I'm sure the common misconception of "it's a ghost town" kind of feeds a cycle that keeps a lot of people from joining, especially concerning Mastodon/Pleroma here. I think it's just gonna be really slow but steady growth until either a certain threshold is reached or one of the proprietary silos spark another big controversy. The only thing I think is missing is diversity in content as most people here (including me) are just interested in software and technology, so I'm really thankful when a community pops up about something completely different.
this post was submitted on 21 May 2021
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The type of content available is a bit narrow indeed, but I don't see how it would appear as a "ghost town". Lots of activity on the Fediverse.
When I talk to "normal" people about alternative services like the Fediverse, I mostly get "huh? never heard of it" coupled with a mostly implied "ah ok, just another website, why should I care?" kind of attitude. And for that there really isn't a quick fix, it will just take time.
I think I can agree on this one. been looking for writers on fediverse. real ones that makes novels and such. it seems that if mastodon has community groups that users from other instances can join. that can fix isolated communities and users especially if they are on single user instances.
IMO it is not the fediverse lack of anything. It is rather that fediverse appeals to those, who are not happy with the centralized media ecosystem. And such people are:
- a minority (while growing)
- very often invested in their long-term footprint in the former environment
- also often not knowing what is the fediverse about and what would they trade their "comfort zone" for.
I believe it is to us, precursors, to keep "educating, agitating and organizing" long-term, so more and more people come here, shed their toxic habits acquired in the corpozone, and become happier and caring members of their communities.
What it needs, I believe, is
- Building our own social permaculture ecosystem.
- Supporting technical infrastructure of fediverse by elaborating other levels of social dynamics, for example as I outlined here: https://lemmy.ml/post/63108
- Expanding the variety of needs (social, psychological and material) fediverse services can fulfil, so people keep coming not just for a whiff of freedom. :-)
"They come for services, they stay for freedom"
very often invested in their long-term footprint in the former environment
I would not mention this yet.
There is a lot of teens from a few years ago that only promote consumerist culture: buying non-needed hardware every 2 years or when main companies promote new exigent game, etc.
I think this is the least probable group of adopters for now, at least until we reach the early majority stage. They live in a groomed bubble of corpoinfluence and are not likely to break out on themselves. The demographics, however, is on our side. In every generation there is always a group of dissidents, actively looking for something "above and beyond" and -- even bigger -- a group of those who see no alternative but getting molded into a shape that mainstream dictates.
There are already a lot of them inside. You can mostly check it in the Pleroma side.
It think that the reasons where quite different to the rest of people to join.
When most of us didn't realize the huge amount of information flowing on the Interne yet, we used to condone some monopoly enterprises to grow bigger (and maybe they have already become too big. sometimes they sell users data or put ads on webs). then we paid for our ignorance, those giants can sell everything including the users data in order to gain economic benefits.
but there are still many people who don't realize that the above situation is very dangerous. there are still many people even dont know fedi yet.
all we can do is to introduce fedi to them, and let them choose which they like: to be free or to be betray(ed)/sold, this is a question which worth to think about.
but there are still many people who don’t realize that the above situation is very dangerous. there are still many people even dont know fedi yet.
what dangerous situations are you specifically talking about?
some companys sold users data secretly for economic benefits. so sometimes people receive nuisance calls or spam.
does anyone else get spooky political commercials on youtube?
no I have the uBlock origin addon.
that's great.
but also i don't think it solves the problem.
what could solve the problem is a VPN + ublock + youtube frontend.
i think that would be perfect
User-centric content rating and sorting is sorely missing.
Unfortunately a lot of people are confuse the concept with the opaque, often user-hostile filtering run by big social networks.
I might be illiterate here, but what do you mean by user-centric content rating. recommendations?
Unfortunately a lot of people are confuse the concept with the opaque, often user-hostile filtering run by big social networks.
yeah, you can see that in this social media people are taught inconspicuously how to behave. and with the vague guideline and rules that doesn't mean anything until they ban someone for a reason. people may not agree with it but slowly they become obedient by the fact that they can't use anything but this platform.
I'm talking about algorithms to help the user sift through tons of messages based on the user's needs and preferences. The effect is to show the users the most interesting content first. Importantly, they can understand how and why the contents have been selected and control the filtering.
Not to be confused with those social networks that use similar algorithms but with the goal of manipulating users (see Cambridge Analytica) or increasing engagement by fueling disagreements and outrage (see Twitter).
Twitter works like that?
Nothing