But fediverse isn’t ready to take over yet
But the fediverse isn’t ready. Not by a long shot. The growth that Mastodon has seen thanks to a Twitter exodus has only exposed how hard it is to join the platform, and more importantly how hard it is to find anyone and anything else once you’re there. Lemmy, the go-to decentralized Reddit alternative, has been around since 2019 but has some big gaps in its feature offering and its privacy policies — the platform is absolutely not ready for an influx of angry Redditors. Neither is Kbin, which doesn’t even have mobile apps and cautions new users that it is “very early beta” software. Flipboard and Mozilla and Tumblr are all working on interesting stuff in this space, but without much to show so far. The upcoming Threads app from Instagram should immediately be the biggest and most powerful thing in this space, but I’m not exactly confident in Meta’s long-term interest in building a better social platform.
I disagree strongly with this view. One of the truly valuable elements of reddit is/was the shared knowledge for a lot of things that are not techy. As a somewhat recent homeowner, the r/homeimprovement subreddit and the mildly related ones have been invaluable. It’s populated by random homeowners of all types and experts in various professional and DIY fields. These are not people who are likely to migrate to Lemmy in droves and that’s a loss, as far as I’m concerned. Maybe some will make it and smaller communities might grow to have similar knowledge wells, but they won’t be as deep.
I’m all-in on the transition away from the social media giants, but there’s a lot about the simplicity of a non-federated platform that won’t carryover which will make the barrier to entry higher than many people want to navigate, and that is definitely a shame.
That’s something I hadn’t considered!
At this point, I’m not looking for a replacement, but an improvement. I will miss the niche groups in Reddit and especially the fact that I could find a specialist in dryer repair, saving me the cost of replacement or read all about Miele vacuums from a seasoned vacuum tech. The benefit of the Fediverse is tied to it’s size. It keeps the ecosystem more manageable and as far as I have seen, more humane. The people are nicer and I’ve seen an improvement in life since moving here because of it. The size and the type of environment surely go hand in hand!
I feel that this is just another growing pain, that I can still get help with a dryer or finding a good vacuum or whatever, it will just look different going through that process here.
I think that in time, more users will come and create further specialization in the platform, but at a rate that will allow for proper moderation and innovation to overcome performance and management hurdles.
Congratulations on the new home, or maybe congratudolences. It’s been a whole new phase of my life and a wonderful, intermittently painful, learning experience.