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 @noodlejetski@lemm.ee 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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Since most people are talking about the sign-up barriers, I’ll mention culture and reputation.
I love Lemmy and Mastodon, but whenever I’ve seen the fediverse brought up elsewhere, someone inevitably shuts down any curiosity by suggesting that it’s a political echo-chamber. I don’t think that’s accurate for all of it, but if that reputation is out there, we probably need to make an effort to show that there’s a broader appeal. If the average person is expecting the fediverse to be the left-wing equivalent of something like “Truth Social”, I could understand the reluctance to adopt it.
Nowadays, I point to show that it’s more than just politics, news and tech
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned porn yet. Like it or not, it does drive growth.
Yeah, porn is the only reason I still visit Reddit from time to every day.
there is lemmynsfw
I’m very well aware. I frequent that server.
cool
Don’t.
I like what this is, I don’t want it to become everything for everyone
Agreed. Look what Reddit turned into. Better to have fewer but higher quality comments than a sea of the same tired jokes and ancedotes over an over again.
Make it look like a centralised system initially. Provide a portal to a pre vetted/chosen instance that is accepting new members in their locale/country, that is the same for everyone.
Update: This (above) is badly written. I’m trying to say every potential new member gets presented with the same (pretend centralised) portal that is in fact an (valid long-lived) instance local to the individual potential for them to sign up with. So two local users in Oz get given a proxy to the instance local to them, and a user in Blighty an instance local to that person. The decentralised Lemmy looks centralised, but isn’t. The proxy front end should explain that they’re joining their local instance and it’s like a network of little affiliated clubs that can see each others posts globally. they log in for the first time it will become clear.
It’s late, I’m tired, sorry everyone. Is that any better?
I think it’s confusing (the reverse of what they’re used to) for a newbie who have been bought up in a centralised internet with single front ends of all the big players to be presented with little instances to join to access the whole.
How hard would it be to create a little quiz that directs or chooses an instance based on your interests?
I think the hard part would be keeping it up to date as instances change
True. I forgot how easily an instance could disappear overnight. Happened to me in another instance
We don’t. Normies made Reddit suck and they’ll make Lemmy suck too. Always have at least a small barrier to tech entry. When anyone can use it then everyone will use it. So do you want Facebook? Because that’s how you end up with fucking Facebook.
The reason I personally don’t recommend or hardly even mention Lemmy to anyone else is because here’s hardly any content they’d be interested in. The vast majority of posts are quite esoteric and directed at the kind of people who already are here.
Did you have a look at !newcommunities@lemmy.world ? There are threads with different topics with active communities.
Discoverability of smaller communities is definitely an issue we are trying to solve with this.
Porn?
What made reddit so popular in my opinion was that every sub wasn’t filled with agenda driven narratives you could find interests or memes random people with deep insights to whatever the topic was.
In Lemmy it seems every sub is skewed with left wing or DTS filled insane ppl and to find just normal shit is the rarity
Much like when there is an exodus on other platforms to host only right leaning viewpoints a “normal” person viewing it will see the same thing Lemmy has become and just go back to what they were using before
The problem is not the platform its the people. Chill tf out with all that propaganda horseshit and u might get regular ppl to use your product.
Maybe the “age of the free internet” has passed and people just expect bad faith and react completely radicalized today.
Fedi client app developers need to design fedi client apps in a holistic way to include a custom server (as with Mammoth’s moth.social) or create an account for the user on one of a curated selection of other servers, without forcing the user to choose one.
It’s a severe problem with trying to grow fedi that general users are expected to understand how servers work and make an informed decision about which one to join. General users don’t care about this topic and will quickly turn away when it is forced upon them. That’s why the client app needs to handle this for the user without making a fuss about it.
These apps also need good discovery features and feeds with posts that are trending generally and for specific topics. Then devs need to make money with those apps somehow, then they need to market those apps (at this point, it goes beyond just “devs” and expands into an organization with a marketing department, etc.).
Then, hopefully fedi’s inherent advantages of interoperability and resilience will naturally cause people to choose these user-friendly, effectively marketed fedi client apps over things like Instagram, Tiktok, etc. After all, if it can’t compete on its own merits with all other factors being equal, there’s no point to it for most people.
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 User@Lemmy.com. 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 user@lemmy.com it now shows user@lemmy.world. and if in 2 years you move again now it says user@lemm.ee even for posts you made 2 years prior. It always lists your current account. Even if you move to Mbin. Now it says user@fedia.io
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 Nintendo@Lemmy.World 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 user@lemmy.world 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 retrogames@lemmy.world either. They don’t want to be in linux@lemmy.ml 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 user@lemmy.world, 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.
Why do we want to? They’ll just lower the overall quality and bring on the enshitification.
the pursuit for money brings enshittification, not more users.
You’re so close to getting it… who do you suppose will be pursued for the money? If you have more of the ‘who’, that will encourage faster/greater enshitification as a natural part of the pursuit.
With all due respect, fuck the normies. The fediverse is better off without them.
I think picking an instance is just something people will have to learn and get used to as that’s very essential to the fediverse experience.
I personally hate algorithms picking shit for me and that’s why I use lemmy and why I used reddit back when it first came out. I search out and pick what content I see on my feed.
I definitely agree with more marketing. It’s insane to think there’s a lot of people that still use reddit and never even heard of lemmy
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.
Weird.
It’s way harder to find posts on mastodon compared to bluesky as you have to follow people to start getting a feed, whilst in bluesky they have a discovery feed. This makes it a way more streamlined experience for users, making bluesky and threads far more attractive to users than mastodon
