This is a follow-up from my previous thread.
The thread discussed the question of why people tend to choose proprietary microblogging platfroms (i.e. Bluesky or Threads) over the free and open source microblogging platform, Mastodon.
The reasons, summarised by @noodlejetski@lemm.ee are:
- marketing
- not having to pick the instance when registering
- people who have experienced Mastodon’s hermetic culture discouraging others from joining
- algorithms helping discover people and content to follow
- marketing
and I’m saying that as a firm Mastodon user and believer.
Now that we know why people move to proprietary microblogging platforms, we can also produce methods to counter this.
How do we get “normies” to adopt the Fediverse?
I said since I got here that the actual sign up process IS the hardest part. For exactly the reasons you said.
Each instance has it’s own personality. As much as EVERY user here will hate to hear this, you need to centralize the decentralized. Have a single point of entry. Signup at Lemmy.com
Now you’re User@Lemmy.com. and you’re told that you have 6 months to pick an instance. And here’s a guide to all known instances, with a wiki style explaination of what each instance’s personality is. With an expandable list of each federated and defederated instance.
Now once they switch to their new “home” all their comments stay in their comment history. Everything in their profile comes with them. EVERY instance in the fediverse needs to adhere to a set of protocols. So that when they move instances, the only thing that changes is if you look at a post they made last week, it no longer shows user@lemmy.com it now shows user@lemmy.world. and if in 2 years you move again now it says user@lemm.ee even for posts you made 2 years prior. It always lists your current account. Even if you move to Mbin. Now it says user@fedia.io
It’s a learn, and grow as you go situation.
Oh, and if an instance ever shuts down, those profiles aren’t lost. They revert back to Lemmy.com, and the 6 month rule is back in effect.
But you have to anticipate the user. Not control the user. And right now the user understands centralized. So centralize the decentralized, and THEN teach them slowly how it works. I understand today leaps and bounds more than I did 4 months ago. I’m still not sure Lemmy.World is my final home. I’m trying out piefed. I’m probably going to try out Mbin. And I’m sure I’ll discover new things. But on day 1, I was like “…do what now? What’s an instance? What’s decentralized?”
And NOW I can see that the Nintendo account I follow on Mastodon for the past year isn’t really Nintendo. It’s Nintendo@Lemmy.World and EVERY post gets auto “boosted”. A year ago I thought that was literally Nintendo. I was surprised they were not only OBSESSIVELY active, but that they had a Mastodon account at all.
You gotta remember, this is how most people will walk into the fediverse on day 1. Not knowing how shit works, and if it doesn’t work for them, they’re out. You can teach them later. But also right now the fediverse as a whole is fragmented as shit. There’s decentralized, and then theres disjointed.
You’ll notice that I post regularly to THIS community. With constant questions. I’M taking the active approach to learning. The average user won’t know that they’re stupid. They’ll think the fediverse is stupid because it doesn’t work the way they’re used to. Most people don’t have the self reflection I have, nor the constant curiousity. If I don’t know a thing, it bothers me. If most people don’t know how a smoke alarm works, they fon’t give a shit. Whereas I watch a youtube video for almost an hour. Did you know there’s actually several different types of smoke detection? And that one type is very much more prone to false positives, and worse, lack of positive positives due to light? See, most people will find that boring, not give a shit, and move on. So YOU gotta teach them with annoying popups. “Hey, the fediverse is actually self hosted, and right now you’re on the instance of Lemmy.com! Whats that mean? Well…” blah blah blah, you guys already know this part, but that’s the message they should get on day 1. Teach them they need to understand what an instance is, and how to pick an instance that works for them. Then they can migrate there. If that instance is ever no longer good enough, they can migrate elsewhere. Even to Mbin, even to piefed, wherever! One account, all the fediverse.
And here’s the best part. They can go to fediverse.com and log in regardless of which instance they’re on. Just type user is user@lemmy.world password is ********* and login.
And now all the decentralized is centralized. Without losing the benefits of being decentralized. Because it IS still decentralized. But most drivers aren’t mechanics. They use the service, but they don’t need to know the ins and outs. They just need to be able to use it, without it being confusing for THEM.
The hardest thing I’ve noticed is that linux user types don’t grasp is that just because THEY understand something as easy, doesn’t mean EVERYONE finds it easy. And there are a LOT of linux mindset people here. You may “get it”, but that doesn’t make it naturally intuitive. The fediverse is confusing as shit. Each part works differently. Has a different layout. Has a different interface. Operates differently. Which is a stark contrast to facebook users who just say “DO THE THING!” and suddenly 70 boomers are giving them thumbs up and emojis for a quilt they sewed and sharing the patchwork on.
Everyone here is saying to defederate from Threads, because it’s facebook, and I get why. But are you seriously going to cut off the biggest by far userbase to federate with you, simply because you don’t want corporate integration? Facebook still wouldn’t own the fediverse, but now something like 80 million users will start asking questions about the fediverse. Yes, it’s all old people, and people we would rather not interact with, but guess what. They don’t want to interact with you in retrogames@lemmy.world either. They don’t want to be in linux@lemmy.ml either. They’re going to create their own communities, which have no interest to you, but boost the fediverse’s numbers. By the millions. And now maybe facebook as a whole integrates. Maybe reddit sees the momentum and they integrate. Maybe hoogle sees the momentum.
And pretty soon the fediverse becomes the default layout of how the internet works. And the decentralized nature means that no corporate entity CAN own it. They can put ads on individual instances that they own…but they can’t control all the instances. And people who don’t care about those ads will stay there. People who don’t will go to other duplicate instances.
But to defederate from threads before ANY of this takes place is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, while daily seeing those same people ask “How do we grow the fediverse?”
THATS HOW!!! Ok, I’ve ranted enough…
Very difficult technically. Mastodon doesn’t allow this either, I don’t know any Fediverse platform which allows this. If someone knows one, please share
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#export
About Threads, have you been to Facebook lately? The level of conspiracy, bigotry etc is over the roof.
And on top of that, millions of users federate here from Threads
It may not exist NOW, but my point is the fediverse itself needs to adopt a stance of “Ok, these are the foundation for which EVERY service will connect to the fediverse. Develop these services into your platform now, or risk being auto-defederated from all complying fediverse platforms in future updates.”
Give it like 3 years to actually let these platforms figure out how to work it in, but eventually ALL platforms will have to have it if the fediverse as a whole wants to succeed. Basically your account wouldn’t be a Mastodon account, or a Lemmy account, or a Pixelfed account, or any other platform specific account. It would be a fediverse account. And you’d log in via one central place, which then exchanges information with the instance, and back to the centralized log-in point. So if you wanted to browse Pixelfed for example, you’d log in user@lemmy.world, with your password on Fediverse.com, and Fediverse.com would exchange info with your instance, verify the login, and then exchange info with pixelfed which would already know you’re a verified logged in user. Then, using Pixelfed’s layout and platform, you’re browsing a pixelfed instance, via Lemmy.World, with all traffic being handled by fediverse.com as a neutral middle party to handle login verifications.
That’s all fine. I literally covered that in my innitial post when I said
So, even though I didn’t know it was happening, I literally predicted that would happen. Even down to the duplicate communities to get away from those that you don’t want to interact with. Fine, let them have their own racist communties that you never have to interact with. Let THEIR moderators handle that. The bigger thing to take away is that the fediverse, racist communities and all, is growing and becoming actually relevant. You can’t just treat internet places as “safe places” where only your kind exist. You have to either solve racism in real life, or accept that it will also exist online. You can use moderation tools to make sure that attitude isn’t welcome in your instance, but if you say they aren’t welcome on the fediverse, then you cut off about 90% of the older generation, and about half of society as a whole…or 48% if we’re being accurate.
I was at a family get together, when my mom just casually threw out the N-Word. The table had 7 people sitting at it. 4 of them were my moms age, in her 70s. My sister is 50, and I’m 40. My niece is 12. When she said it, My sister, my niece, and me all looked at each other with eyes that basically said “WHAT THE FUCK???” and the 4 other elderly people just didn’t even phase them. My mom has never once in my presence, nor my sisters presence, EVER used language or an attitude like that. She’s not part of the 48% party. But to see her generation just casually accept that was mind blowing for not only me, but also my sister, and my niece. We immediately huddled off to the side room and everybody immediately asked “WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT???” in whispered tones. Nobody had EVER heard anything like that from her. She doesn’t watch fox news. We have no idea what got into her, other then thinking maybe that’s just what her generation says when nobody younger is around, and this time it slipped out. But my brother in laws parents, and the other elderly neighbor didn’t even react. Whereas it was clear to us three that something weird just happened.
And as far as the world goes, the boomers, even on deaths door, are STILL the largest demographic of people in society. So if you exclude them, you are saying millions of people aren’t welcome on your platform, and in doing so, will hinder it’s growth. Permanently. Until they die off, their numbers are needed for anything to be considered a sucsess.
So the best you can do, is welcome them to your platform, stick them off into their own instance, you go onto your own instance, you don’t interact with them, but let them interact with each other. Then other platforms can see the numbers, not understand the situation, and THEY join in. And THAT’s where you get the users of actual value. The people on reddit, and instagram, and youtube. ESPECIALLY youtube.
Peertube is what’s poised to gain the most here. NOBODY likes youtube. The creators don’t like youtubes god complex, and holding them to strict rules that change on a dime, and retroactively give them strikes that were perfectly inline with their rules at the time of posting. Users don’t like youtube, again because of their god complex. Changing features, removing thumbs down button, doing everything they can to force ads onto your screen.
BOTH SIDES want a change, but there’s no valid alternative until people start USING an alternative. That’s because if you go outside, and ask 100 people in a common public place “What is the fediverse?” I would be SHOCKED if 1 person knew. Ask those same 100 people what youtube is, and I’d be SHOCKED if only 99 people knew. The awareness just isn’t there yet.
So yeah, for the time being, you HAVE TO allow the racists onto your platform purely for the growth. They’ll be dead in 10 years anyways. But until people know what the fediverse is, you need EVERY platform willing to federate. Then, once the fediverse is a common term, and everybody underdstands it, THEN you can start saying “Ok, boomer, fuck off with that racist shit.”
Who manages fediverse.com? Who prevents it from being bought out by a billionaire? Who ensures that it stays neutral in case of cat food vegan debates? Who prevents people unsatisfied with the issue of that debate to create their own fediverse.com?
TikTok doesn’t have boomers, is it not considered a success? Trying to bring in the boomer population doesn’t seem to bring a lot of values if they don’t interact and stay in their own bubbles.
Bringing Reddit users, which are usually closer to the Lemmy demographics, would be more interesting, as those users would interact and mingle better with the rest of the existing userbase.
As a general comment, I’m always surprised when people want to bring everyone to a platform. Every city or town has several bars and cafes. You don’t expect the old ladies sipping tea to go to the rock cafe, and you don’t expect young parents to spend time in university bars.
It’s okay to have different places for different people on the Internet.