Fediverse

The federation aspect of it has to be invisible to the user. The user shouldn't have to pick an instance (unless they want to) and they should see communities from all instances by default. Also we need a discovery algorithm. That's the most needed feature.

I think its going to split and fracture, at least for the forseeable future. Just like how people who want too be free from corporate influence moved permanently from twitter to mastodon, so to will users who want to be free from corporate influence be drawn here. Those who don't care, or who buy into corporate propaganda will stay until and unless they can't tolerate it anymore, and even then they may just move to a different corporate platform.

It looks like they're going to merge

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/8/23754304/instagram-meta-twitter-competitor-threads-activitypub

Fediverse will go through what Linux went through. Be seen by businesses as an existential threat. Then face FUD and EEE campaign.

One day, likely earlier than Linux witnessed the rise of RedHat, Google, Facebook as prominent businesses that became poster children for Linux, new or existing businesses could be built around and/or on fediverse. They may as well come together to form an ActivityPub foundation similar to the Linux Foundation for all we know.

Email went through similar trajectory too. SMTP, IMAP, pop are are open protocols. Yet we have a sort of oligopoly on email.

Similar to how Windows did not die away because Linux came along, existing social networks may remain in existence. The availability of fediverse as an alternative would keep them busy

Probably, since it's decentralised people can just move to another instance if the mods on theirs abuse their power.

The issue is that without marketing or any big scale advertising, the fediverse is never going to take off. Because it is not backed by a big corporation with enough capital like Reddit, it won't ever reach the masses, even with all the advertising the recent Reddit API changes have brought to lemmy and the fediverse, even if Fedi were to be 10x better than anything else.

Yes, I think so. It could. Is it likely to happen? No!

I see a distributed architecture central to have a “public space” online that works in the long term. The communication infrastructure shouldn't be controlled by any single party.

However the way people work and the way capitalism works, it's utterly difficult for something like ActivityPub to become the standard. F**book joining in frightens and encourages me at the same time.

For most of the users currently online it's extremely difficult to understand the concept of federation and how everything works, so I doubt it'll ever be as prevalent as "the big social media platforms", but for technically-inclined users, it'll definitely have at least moderate success.

I think ultimately that is going to be the goal. Security advocates for years have insisted that we OWN our own data.

Personally, I don't think replacement should be the goal. As others have said, a better, more likely outcome is that the Fediverse become a viable alternative to big social media (in the eyes of the public) & an influential part of the ecosystem.

And anyways, the Fediverse is a solution for me - and others, presumably - but it probably won't be the solution for social media influencers, terminally online political provocateurs, people stuck in the endless, algorithmic (and psychologically manipulative) stream of 'content' which Big Social offers, advertisers, etc. As long as people have those sorts of relationships to social media and as long as capitalism and consumerism exist, big social media platforms will always be around to capitalize on that and fill that niche.

Plus, the barrier to entry for the Fediverse is technical skill, which has impeded its accessibility to the broader public. While making the Fediverse more accessible and cultivating that technical skill and know-how in the public are both things I support, I appreciate the more intentional social media communities which are forming around here and are able to grow sustainably quite possibly because it's harder for the average person to wrap their head around. It reminds me a lot of the older days of the internet.

The best thing for that, IMO, is for the Fediverse to continually exist in its decentralized state and provide unique examples of how social media could be, for it to keep growing slowly, for average people to come here of their own volition, see how things are here, and decide on their own that they want to be part of it.

As long as a hardware will be sold with microsoft/google/twitter/facebook by default, no chance fediverse replace all these well-established applications. BUT it's not a problem for me : i use what i like, open-source, and i let other use what they want.

Absolutely yes, better than the others.

For me personally it can. Not sure about everyone else.

I think you're on to something. I'm all in on the Fediverse. I still have some legacy stuff on traditional social, but I spend most of my time here. Though I have to admit I love me some LinkedIn.