Don’t get me wrong I’m a big fan but it seems like the fediverse could theoretically exist with like 5 users whereas a commercial company needs users for revenue. It feels like we are using the masters tools to try to destroy the masters house
A lot of community types just simply don’t work without a minimum critical mass of members.
Imagine asking a programming question on a software development community of just 5 people. You end up with 3 people who aren’t active enough to see the question, 1 person sees but doesn’t have an answer and doesn’t respond (classic lurker), and one person sees it and responds that they don’t know the answer. Now imagine a community of 5 thousand people…it’s suddenly much more feasible to even bother asking the question.
Sure, fediverse could exist with just 5 people, but it would be worthless and pointless.
yea the reason to want more users is for niche communities, I don’t need a billion people just for memes or news, but when you subdivide your users down to niche communities suddenly you’ll want more
I wish there were more people on Lemmy talking about Deus Ex, The 7th Guest, DOS games, Randomizers, or specific TV shows that I’m currently watching (Reddit always had a pretty active sub for each and every show)
One could make the argument that 5000 users is still not mass adoption. If that is enough activity, then mass adoption is not a requirement for the fediverse to be a nice social place to be.
5,000 users in a niche community would need hundreds of millions in the wider network.
This is how bulletin boards used to work. The most successful were focused on a niche and one with 5,000 users would be big enough to be of use to people interested in that niche. But when your niche is part of a much larger community covering all niches, that community needs to be vast to get 5,000 subscribing to any given niche.
I think the biggest deal about Fediverse is it gives users control instead of companies. Most of social networks are controlled by big tech companies, the fact Fediverse can’t be controlled by companies but users makes me feel commited to it. Fediverse could be as good as we want.
I think I understand your comment, so my question is why are so many people up in arms about Threads taking over or destroying the Fediverse?
If meta makes special features threads only and once they have a corner on the market start defederating, it could suck other already decently popular services dry (mastodon) since they either move to threads or lose any connections they had on threads. In the end, a cool decentralized thing becomes just another corpo social network.
Sorry I’m fairly new to all this, does defederating mean you break connections to the larger fediverse?
Like I make a server that has 5 people on it and then defederate the server, those 5 people now can’t communicate with the fediverse at large?
You don’t defederate your whole instance. You defederate from specific instances.
It’s basically like blocking a whole server, so if threads defederates from mas.to, users on either site can’t talk to eachother
Because Meta has the resources to make an instance that creeps into domination over all the other Fediverse instances, which would effectively make them the masters of it and brings us back to square one
It’s about the network effect. As it stands now, the network effect is built on the backs of many different nodes on the network all contributing together.
But as you’ve seen, the amount of people on the network is nothing compared to the total of all the Threads users (~30mil). Once they federate with the rest of the network they will provide a MASSIVE boost to it’s enharent value. As people from other instances connect with friends, brands and public figures and alert services on Threads they are slowly becoming dependent on that content.
The users on Threads are not going to be as privacy or technology curious. Almost all of them will be existing Instagram users. They’re not going to move to another instance, especially if they can’t keep using the threads app, which could have features the other instances don’t support.
Almost all social media platforms have this network effect because they were first and/or strategically built their network.
Facebook utilized Universities, requiring uni email address to register and they had features that made it easy to connect with your classmates. Once they hit a critical mass they opened it public.
Twitter piggy backed off of the 2007 SXSWi conference. Displaying pubic Twitter feeds from users at the event on large LCD TVs, they connected users with a similar occupation and intrist. Sending their tweets per day from 20,000 to 60,000.
Threads is building it’s network on the back of Instagram while also on the back of Twitters failings. They’re co-opting the bad vibes of Elon Musk to syphon users off the platform.
Ultimately, there will be a short term boon in the perceived “value” of the fediverse, and in reality, Threads and Meta will make up a large percentage of that value. Over time, people will have become accustomed to the content Threads provides and when Meta nolonger needs to be federated, people will leave with them.
It’s all about content and diversity. Without a huge number of users you won’t get all these niche communities that one loves Reddit for.
Where is the active plant doctor community? Where are the folks from different professions weighting in with their opinion?
The Fediverse could exist with 5 users. But it would be boring. It just now crossed a threshold where one could hope that if becomes something.
people who like content sorted by “top” or “hot” or upvotes or boosts and so on also need a large diverse number of people viewing and clicking to create a meanigful / representative ranking of content.
I agree, but only until a certain number.
Lemmy and kbin both have over 1 million users now, let’s assume half of them is bots, so we’re left with half a million people. I think even that number is high enough for us to generate interesting and diverse content. I mean, can you even imagine how large of a number half a million is? It takes 1 poster to jumpstart the magazine, 10 posters would already be more than adequate.
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Because, like it or not, what normies do on social media matters. I, for one, don’t want fuckwads like Zuckerberg, Musk and Spez to continue to be able to skew the conversation in the proverbial town square e.g. during the 2024 election.
Centralized, corporate-controlled social media is literally a threat to democracy.
I’m keen on having as many communities as possible. Having things silo’d into a few mega hubs is a recipe for disaster. Having a concentration of users all in 1 or 2 spaces where there’s no transparency from administrators / moderators is what we should have all learned from Reddit and their recent nonsense.
It seems like a common belief on here is “centrally located social networks erode democracy” 👍
The fediverse is the best chance any of us have of experience an internet free of tech oligopolies, that’s the biggest difference for me.
Of course mass adoption would make it more likely to have lively niche communities, but most importantly, I think it should be a right for people to exist on the internet without a massive corporation trying to turn them into a nutjob for monetary gain.Because more content, better tools, more platforms, and more development. Also if it’s mainstream, you can talk about decentralization in a normal conversation without sounding like a turbo nerd.
Interesting take. Yeah for some reason the word “federation” is scary even tho it’s popularized as fuck in pop culture 🤷♀️
Well, the destruction of Twitter AND Reddit, especially so close to each other, is leaving a hole in my heart.
The magic of the “fediverse” can be both a bandaid and a fix.
A shiny, new replacement (Mastodon and Lemmy) for me to fall back on for comfort, and a new paradigm of social interaction (Fediverse) that will hopefully offer long-term immunity from assholes that want to destroy everything.
The more people on the Fediverse, the better it can become for everyone.
Yeah, I never get all these comments saying “if Lemmy wants to get big” it needs to do X (probably some Reddit feature), and " if Lemmy wants to succeed" if needs to do Y (some niche thing most people dont need).
Like, it’s already successful doing exactly what it was intended for.
Possibly Lemmy is a lot of peoples first foray into FOSS software, and being the biggest and best, and profits go brrr isn’t the aim.
Capitalism is a hell of a drug when it’s all you’ve known.
Very this :-\ Seems like most people think the whole this is just distributed Reddit and make a bunch of assumptions mostly based around Reddit (or assumptions themselves sourced or derived from Reddit)
Also, this obsession like “number get big! Bigger number! BIG BIG NUMBER!!” is hella irritating and wrong. “More users” isn’t the answer to “how do we get active niche communities” and even some of the people acting like it is will admit that only a few users even contribute. Maybe we could hope for quality instead of just blindly chasing quantity. Maybe 80k active critters (just making up a goal and some numbers here, to illustrate) isn’t so much worse than 1M meme-bots and 100k active critters? Maybe this can be the place for people who are seriously interested in Community/Magazine topics and not just every bot or butthead who’s heard of, say, Arduinos or volleyball or woodcraft.
In other words, instead of hoping for incidental gains by filling up with random bellends, maybe getting the ones who matter over here will leave us with a leaner environment of no less utility. … You know, after it’s been more than a couple of weeks since the initial exodus, after there’s been time for any kind of community or at least thread history/catalog/collection to even develop.
I think there are people coming from Reddit that miss the mindless scrolling content that only hundreds of thousands of users can create.
I did this all the time on Reddit, hours and hours of lurking, looking at memes and reading bullshit stories. Just endless content.
I don’t have that here, and I like it. I do miss it, but I’m not desperate for Lemmy to drop in and replace it.
I think if this is what Lemmy is intended for it’s sad and will always a niche thing. I refuse to believe that this is what Lemmy is aiming for.
Yeah, the front page is working just fine, what’s not as good is going to a specific community for a subject you’re interested in which currently has 1-3 posts and zero replies.
What’s wrong with it being a niche thing. It’s been around for long enough being just that.
I’m not saying Lemmy can’t be more, just there’s nothing “wrong” with it as is. I jdon’t like people offering up the opinions I mentioned above.
I mean I guess it’s fine. It just doesn’t provide much value to me personally.
I’m not online so I can stare at websites, and any website will do. I want discussions, people and content. A platform with five users, as you say, has relatively little value to me unless they’re like my best friends.
I actually like the level of activity there is now. When I take a look there’s always new posts and usually something I want to reply to.
More would be fine. But yes 5 random people would get stale pretty quickly.
The amount of knowledge within the community and the representation of niche subcommunities grows with amount of users. So within huge communities you can be assured you have an expert for nicht topic x somewhere. And even your most outlandish interest is followed by at least a few others. That is what I joined larger social media for at least.
Greater probably of subject matter experts existing. 👍 Bonus points for a solid logical argument
I think it might be a bit of an xy problem. I myself have hoped for the runaway success of the fediverse. But I realized it’s not actually some absolute number of users I want. What I want is for the fediverse to have that same “there’s a community for anything” that reddit had.
I’m starting to hope the fediverse doesn’t get too big now, honestly. There’s a certain number of eyeballs that is going to attract people interested in exploiting those eyeballs, and I don’t know if the fediverse is robust enough to fight them off as the pot of gold they see begins to overflow. It’s hard balance to find. And maybe the decentralized aspect of the fediverse does mean that it can’t be fully assimilated by capital, I don’t know.
Were living in interesting times.
I don’t know if the fediverse is robust enough to fight them off as the pot of gold they see begins to overflow. It’s hard balance to find.
By now I think it’s not a balance which can be found. I think “migration to the next thing” is just part of the nature of online identity, if it’s important to you.
After some time the weaknesses of certain systems and platforms will start to show, especially if they start becoming “mainstream”. And then chances are good that pressure will mount, as a new platform will bring up which aims to adress at least some of the weaknesses of the previous platform. Rinse. Repeat.
All that is solid melts into air
This is kinda what I was getting at towards the end of your comment. More shitheads doesn’t necessarily mean better content
Because if this place really did have only 5 users, it would be boring and pointless.
@vera Honestly I was on reddit for the nerds (people) not the company and that’s why I’m here now. Fortunately(?) I remember the internet before big social media and very comfortable with forums and boards. Can’t say I’m able to speak for anyone else though.
I would definitely be down with a return to things like webrings. Everyone creates their own website and uploads content, and good creators invite eachother to their rings. I don’t know why we ever stopped doing that.
But is that not what the fediverse is at heart? Anyone can make their own instance?
Nah, it doesn’t seem quite like that. The closest thing I can think of would be something like Tumblr or closer still Geocities
There are many different visions for “success” of decentralized projects, some of which require/imply explosive growth and some do not. There are also some goals, such as diversity and inclusivity, which can have complicated relationships with the concept of “growth.”
I want all kinds of people (that are NOT BIGOTS) to be join the fediverse, participate safely and form their own communities[1].
To achieve this, it’s beneficial for it to be easy for folks to join the fediverse at all, e.g., being able to easily find an instance and sign up for an account and not worry about the infrastructure or instance politics, and critically to be able to easily find one another and interact. These are also features that just fuel userbase growth generally.
But to sustain it, it’s necessary to have strong moderation (which in turn requires a manageable workload for mods) and to keep large pools of bad actors in check. It’s also important on a safety basis for many users to be less discoverable because high discoverability of marginalized users results in high rates of harassment by bigots. These are features that support a better and safer experience for people who are in the fediverse.
These things are directly in tension, which makes it very difficult to have a healthy fediverse. The result on Mastodon has been a bifurcation of “successful” (by different definitions) instances into, on the one hand, very large but poorly moderated instances with garbage fire local timelines but lots of people and lots of content to interact with, and, on the other hand, smaller, well moderated instances that flourish internally but can be hard to join or to interact with if you’re on one of the large instances.
Both models exert exclusionary forces in their own ways. If you keep everyone in your federation, and that includes nazis, then you are de facto participating in driving people who are targeted by nazis off of the network. But if your happy little closed instances are impossible to join and has a constraining monoculture, then a lot of other nice folks may get left out.
There’s not an easy solution to this. The situation for lemmy will be similar in some ways and different in others. The piece that worries me particularly is that instance politics questions become potentially more charged due to the fact that instances are hosting the communities[2] and not just the users, plus there’s not yet a way to migrate communities.
Thanks for the thought out reply 🙏
