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I know this has been absolutely beaten to death and I'm sure dozens if not hundreds of people have already said it better than me. But nevertheless I persist.

I know this has been absolutely beaten to death and I'm sure dozens if not hundreds of people have already said it better than me. But nevertheless I persist. Setting aside the question of whether Mastodon adoption has actually stalled, I submit that federated social media will not grow to replace centralized platforms (Reddit, Twitter, Facebook) because that would require "normies" to adopt them, and normies: - Do not care enough about 'freedom' to leave Twitter and Reddit - Do not understand what 'federation' is, and/or don't care if it's technically 'better'. Normies will leave Twitter and Reddit when everyone else does, and they'll only leave to go where everyone else went. To me, federation is a nothing-burger, a solution in search of a problem just like blockchain. I do understand how it works. I use Mastodon and Lemmy. I can't find any benefits that don't come with tradeoffs. And the "email is federated" comparison holds no water -- it's a completely different use case. I believe the long-term usage of these technologies, eventually, is either zero OR an eventual community decision to pool resources and merge all instances into a single isolated Mastodon or Lemmy instance as a responsible commercial entity or nonprofit that aims to not make the same mistakes as Twitter or Reddit.

Sakos 3y ago
I've been trying lemmy just to be sure I wasn't being unfair towards the project. I completely agree with everything you just wrote. The usability is downright awful and I don't see how normies are supposed to use this. And it's not like it's impossible. There are such obvious pain points that could be addressed that would immediately make it significantly more viable, yet it's the usual OSS/Linux story that it's "good enough" or the usual attitude of "don't complain, we're doing this for free" or "then do it yourself". What's good enough for people who know what federation is and are motivated by that to use lemmy isn't good enough for your average guy or girl who just wants random shit to read or watch when they're bored.
- GravitasFailure 3y ago
  The friction seems to be a selling point for a significant number of users that want to keep Joe and Jane Average out. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out, but it seems unlikely that any ActivityPub-based system will ever a 1:1 replacement for Reddit or Twitter or see nearly the scale of use that those platforms currently enjoy.
  - unshavedyak 3y ago
    Fair. I’m loving Mastodon and etc, and frankly a big selling point is that it’s not the Reddit or Twitter audience. If they joined my next desire would be looking for smaller instances or communities to filter out the vibe of Reddit. That’s also a big reason why I come to HN. It isn’t Reddit. Though that’s getting worse as it grows, of course
illiac786 3y ago
I think your position is based on the assumption that choosing an instance will remain friction-full. One could imagine a client picking an instance at random, completely transparent to the end user. Probably not simple but it's possible. (technically it's simple enough, I'm talking about the non-technical challenges)
- Sakos 3y ago
  Well, yes, because that's what all these alternatives are like now. I also haven't seen any motivation to become more accessible to users in general. If somebody writes a client that's perfect in accessibility, but users never find out about it, then the problem remains. It requires a larger buy-in from the devs and communities involved, but good luck getting that going.
  - unshavedyak 3y ago
    Man, I personally love the fediverse and I think it’s hugely successful. My benchmark isn’t Reddit though, Reddit is a failing to me. It’s the forums of the late 90s and 2000s. To me it’s the solution to the problem of starting communities. Or it’s difficult to start a forum these days because it’s not Reddit. You have to get buy-in from tons of people. Huge friction. Reddit and Twitter style but-in to new tags or new subreddits is basically zero friction. The fediverse solves that problem to me. You can create a forum that isn’t on Reddit now while having a non-zero chance at people joining, people that are in the fediverse that is. That’s huge to me because it felt to me like the internet was dying due to centralization. It was Reddit or nothing. It’s already successful in my view. Obviously it has a long way to go on UX, but it’s got so much potential.
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  The concept of instances is already too much friction, and will surface beyond the initial "choosing an instance" issue. What happens when your chosen instance shuts down because of lack of funding, or gets pwned because of an admin careless with security, or the admin is a malicious actor and starts messing around, or there is some (whether justified or not) inter-instance drama and as a result yours is getting cut off from the rest of the network? Instances shouldn't be a thing. They are not a thing in conventional social media platforms the fediverse is trying to displace, and those conventional social media platforms displaced the earlier iteration of the fediverse aka forums and websites because most people don't want the extra friction and overhead of maintaining a server and having mostly-isolated communities. Non-ActivityPub implementations such as Nostr actually have a better chance at displacing conventional social media because "instances" aren't a thing; the network isn't balkanized and clients are in charge (so inter-instance drama isn't a thing) of fetching content and choosing which content to display, with relays acting in the background and mostly being replaceable (cryptography ensures relays can't actually tamper with any content).
user_named 3y ago
The issue with federation in this case is that it is exposed to the user. It shouldn't be.

Sakos 3y ago

I've been trying lemmy just to be sure I wasn't being unfair towards the project. I completely agree with everything you just wrote. The usability is downright awful and I don't see how normies are supposed to use this. And it's not like it's impossible. There are such obvious pain points that could be addressed that would immediately make it significantly more viable, yet it's the usual OSS/Linux story that it's "good enough" or the usual attitude of "don't complain, we're doing this for free" or "then do it yourself". What's good enough for people who know what federation is and are motivated by that to use lemmy isn't good enough for your average guy or girl who just wants random shit to read or watch when they're bored.

GravitasFailure 3y ago
The friction seems to be a selling point for a significant number of users that want to keep Joe and Jane Average out. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out, but it seems unlikely that any ActivityPub-based system will ever a 1:1 replacement for Reddit or Twitter or see nearly the scale of use that those platforms currently enjoy.
- unshavedyak 3y ago
  Fair. I’m loving Mastodon and etc, and frankly a big selling point is that it’s not the Reddit or Twitter audience. If they joined my next desire would be looking for smaller instances or communities to filter out the vibe of Reddit. That’s also a big reason why I come to HN. It isn’t Reddit. Though that’s getting worse as it grows, of course

illiac786 3y ago

I think your position is based on the assumption that choosing an instance will remain friction-full. One could imagine a client picking an instance at random, completely transparent to the end user. Probably not simple but it's possible. (technically it's simple enough, I'm talking about the non-technical challenges)

Sakos 3y ago
Well, yes, because that's what all these alternatives are like now. I also haven't seen any motivation to become more accessible to users in general. If somebody writes a client that's perfect in accessibility, but users never find out about it, then the problem remains. It requires a larger buy-in from the devs and communities involved, but good luck getting that going.
- unshavedyak 3y ago
  Man, I personally love the fediverse and I think it’s hugely successful. My benchmark isn’t Reddit though, Reddit is a failing to me. It’s the forums of the late 90s and 2000s. To me it’s the solution to the problem of starting communities. Or it’s difficult to start a forum these days because it’s not Reddit. You have to get buy-in from tons of people. Huge friction. Reddit and Twitter style but-in to new tags or new subreddits is basically zero friction. The fediverse solves that problem to me. You can create a forum that isn’t on Reddit now while having a non-zero chance at people joining, people that are in the fediverse that is. That’s huge to me because it felt to me like the internet was dying due to centralization. It was Reddit or nothing. It’s already successful in my view. Obviously it has a long way to go on UX, but it’s got so much potential.
Nextgrid 3y ago
The concept of instances is already too much friction, and will surface beyond the initial "choosing an instance" issue. What happens when your chosen instance shuts down because of lack of funding, or gets pwned because of an admin careless with security, or the admin is a malicious actor and starts messing around, or there is some (whether justified or not) inter-instance drama and as a result yours is getting cut off from the rest of the network? Instances shouldn't be a thing. They are not a thing in conventional social media platforms the fediverse is trying to displace, and those conventional social media platforms displaced the earlier iteration of the fediverse aka forums and websites because most people don't want the extra friction and overhead of maintaining a server and having mostly-isolated communities. Non-ActivityPub implementations such as Nostr actually have a better chance at displacing conventional social media because "instances" aren't a thing; the network isn't balkanized and clients are in charge (so inter-instance drama isn't a thing) of fetching content and choosing which content to display, with relays acting in the background and mostly being replaceable (cryptography ensures relays can't actually tamper with any content).

user_named 3y ago

The issue with federation in this case is that it is exposed to the user. It shouldn't be.