So last decade was filled with corporate social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, etc. And I mean it still is but perhaps if we play our cards right we can make 2020 the age of decentralized social media? Maybe we won’t end up being the top 5 pages on the internet but we just have to grab a good portion of people to compete more directly with the big corpos. Descripción
I’d like to think so, but I do wonder whether that’s mostly due to me being in my 40s and fondly remembering the internet before it was all owned by four companies. Is it nostalgia, or were things genuinely more agreeable back when it was all forums as far as the eye could see; forums that were owned and run by random people with no real financial skin in the game.
At my peak I had five forums that I regularly posted on: all of them are long gone now. But what’s Lemmy if not just a bunch of different forums?
Honestly it seems like social media as we know it is kind of dying. Fewer and fewer young people are using Facebook and Twitter. I think it’s going devolve back onto more forum based ala Lemmy, tildes, squabbles, reddit, etc where people can joing the communities they enjoy, and also through discord, WhatsApp, etc for chatting with people in those interests.
I mean imo I think that the internet is at its best when everyone keeps to themselves and only addresses problems pressing within their own community. At times there will be cause for large awareness or topics that span across communities, but too much of the toxicity on Twitter is people having opinions about communities that they aren’t even apart of.
I’d like to think so, and I hope I’m wrong here, but probably not.
The decentralized communities are definitely going to grow over the coming weeks to years, and that’s awesome and very welcome, but I don’t think they’ll ever reach enough critical mass to supplant the big players.
For example, a lot of people I know are fully aware Facebook sucks, but it’s also the only way they are able to keep in touch with certain groups of people (family, old school friends, etc). There would need to be some coordinated effort on all of their contacts’ parts to move somewhere else, and a lot of them fear losing touch with those that can’t/won’t make the switch. That’s also not factoring in the learning curve to leave a familiar platform. I’m thinking specifically of grandparents who are on FB, but it doesn’t apply just to those.
I do think there will be a steady influx of users from the big players and the content quantity/quality on Lemmy et al will definitely improve, but I feel the decentralized platforms will always remain secondary to their “big tech” counterparts.
There’s also currently too many steps for users beyond “install app, turn off brain, and start scrolling”. As sad as it is, that’s all many people want: an app that lets them mindlessly scroll.
And, IMO, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I feel like Reddit has experienced a lot of “brain drain” the last month and more quality content is appearing on Lemmy rather than Reddit. It’s been absolutely refreshing not seeing screenshots and reposts from other social media in my feed, and I think the barriers to entry for decentralized social media are contributing to that.
There’s also currently too many steps for users beyond “install app, turn off brain, and start scrolling”. As sad as it is, that’s all many people want: an app that lets them mindlessly scroll.
I agree with your overall post, but I think this part is an especially major limiting factor–the selling points of a decentralized system are also disadvantages for mass appeal for a lot of general users. Most people just want something they can open and have everything already set to go and with everything in one place. And honestly I see the appeal of that. It comes with its own disadvantages, but sheer ease of use is hard to beat, and decentralized systems that have a higher barrier of entry to access content have a leg behind on competing with an immediate one stop shop. I think the overall competition is going to be in quality of community rather than population capture. I don’t see decentralized systems outcompeting in the latter category.
Insightful. I believe that some of these issues are resolvable with better onboarding, but not all of them.
What I really wonder about is how people will interpret the damage, degradation, and collapses of important web communities. Some of this will really come down to the stories we tell ourselves about what happened, and how we respond to that story to prevent it from happening again.
i agree with all of this. but, i’d also like to point out that i think i’m okay with sites like lemmy not having millions of users. even if there’s maybe less content than i’d like sometimes, and there’s not quite enough users for very niche communities to appear, i like how the quality of content here seems to be better than other major apps, and everyone is just… nicer. i feel like, if lemmy were to grow too big, some of these qualities would be lost, when they’re what makes it more enjoyable than reddit in some ways.
Gosh, I sure hope so.
I think what you said though —
Maybe we won’t end up being the top 5 pages on the internet but we just have to grab a good portion of people to compete more directly with the big corpos.
— is actually pretty achievable and honestly my current best-case-scenario. I don’t know how realistic or sustainable it’d be for federated, decentralized social media to act as a full replacement for corporate, centralized social media. It would be great if federated social media could represent a larger part of the social media space than it does now, and thus be considered a viable alternative by the public.
My preferred direction for federated social media would be for it to continue taking creative approaches to social media and highlighting ActivityPub’s potential utility and interoperability. I’d also like to see more federated software which doesn’t seek to replicate existing services but rather tries to produce novel experiences. Rather than giving us Reddit -> Lemmy or Twitter -> Mastodon/Calckey/etc., coming up with more unique types of content to serve, or more unique ways to serve that content.
It could very well be!
But truthfully, I don’t think… Most of those decentralized platforms seems a bit young and imatures. Imature software makes it meh to use, but I think, since the communities are figuring out their power, and what they can do, from the outside it looks like a full on war against each other…
I think the beauty of it (independent instance that can federate[or not]) will also be the reason why “normal” people won’t join.
I would say it’s chances are about the same as it being the ‘Year of the Linux Desktop’
To be fair with the steam deck and proton we are “almost” there.
Proton has made gaming easier on Linux, but it’s still reliant on productivity and specialised software being made for it. Some software - ArcGIS comes to mind - simply Does Not Work on Linux, and the FOSS alternatives don’t work for everyone,
I don’t think we should try to compete with the big corporations. The Fediverse is best as an aggregate of different communities, not a massive platform. We are currently having lots of growth as the result of Big Tech’s failures. People are seeking community elsewhere, and some are finding it here. But the important thing was never if they joined the Fediverse, it is if they find community.
What really matters is something we cannot do here on this platform, it is making the physical world one that can support the communities that people had before social media. This is how we will break the hold of corporate social media. That’s a lot harder though, and while vitally important (its necessary for solving most of our collective problems) it is not something we can realistically achieve on BeeHaw. We can improve the Fediverse though, I’ve been loving the conversations here and elsewhere on this topic! But we do not need to beat the tech companies at their game, and trying to may not lead us down a good path in the long run.
Its possible. Big social appears to be running their users away rapidly with bad decision after bad decision.
I would love that.
Probably not. Most people still use centralized services and have no idea of the fediverse.