this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
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No Stupid Questions

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago

I think the Fediverse will be popular. It's already being adopted by Meta in the way of Threads.

Popularity comes when major companies, like Meta, push for something to be in the mainstream. Will Lemmy be popular and be pushed for the mainstream? Probably not. The mindset of the majority of the admins is against streamlining it. It's why we have a bunch of instances and why so many of them defederated from Threads (which I agree with). They've even taken steps to stop having so many people default to the .world instance in an attempt to diversify it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

Honestly no, and that's okay?

Early web2 websites like MySpace did become "popular". But IMO one of its layckings was trying out web2 by evolving something from web1's static websites.

Where Facebook is the platform that popularized web2 in a way that worked with what web2 was and fundamentally build something new off of that.

I think Lemmy/mastatdon/most current federated clones that exist today won't last all that long. Something that is built with federation to its core and instead of just being a feature, is central to its offering.

What is that? Not a god damn clue.

But I'm excited to try it out.

Disclaimer: not a historian. Born in the early 90s so a lot of my judgement above is bassed off of foggy memories and are my opinions and only opions.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I think we're going to need to start by defining what "popular" means.

According to https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy, there are 462,745 total Lemmy users. (Note: I know nothing about this site or their metrics; I literally just Googled "Lemmy users.")

If 462,745 people showed up to my birthday party, I would feel like the most popular person on the planet.

So, I think we need to consider a less abstract figure to answer this. Will Lemmy ever be as popular as a place like Reddit? I think that's extremely unlikely, at least not anytime soon. But will Lemmy ever be popular enough to sustain an engaged community? I dunno; I kind of think we're already there.

Maybe this is the old head in me, but I remember the decentralized days of the early internet, where communities weren't oceans of people on social media giants, but rather smaller, close-knit forums and message boards. If you spent a few months interacting, you would likely get to know and have specific opinions about individual users that you would regularly engage with, unlike the sort of hit-and-run buzz style of the modern social internet. I think right now, Lemmy is almost treading a special sweet spot between the two eras, and I'm pretty happy with it.

Although I will concede that I'm as addicted to social media as everyone else is these days, and I would certainly welcome the increase in on-the-minute activity that additional users would bring.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

462k are the people that have created an account, Lemmy actually has ~40k active users (and even then "active" just means they logged in once this month). I do share the sentiment that not everything has to be super popular but Lemmy really could use more people.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

I appreciate the clarity, thank you. As I said, I pulled a random googled number and wasn't trying to use it as the sticking point of my commentary. But also for what it's worth, it's not exactly a fair comparison to the larger giants either as lemmy's smaller scale means it is also less trafficked by bots, fake accounts, secondary novelty accounts, etc. Depending on what source you're looking at, twitter is claimed to be anywhere between 15-75% bot or fake accounts. In general my point was there are still a large number of people using lemmy on most scales, we are just choosing to view it on the scale of established corporate social media metrics.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Might consider that a lot of people have alts, maybe even 5+ alts, and there are a lot of bots.

40,000 monthly active users is probably a more useful number here.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

40,000 monthly active users is probably a more useful number here.

I fully agree. Again, I did not think that the random figure, which I tried to appropriately caveat, was the salient part of my comment.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

This right here

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

It depends whether the servers can handle the inevitable next Reddit exodus.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (6 children)

I'm gonna say yes, for the exercise.

Four assumptions:

  1. Reddit will keep getting worse, due to the nature of enshittification and venture capital. Eventually enshittification reaches a breaking point where people leave or stop arriving.
  2. Lemmy (in a broad sense - et al!) will keep getting better, due to.the nature of open source software.
  3. Non-free alternatives to Reddit will eventually enshittify, law of enshittification.
  4. Free alternatives will use ActivityPub for the obvious advantages.

If these assumptions are met, given infinite rounds of enshittification and unhappy users, eventually a federated and free alternative will be the most lucrative option for the majority of users. Eventually Reddit will Digg itself a hole. Maybe Lemmy won't take over then, but it'll stick around.

The most unrealistic assumption is of course that the federated solutions will keep getting better indefinitely. Maybe they won't. But as long as people keep developing and contributing to the Fediverse, it's alive and improving in a way commercial alternatives cannot in the long run compete with.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

Depends, it's been a bit disappointing to see virtually no change since I started using it, particularly in terms of QoL. It is open source, so that's on everyone, including me, but I had hoped for more speed, etc..

Mastodon is way better when it comes to filtering.

Having the option of a reddit clone is pretty good though and I will stick with it. Who knows when and where it will get that critical bit of momentum.

It's already superior to regular forums, in my opinion, so now the question is what kind of format you want to have discussions in, instead of having to default to forums. That choice is a definite upside and I'm glad it exists.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Truthfully, no.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Not with how federation works on Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I can't foresee Lemmy specifically reaching levels of popularity comparable to platforms like Twitter or Reddit. Barring some very strange disastrous upheaval of the whole landscape they and their ilk will continue to be Leviathans even with decisions at the top that look like outright sabotage. There is so much inertia. Maybe those two examples might disappear, but only if they're devoured by another just like them.

I can see Lemmy and similar Federated platforms with their quite sizeable yet comparatively miniscule user bases carrying on as they are and even growing a little bit and having some effect on the zeitgeist with the occasional piece of local culture seeping in to the wider platforms though people there will likely not know that's where it came from. I also think efforts like Threads or likely something similar that comes after will be where the fediverse meets any mainstream success essentially becoming part of those bigger platforms in some way I can't yet predict in detail.

The big appeal of Lemmy is ideological and technical, this will always limit the number of people drawn to it. If there weren't already giants in this space that wouldn't matter because there'd be a snowball effect that would draw crowds who came because of other people not because of any interest in how the platform functions or ideals to pursue and with those crowds could come more crowds until you have a critical mass. But with the situation as it is now, the big crowds that draw yet more crowds still, are elsewhere so you'll only ever have enthusiasts or ideologues that go out of their way to be here.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

I much rather that Lemmy remain the domain of people who want to use it because of how & why it differs from the commercial sites. Good! Then I can have a reasonable expectation of the demographics. The occasional shit mod notwithstanding.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Which instance?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Not unless it gets a good marketing team.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

I don't think the form of Lemmy as a federated service will be able to scale.

What I expect is that, if Lemmy is successful, it will be as a platform for various Reddit alternatives, kind of like how Truth Social is Mastodon.

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