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.
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.