4 ms·

I really don't see centralized social networks bring competitive with the fediverse for much longer. After all, how do you convince millions of people to use yo

I really don't see centralized social networks bring competitive with the fediverse for much longer. After all, how do you convince millions of people to use your service and pay for it while you spy on them, sell every scrap of data you can, and even then still show them invasive ads? Meanwhile mastodon is free as in freedom. If you want to, you can buy your admin a beer. People seem to like this arrangement quite a lot. You, an individual, are giving money directly to another individual for services they're providing to you with zero obligations. It feels more like buying your plumber friend a case of beer for fixing your sink and less like throwing money into a corporate void for no discernible benefit as the price slowly and invariably creeps upward. The really cool part though is that centralized social media has to compete with the fediverse, but the fediverse does not need to compete. It's not interested in competing. It will simply continue to exist for as long as there are users. No one cares what percentage of the global population uses it, or about infinite geometric growth forever. It's just people talking to other people. It's not an experience that you get on traditional social media anymore.

huimang 3y ago
The public at large doesn't care about any of that at all. I don't think mastodon will ever grow that large due to how painful the signup process is. And that's fine! But we have to acknowledge that only a very small portion of people care about things like privacy to the point of uprooting their social media where their friends are. AT Proto is more interesting than ActivityPub anyway, but I think BlueSky will eventually succeed because the signup is painless. You just sign up on bluesky, there's no need of discussion on which instance, etc. There's no worry about losing everything if the particular instance you're on goes down, or having to deal with migrations.
- gargron 3y ago
  What in your opinion are the pain points in the current sign up process?
  - calamari4065 3y ago
    Mastodon.social. These enormous monolithic servers offer the worst experience and degrade the whole network. And now joinmastodon.org points you at mastodon.social first, then a list of the largest servers. In other words, centralizing.
  - huimang 3y ago
    That there is any discussion on "what" instance to join. I understand this is the whole point of being a decentralized system, but your average person doesn't care about that for social media. Maybe I'm wrong and mastodon.social is perceived in that way similarly to how bsky.app is for Bluesky. I haven't followed mastodon in some time but the account migration thing was a pain as well, which I feel that the AT Protocol addresses much better.

huimang 3y ago

The public at large doesn't care about any of that at all. I don't think mastodon will ever grow that large due to how painful the signup process is. And that's fine! But we have to acknowledge that only a very small portion of people care about things like privacy to the point of uprooting their social media where their friends are. AT Proto is more interesting than ActivityPub anyway, but I think BlueSky will eventually succeed because the signup is painless. You just sign up on bluesky, there's no need of discussion on which instance, etc. There's no worry about losing everything if the particular instance you're on goes down, or having to deal with migrations.

gargron 3y ago
What in your opinion are the pain points in the current sign up process?
- calamari4065 3y ago
  Mastodon.social. These enormous monolithic servers offer the worst experience and degrade the whole network. And now joinmastodon.org points you at mastodon.social first, then a list of the largest servers. In other words, centralizing.
- huimang 3y ago
  That there is any discussion on "what" instance to join. I understand this is the whole point of being a decentralized system, but your average person doesn't care about that for social media. Maybe I'm wrong and mastodon.social is perceived in that way similarly to how bsky.app is for Bluesky. I haven't followed mastodon in some time but the account migration thing was a pain as well, which I feel that the AT Protocol addresses much better.