Fediverse

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A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to [email protected]!

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Posts must be on topic.
Be respectful of others.
Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
Follow the general Lemmy.world rules.

Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Hachyderm admin: if we were to cost of the people working on this instance, it costs $1.50/user/month, $8.50/active user/month. (hachyderm.io)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Isn’t that the point of federation?

No. Being able to move is an advantage compared to centralized platforms, but it is not the "point" of it. It makes the system overall more robust, but it doesn't guarantee or protect the individuals that are part of it.

Do you think that the world wide web would reach the size that it has today if websites had such a short shelf-life? Of course not. It would remain just a geeky curiosity, just like Lemmy or Mastodon. There is a reason why Bluesky is adding one million users per week while we are here counting the same dozen of active people since summer 2023. People generally do not care about how the system works, they just want to something that helps them achieve their goals or solves their problems.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

There is a reason why Bluesky is adding one million users per week while we are here counting the same dozen of active people since summer 2023.

I know you like hyperboles, but Bsky's growth slowed quite a bit:

The main reason it's much more successful than Mastodon is content discoverability

People generally do not care about how the system works, they just want to something that helps them achieve their goals or solves their problems.

Agreed. And the problem Reddit and Lemmy solve is becoming a niche issue

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Bsky’s growth slowed quite a bit

What a silly remark. Yeah, of course (percentage-wise) they slowed down. Do you think that would see 190% growth every month?

The main reason it’s much more successful than Mastodon is content discoverability

You are talking about the symptoms, but you are ignoring the diagnostic. The reason that Bluesky has a superior product at the moment is because they HAVE MONEY. They can go and hire people, they can invest in infrastructure, they can spend on marketing, they can go cut out deals with other service providers.

Meanwhile, the Mastodon devs are all sharing the belief that they are saints who are working "for the community". Sorry, it's not enough. We are not going to amount to much if our ambitions are that low.

And the problem Reddit and Lemmy solve is becoming a niche issue

It doesn't matter the format. This is not (specifically) about Reddit, or Twitter, or Instagram or TikTok.

This is a discussion about a model that can keep sustainable development and operations of an open web. ActivityPub as whole allows us to think in much broader terms than "replacing Reddit" or "replacing Youtube. The format of "popular social media" may change, but the fact that people will always have an interest in consuming, creating and sharing content will always be there.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 58 minutes ago

What a silly remark. Yeah, of course (percentage-wise) they slowed down. Do you think that would see 190% growth every month?

You were saying "one million every week". They hit 25 million users on 13 December. We are 4 weeks later, they still haven't reached 27 millions. Not sure why using the actual numbers is considered silly.

You are talking about the symptoms, but you are ignoring the diagnostic. The reason that Bluesky has a superior product at the moment is because they HAVE MONEY. They can go and hire people, they can invest in infrastructure, they can spend on marketing, they can go cut out deals with other service providers.

Bsky having money gives them an advantage, nobody is denying that. But Mastodon had a huge opportunity the first time Musk messed up with Twitter. They were never able to create an easy enough to use solution for people to jump over, especially when microblogging relies on "high profile" posters. If Mastodon had managed to solve the discoverability issue, and convince people that it's as easy to use as Twitter, the outcome could have been different. We'll never know.

The format of “popular social media” may change, but the fact that people will always have an interest in consuming, creating and sharing content will always be there.

Okay, let's go that route. As I said above, short video/"stories" format is king with people below 29 years old, be it Snapchat, Tiktok or BeReal https://www.statista.com/statistics/1337525/us-distribution-leading-social-media-platforms-by-age-group/

How do you plan to host video content at scale in a federated way? And if your answer is "make every teenager pay 5€ per month to get access to the network", you'll never get adoption.

At the end, that's an unfair competition. We are competing with actors who can sell data and ads to make money. Most users don't care. Those platforms make money, get more users thanks to the network effect.

I don't really see how to solve this issue.