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 @[email protected] 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?

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[–] fireweed 6 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Lemmy (or at least lemmy.world) was bonkers levels of buggy last summer during the reddit blackout. Like, literally unusable levels of buggy. Getting the word out that it's (mostly) bug-free now would probably be good, because I'm sure there were many redditors who tried it and quickly swore it off as a pile of shit.

Otherwise I'm in agreement that the instance-selection part of sign-up is a huge barrier, because what instance you choose is actually really important but it's overwhelming when you're just getting started. Plus not being able to migrate your account/communities/posts to another instance if yours goes to shit/shuts down/turns out to not fit your needs makes the fediverse feel really unstable.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Otherwise I’m in agreement that the instance-selection part of sign-up is a huge barrier, because what instance you choose is actually really important but it’s overwhelming when you’re just getting started.

Point them to lemm.ee, they can move later if they want. The name is neutral and it's the second biggest

Plus not being able to migrate your account/communities/posts to another instance if yours goes to shit/shuts down/turns out to not fit your needs makes the fediverse feel really unstable.

Can people move their posts from Twitter/Reddit now that they are enshitiffied? This requirement isn't usually expected from centralized systems, so this should be the same here

[–] fireweed 2 points 2 months ago (3 children)

The difference is if the primary (sometimes only) admin of your instance loses interest, goes to jail, or gets hit by a truck, your entire instance could be dead in the water, whereas there are way more safeguards to "established" social media like Reddit and Twitter. Plus the issue of "well shit my instance got defederated from most of the fediverse because it turns out the admin is an asshat" is completely nonsensical on platforms without instances. Example: before I knew that Lemmy had a tankie problem, I almost signed up on lemmygrad because I thought it was just a witty pun...

Plus when you say "point them to lem.ee" what scenario are you imagining? Because "you should join reddit" or "our business is on Facebook" or "Twitter is a great resource for artists" are all straightforward and easy pieces of information to convey and pick up. "Join Lemmy, a subset of the fediverse, I signed up via lemmy.world although I hear lem.ee is also good, but don't let that stop you from picking another instance" is like... Dude, people just want to go to [site].com, click on "sign up", enter a username and password (and maybe email) and that's it. Just having to explain to people that "lemmy.com" isn't a thing is already too complicated for most folks.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

The difference is if the primary (sometimes only) admin of your instance loses interest, goes to jail, or gets hit by a truck, your entire instance could be dead in the water

That's why you should use an instance with at least two admins who communicate regularly on how they are doing

“established” social media like Reddit and Twitter.

Twitter has been purchased by Musk who is pushing misinformation over the whole platform. Being an established social media does not offer any guarantee.

what scenario are you imagining?

Literally that "looking for a Reddit alternative with better clients, no ads, no bots? Have a look at Lemm.ee "

Agreed on you with skipping the whole federation explanation, it's unnecessary and complicated

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

The difference is if the primary (sometimes only) admin of your instance loses interest, goes to jail, or gets hit by a truck, your entire instance could be dead in the water

This is why I self-host. Worst case is that one of the servers I federate is down for a while, and I still see content from everywhere else.

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

Just having to explain to people that “lemmy.com” isn’t a thing(...)

https://lemmy.com is actually a thing... ;)

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