Yeah. Another thing that can't really happen on fedi: nymwars.
Obviously there are also threats, but they are different threats than those that apply to centralized platforms. One of the threats, in fact, is centralization itself — if people flock to a few gigantic instances, that creates a central point of failure, potentially.
But there are currently ~20k independently run fedi instances. Some had been running for a decade or longer.
As I said, we're here for the long run.
If the Fediverse just wants to exist stabely, even be mentionable in size, it is not. But to take over from the Big Tech SNSs, it is. People are where other people are. And that’s what the topic was about, replacing Big Tech SNSs.
Fediverse existed before Google+, then came Google+, then Google pushed it hard (including forcing YouTube users to have Google+ accounts), then Google killed Google+.
Fediverse is still here.
So while yes, it would be nice to have more people out of walled gardens, let's keep stuff in perspective.
Well, an imgur alternative does not need to be federated, if it's to be used to only host large content. Imgur does not have any real social features, as far as I understand, either.
So any simple image/video hosting tool should do. I mean, you could also just use imgur!
And that's a good thing, in your opinion?
Mastodon grew, but only took a tiny slice of Twitter
Growth is not the only, nor even main, metric to measure success of fedi. Fedi is not a VC-funded startup that needs to grow exponentially to remain viable (consider how that worked for Twitter and Reddit…).
Building a resilient, safe, longterm-viable communities is the metric to measure fedi by. That takes more time, than hooking people on endorphin/noradrenalin high and slick interfaces.
half of Mastodon are bots or people who crosspost to both.
This is false. I follow a couple of thousand people and have an interesting, diverse, funny, and informative timeline. Very few accounts I follow crosspost.
There is no recommendation algorithm so your timeline is what you make of it. It takes a bit more time to curate, but you end up with your own thing that suits you — if you put in the tiny bit of effort required.
You forgot about Google+, which Google was pushing hard (forcing YouTube users to have Google+ accounts even!) and then shut down. 😄
Fun fact: Google+ started after the early version of Fediverse, and shuttered years ago. There is continuity on fedi with some instances running continuously since before Google+ was a thing. 👈
And completely unacceptable.
Absolutely not. Cryptobros showed that the whole cryptocurrency scene is either in on the scams or at least not bothered by them. Just consider Web3 Is Doing Great: for every promise "web3"/DAO people make, there is at least one story there how "web3"/DAO does not deliver and cannot deliver.
Here are some additional resources about why any suggestions of cryptocurrency/NFT/web3/DAO-related actions need to be pushed back on with full force:
- https://doctorow.medium.com/moneylike-d20f8279a72e
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
- https://strangematters.coop/web3-vs-fediverse-decentralized-internet/ (full disclosure, I wrote this one)
Cryptobros had all the time to build sustainable, equitable, decentralized communities, and failed to do so. Instead, they scammed a lot of people out of their money, and a lot of artists out of their work.
Letting them in on the federated social networking action is letting in foxes into the hen house.
Donations, Liberapay, etc are the right way to support these federated social spaces. DAOs and other cryptocurrency scams are absolutely, positively not the right way to support them. Relying on them will let cryptobros benefit financially from it, while destroying the movement.
I don't think you need to worry about it. It's up to a given community whether or not that baggage affects it or not, I think. Building communities that are very explicitly not tankie is a great way of helping overcome that baggage for the whole project.