, doesn’t mean EVERYONE finds it easy. And there are a LOT of linux mindset people here. You may “get it”, but that doesn’t make it naturally intuitive. The fediverse is confusing as shit. Each part works differently. Has a different layout. Has a different interface. Operates differently. Which is a stark contrast to facebook users who just say “DO THE THING!” and suddenly 70 boomers are giving them thumbs up and emojis for a quilt they sewed and sharing the patchwork on.
Everyone here is saying to defederate from Threads, because it’s facebook, and I get why. But are you seriously going to cut off the biggest by far userbase to federate with you, simply because you don’t want corporate integration? Facebook still wouldn’t own the fediverse, but now something like 80 million users will start asking questions about the fediverse. Yes, it’s all old people, and people we would rather not interact with, but guess what. They don’t want to interact with you in [email protected] either. They don’t want to be in [email protected] either. They’re going to create their own communities, which have no interest to you, but boost the fediverse’s numbers. By the millions. And now maybe facebook as a whole integrates. Maybe reddit sees the momentum and they integrate. Maybe hoogle sees the momentum.
And pretty soon the fediverse becomes the default layout of how the internet works. And the decentralized nature means that no corporate entity CAN own it. They can put ads on individual instances that they own…but they can’t control all the instances. And people who don’t care about those ads will stay there. People who don’t will go to other duplicate instances.
But to defederate from threads before ANY of this takes place is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, while daily seeing those same people ask “How do we grow the fediverse?”
THATS HOW!!! Ok, I’ve ranted enough…
Now once they switch to their new “home” all their comments stay in their comment history. Everything in their profile comes with them.
Very difficult technically. Mastodon doesn’t allow this either, I don’t know any Fediverse platform which allows this. If someone knows one, please share
Mastodon currently does not support importing posts or media due to technical limitations
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#export
About Threads, have you been to Facebook lately? The level of conspiracy, bigotry etc is over the roof.
And on top of that, millions of users federate here from Threads
- they start upvoting, commenting in the established communities, drowning every existing user with their numbers
- previous Fediverse users start to recreate their own communities without the Threads users, just because of the population differences
Very difficult technically. Mastodon doesn’t allow this either, I don’t know any Fediverse platform which allows this. If someone knows one, please share
It may not exist NOW, but my point is the fediverse itself needs to adopt a stance of “Ok, these are the foundation for which EVERY service will connect to the fediverse. Develop these services into your platform now, or risk being auto-defederated from all complying fediverse platforms in future updates.”
Give it like 3 years to actually let these platforms figure out how to work it in, but eventually ALL platforms will have to have it if the fediverse as a whole wants to succeed. Basically your account wouldn’t be a Mastodon account, or a Lemmy account, or a Pixelfed account, or any other platform specific account. It would be a fediverse account. And you’d log in via one central place, which then exchanges information with the instance, and back to the centralized log-in point. So if you wanted to browse Pixelfed for example, you’d log in [email protected], with your password on Fediverse.com, and Fediverse.com would exchange info with your instance, verify the login, and then exchange info with pixelfed which would already know you’re a verified logged in user. Then, using Pixelfed’s layout and platform, you’re browsing a pixelfed instance, via Lemmy.World, with all traffic being handled by fediverse.com as a neutral middle party to handle login verifications.
About Threads, have you been to Facebook lately? The level of conspiracy, bigotry etc is over the roof.
And on top of that, millions of users federate here from Threads
they start upvoting, commenting in the established communities, drowning every existing user with their numbersprevious Fediverse users start to >recreate their own communities without the Threads users, just because of the population differences
That’s all fine. I literally covered that in my innitial post when I said
They’re going to create their own communities, which have no interest to you, but boost the fediverse’s numbers. By the millions. And now maybe facebook as a whole integrates. Maybe reddit sees the momentum and they integrate. Maybe hoogle sees the momentum.
And pretty soon the fediverse becomes the default layout of how the internet works. And the decentralized nature means that no corporate entity CAN own it. They can put ads on individual instances that they own…but they can’t control all the instances. And people who don’t care about those ads will stay there. People who don’t will go to other duplicate instances.
So, even though I didn’t know it was happening, I literally predicted that would happen. Even down to the duplicate communities to get away from those that you don’t want to interact with. Fine, let them have their own racist communties that you never have to interact with. Let THEIR moderators handle that. The bigger thing to take away is that the fediverse, racist communities and all, is growing and becoming actually relevant. You can’t just treat internet places as “safe places” where only your kind exist. You have to either solve racism in real life, or accept that it will also exist online. You can use moderation tools to make sure that attitude isn’t welcome in your instance, but if you say they aren’t welcome on the fediverse, then you cut off about 90% of the older generation, and about half of society as a whole…or 48% if we’re being accurate.
I was at a family get together, when my mom just casually threw out the N-Word. The table had 7 people sitting at it. 4 of them were my moms age, in her 70s. My sister is 50, and I’m 40. My niece is 12. When she said it, My sister, my niece, and me all looked at each other with eyes that basically said “WHAT THE FUCK???” and the 4 other elderly people just didn’t even phase them. My mom has never once in my presence, nor my sisters presence, EVER used language or an attitude like that. She’s not part of the 48% party. But to see her generation just casually accept that was mind blowing for not only me, but also my sister, and my niece. We immediately huddled off to the side room and everybody immediately asked “WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT???” in whispered tones. Nobody had EVER heard anything like that from her. She doesn’t watch fox news. We have no idea what got into her, other then thinking maybe that’s just what her generation says when nobody younger is around, and this time it slipped out. But my brother in laws parents, and the other elderly neighbor didn’t even react. Whereas it was clear to us three that something weird just happened.
And as far as the world goes, the boomers, even on deaths door, are STILL the largest demographic of people in society. So if you exclude them, you are saying millions of people aren’t welcome on your platform, and in doing so, will hinder it’s growth. Permanently. Until they die off, their numbers are needed for anything to be considered a sucsess.
So the best you can do, is welcome them to your platform, stick them off into their own instance, you go onto your own instance, you don’t interact with them, but let them interact with each other. Then other platforms can see the numbers, not understand the situation, and THEY join in. And THAT’s where you get the users of actual value. The people on reddit, and instagram, and youtube. ESPECIALLY youtube.
Peertube is what’s poised to gain the most here. NOBODY likes youtube. The creators don’t like youtubes god complex, and holding them to strict rules that change on a dime, and retroactively give them strikes that were perfectly inline with their rules at the time of posting. Users don’t like youtube, again because of their god complex. Changing features, removing thumbs down button, doing everything they can to force ads onto your screen.
BOTH SIDES want a change, but there’s no valid alternative until people start USING an alternative. That’s because if you go outside, and ask 100 people in a common public place “What is the fediverse?” I would be SHOCKED if 1 person knew. Ask those same 100 people what youtube is, and I’d be SHOCKED if only 99 people knew. The awareness just isn’t there yet.
So yeah, for the time being, you HAVE TO allow the racists onto your platform purely for the growth. They’ll be dead in 10 years anyways. But until people know what the fediverse is, you need EVERY platform willing to federate. Then, once the fediverse is a common term, and everybody underdstands it, THEN you can start saying “Ok, boomer, fuck off with that racist shit.”
all traffic being handled by fediverse.com as a neutral middle party to handle login verifications.
Who manages fediverse.com? Who prevents it from being bought out by a billionaire? Who ensures that it stays neutral in case of cat food vegan debates? Who prevents people unsatisfied with the issue of that debate to create their own fediverse.com?
And as far as the world goes, the boomers, even on deaths door, are STILL the largest demographic of people in society. So if you exclude them, you are saying millions of people aren’t welcome on your platform, and in doing so, will hinder it’s growth. Permanently. Until they die off, their numbers are needed for anything to be considered a sucsess.
TikTok doesn’t have boomers, is it not considered a success? Trying to bring in the boomer population doesn’t seem to bring a lot of values if they don’t interact and stay in their own bubbles.
Bringing Reddit users, which are usually closer to the Lemmy demographics, would be more interesting, as those users would interact and mingle better with the rest of the existing userbase.
As a general comment, I’m always surprised when people want to bring everyone to a platform. Every city or town has several bars and cafes. You don’t expect the old ladies sipping tea to go to the rock cafe, and you don’t expect young parents to spend time in university bars.
It’s okay to have different places for different people on the Internet.
Defeatist opinion.
The commercial alternatives hope to make money with every additional user. They use AB testing and statistics to streamline the on-boarding and to increase engagement. The result may not be in the user’s interest (doom-scrolling, ragebait, …) but it works.
For a fediverse instance, any additional user is a cost, not the promise of money. Financially, you wouldn’t want that. Those who fund instances are giving a gift to the world for their own reasons. You can accept the gift or not. Those who keep instances running with donations will usually want to sustain the community of which they are part. They probably don’t want it to change very much.
So, I don’t think matters will change. Partly because the psychological engineering is antithetical to the fediverse ethos (as I see it, in my humble opinion). But mostly because the outcome we see is an inherent result of the incentive structure.
So I have been on Mastodon and Threads for quite awhile. I’m on BlueSky now too. Threads is the most enjoyable of the three by far. I don’t see how marketing has to do with it in any way, but after spending some time on each, I prefer Threads. It’s the only one that I’ve found content I wanted to engage with.
With Mastodon, I feel like I still can’t get started. I’m not sure what to do.
I’m not sure what to do.
On Mastodon, I used the search function to shotgun random topics that interest me, and then followed all the hashtags on the posts that came up.
Over time, I started replacing following hashtags with following my favorite users who I discovered through those hashtags.
Then I started discovering and following their favorite users through their boosts.
Now that my feed is pretty much where I want it I tend to click “hide boosts” on anyone new that I follow, to prevent their every random amusement from cluttering my feed.
The end result is fantastic, but it took awhile to get there.
Follow hashtags is the way to go. Mastodon should prompt new users to follow hashtags by recommending some topics for the user to choose from. EVERY social media has one of these now.
I prefer Threads.
You are a very brave person.
A sweet interface like Sync for Lemmy and respectful content and engagement are the key to me.
How do we get “normies” to adopt the Fediverse?
We don’t. Normies take one look at anything that isn’t mainstream and pinch their noses. A significant portion of them can barely make a search on the internet, they get lost at the idea of “websites” and are likely heavily biased against people who aren’t using what “everyone is using”
Anedoctal experience: back when I was using dating apps, I’ve had a fair share of girls that stopped talking to me once I said I didn’t have instagram, because it meant I was “hiding something”.
That may be true for some people, but isn’t a valid generalization. See the Brazil blocking Twitter situation.
Millions decided to give Bluesky a chance and a graph showed daily user activity quadrupling. Now, a not-insignificant portion are saying they refuse to return to Twitter because:
- It feels less toxic and healthier
- They have more control over their experience
- They’re finally having fun with social media again
Sound familiar?
And I’m pretty sure Misskey has more features. Hell, Mastodon as well probably. Bluesky doesn’t even support video yet.
The first sin of the Fediverse isn’t being small, that’s the second. First is being a pain in the ass.
The migration that happened from xitter being blocked in Brazil is a good example of a bandwagon effect, or “people go where people are”. If xitter wasn’t taken down, neither bluesky nor threads would’ve received such a big and immediate influx.
Also worth noting is that the vast majority went for those 2, bluesky more so than threads, instead of any mastodon instance because those 2 are the mainstream alternatives
Yes, people chase content, which means chasing where many people are, but why did Bluesky become a mainstream alternative and Mastodon didn’t?
I’m saying marketing doesn’t cut it, and it’s not just about where most users are either, otherwise everyone but Threads would be irrelevant.
People bounce off both Threads and Mastodon, and there are platform-related reasons for that.
The number 1 pain in Mastodon is the dev team. I mean come on, there are plenty PRs to make mastodon better usable and they just get rejected.
Also we could have some sort of algorithm like we have here in lemmy (hot/scaled/new) but if you talk about it there you are instantly the devil. They WANT mastodon to be different, even if this hurt the userbase.
Discoverability is a huge barrier to entry in the Fediverse, and they’re not helping.
It’s hard for me to judge them too harshly, though. Fediverse devs do things I disagree with all the time, and users too. Maybe, in a different world, something else could’ve taken Mastodon’s place… but its forks stick close, Pleroma has the charm of a brick, Misskey is too 日本, and Misskey forks got Messy, and—
…Oh. That’s it, isn’t it? Mastodon is the best that ActivityPub has to offer most microblogging fans.
stopped talking to me once I said I didn’t have instagram, because it meant I was “hiding something”.
That’s awful.
Also, I guess they would think I’m hiding so much, considering the number of bloated awful services I’ve rejected.
Is it an option to not? Cuz if so that’s what I’d choose.
Tell friends and family to get accounts on federated services you use. Word of mouth is how lots of websites get popular.
Recommend it when reddit comes up or gets mentioned.
I don’t even tell people I use Lemmy, let alone recommend it, because of how much authoritarian propaganda there is on here.
I love the idea and won’t give up on it easily, and I hope other users can join me in making it a better place by calling out propaganda.
because of how much authoritarian propaganda there is on here.
lol you never saw authoritarian propaganda in the commercial social media because you already are brainwashed.
Tell the people calling for nuking half the planet to stop it, enforce it.
Boom. You just eliminated 80% of the hostility on the platform.
Lemmy (or at least lemmy.world) was bonkers levels of buggy last summer during the reddit blackout. Like, literally unusable levels of buggy. Getting the word out that it’s (mostly) bug-free now would probably be good, because I’m sure there were many redditors who tried it and quickly swore it off as a pile of shit.
Otherwise I’m in agreement that the instance-selection part of sign-up is a huge barrier, because what instance you choose is actually really important but it’s overwhelming when you’re just getting started. Plus not being able to migrate your account/communities/posts to another instance if yours goes to shit/shuts down/turns out to not fit your needs makes the fediverse feel really unstable.
It was hit with a DDOS for an extended period of time. I suspect the attackers were successful in substantially hampering adoption of Lemmy as a whole.
Otherwise I’m in agreement that the instance-selection part of sign-up is a huge barrier, because what instance you choose is actually really important but it’s overwhelming when you’re just getting started.
Point them to lemm.ee, they can move later if they want. The name is neutral and it’s the second biggest
Plus not being able to migrate your account/communities/posts to another instance if yours goes to shit/shuts down/turns out to not fit your needs makes the fediverse feel really unstable.
Can people move their posts from Twitter/Reddit now that they are enshitiffied? This requirement isn’t usually expected from centralized systems, so this should be the same here
The difference is if the primary (sometimes only) admin of your instance loses interest, goes to jail, or gets hit by a truck, your entire instance could be dead in the water, whereas there are way more safeguards to “established” social media like Reddit and Twitter. Plus the issue of “well shit my instance got defederated from most of the fediverse because it turns out the admin is an asshat” is completely nonsensical on platforms without instances. Example: before I knew that Lemmy had a tankie problem, I almost signed up on lemmygrad because I thought it was just a witty pun…
Plus when you say “point them to lem.ee” what scenario are you imagining? Because “you should join reddit” or “our business is on Facebook” or “Twitter is a great resource for artists” are all straightforward and easy pieces of information to convey and pick up. “Join Lemmy, a subset of the fediverse, I signed up via lemmy.world although I hear lem.ee is also good, but don’t let that stop you from picking another instance” is like… Dude, people just want to go to [site].com, click on “sign up”, enter a username and password (and maybe email) and that’s it. Just having to explain to people that “lemmy.com” isn’t a thing is already too complicated for most folks.
The difference is if the primary (sometimes only) admin of your instance loses interest, goes to jail, or gets hit by a truck, your entire instance could be dead in the water
That’s why you should use an instance with at least two admins who communicate regularly on how they are doing
“established” social media like Reddit and Twitter.
Twitter has been purchased by Musk who is pushing misinformation over the whole platform. Being an established social media does not offer any guarantee.
what scenario are you imagining?
Literally that "looking for a Reddit alternative with better clients, no ads, no bots? Have a look at Lemm.ee "
Agreed on you with skipping the whole federation explanation, it’s unnecessary and complicated
