Centralized social media is where their friends are.
Because most people haven’t gone far enough to even understand this question. The choices come prepackaged, that’s what in front of their eyes, so they assume that’s how it suppose to be, and take the easy ride
Because of network effects.
Building a social network is hard. A typical chicken or egg problem. If you don’t have a user base, nobody is willing to join, and if nobody joins, you don’t have a user base.
It usually requires a bunch of money to build a social network.
The fediverse has a long time to go but I believe it will win sooner or later.
I’d also chalk it up to convenience.
The Fediverse requires effort.
That too.
The Fediverse is a confusing concept. I’m a giant nerd and even I don’t really understand how this is supposed to work. Centralized platforms provide a more straightforward user experience. And as others have said, that’s where the content is right now.
It’s no more confusing than using email, and everybody managed to figure that out. You don’t need to know how the nitty gritty of it works. The network effects is a far bigger issue, as you point out, centralized platforms simply have far more content on them.
It’s far more complicated than email, at least I can send an email to any valid address from any other address by default ( mostly ) - Lemmy / Fediverse is like needing multiple email addresses that each one can only email some of the others, and you might not even get the response someone sent you unless the content is literally carried back to you.
I have multiple accounts on multiple instances, and sometimes I come across posts I read with one account, but my comments or the responses to those comments just aren’t there, so you only get a portion of what is out there.
It’s kinda a terrible experience in that way.
The whole point of ActivityPub is that you don’t need multiple accounts on different servers. You can use your Lemmy account to talk to people on Mastodon, browse PixelFed, watch PeerTube. Yes, there is sometimes lag in content propagating, and so on, but it’s clearly not a show stopper. My experience using Lemmy and Mastodon is the opposite of terrible.
Because I have no clue what the Fediverse is.
Yeah and I wasn’t sure what it mean on account creation to commit to a server fully. I ended up getting a lot of supportive comments when I did ask.
There are going to be layers to this.
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There are lots of people who are just downright too stupid. They wouldn’t be on the internet at all if Tim Apple didn’t put it in a baby baba for them to suck it out of. They use Facebook because their iPhone came with the Facebook app pre-installed.
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There are lots of people for whom popularity is the only thing that exists. Their brain cannot function beyond “Everyone uses Twitter.” They’ll adopt this platform only after everyone else in the world does.
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There are lots of people who have bought the propaganda. The dark web is for drug traffickers and hitmen, torrenting is for pirates, end-to-end encryption is for traitors, and Mastodon is for Linux neckbeards. You shouldn’t associate with those people.
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There’s this weird trend where the commercial platforms are becoming hives for conservatives, so they’re probably going to stay put in their echo chambers. I have observed little to no presence of actual conservatives on this platform; beyond the horseshoe effect with the tankie crowd.
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The culture of content consumption is not supported by the Fediverse. We don’t do algorithmic slop troughs here, and the amount of content on Peertube and Loops rounds down to zero, so it doesn’t fulfill the role of mesmerizing colors and sounds for staring at and drooling like Tiktok does or linear television did.
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Open source software is usually a bit shit. Be it lack of budget, opinionated developers, redundant projects…we can never have one of something. Why does Lemmy, Mbin and Piefed exist simultaneously? We always end up with software that mostly works, has a lot less graphical polish, a shitty project name, a few missing key features and a couple workarounds you just have to know about. Or an intentionally godawful UI. That’ll put people off.
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A few people who show up are going to be put off by the weirdest decision they’ll be asked to make this month: “Choose an instance, your choice doesn’t matter, just pick one.” If it doesn’t matter, why make me pick? I bet if you watched 100 people try to sign up for a Fediverse platform, at least 30 of them will balk at that stage. I’ve sat and stared at that for awhile myself and I’m one of the ones who made it through.
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They just haven’t heard of us. Ask ten people you know in real life if they’ve heard of Lemmy, or Mastodon, or Pixelfed. I bet they haven’t, or if they have they let it pass in one ear and out the other out of apathy.
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A few people have looked at the Fediverse, didn’t see what they wanted here, and left. If you play Satisfactory, for example, you’ll find an active subreddit where the majority of the player base and the developers of the game interact, on Lemmy you’ll find one community where exactly one person posts “daily screenshots until I get bored.” It’s easy to wander off, especially if you don’t like left wing politics, Linux and the Fediverse itself.
“Choose an instance, your choice doesn’t matter, just pick one.” If it doesn’t matter, why make me pick?
Email requires you to pick a provider, but it doesn’t matter.
I think when people falk about #7, it needs to be revised to “your choice of instance doesn’t matter when you’re a noob. By the time it does matter, you’ll understand what you want from an instance and can simply make another account”
Agree on all other points though. I hope Lemmy keeps growing and getting more active. A lot of the communities I’ve joined only have a few posts in the past year.
As always, there’s multiple reasons for things. You did a great job breaking down as much as possible :) the other comments are all right, but you are comprehensive :)
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Because they want to feel involved. They want to be with the in-crowd. If they come to the Fediverse, then they’ll think it’s weird and might scare them because it’s a new concept they can’t grasp. When really, I see the Fediverse as just a social media reset. But because it doesn’t have all of the enshittification that centralized social media has, they don’t dare bother.
Evolution of human behaviour is slow. Right now we are all enmeshed in the dawning discovery that the current way we run society is falling apart at the seams. Just enter the core of almost any city in North America and you’ll see what I mean (and not just N. America). It’ll take a while to set itself right, or it may all just burn in a raging nuclear fire launched by a pissed off oligarch who does not get his way.
Definitely not forward progress towards a better day.
I asked someone on bluesky i follow what is mastodon lacking that they ultimately chose bluesky, and they said something along the lines “basic ease of use. The way it works is probably perfectly sensible to fediverse people, but I had an awful time there”
They do indeed have (abandoned) mastodon account with posts, so they did try. I don’t know what they meant by it lacking basic ease of use, and I didn’t feel entitled to ask stranger for more explanation. But it wasn’t picking instance, since they already had an account on one of them.
The only thing I personally noticed is off is following people on other instances if you’re not looking at them via your instance website Identity not being perfectly transferrable on mastodon. You can post a special “follow me there instead” post, but what if your instance went tyrant and wouldn’t let you post it? Or just went offline? I think cryptographic identity would be more robust for that, but it would also mean user having to store private key somewhere, which would be even less user-friendly
- Ease of use
The combination of having to choose an instance and then start with an algorithm free blank slate is a tough ask. It literally takes time to sit down and setup your initial “feed”, which is probably a good thing, but not at all what attracts users whimsical curiosities nor what they’ve experienced over their entire existence with social media.
I like to follow a couple reporters directly as opposed to subscribing to the local paper and wading through the fluff pieces, so that means using Bluesky.
Back when I was still an artist for my super niche internet garbage, that meant using Tumblr, then after the Tumblr purge, Twitter. Then after Musk, cohost, then after cohost… I mean, I was done with art but I’d probably be on Bluesky for that too.
I don’t think the average user thinks much about the platform they’re on, and about who controls it. I think they go to wherever most of their family/friends are.
Also, those platforms are firmly in the mainstream, the alternatives aren’t really - you’d have to actively go search for them. People just aren’t likely to do that, I don’t think.
Most people are like sheep and just follow the herd.
All but you always get those people that swear they’re different.
network effects
This. And some people just want to post in front of a crowd. So far I like Lemmy because there’s more conversation going on. And less “Look at me!” posts.
In my IT program at school, the only people who have heard of the fediverse are the ones I’ve told.
Because all their contacts and photos are already there.
