I'm amazed at how fast this place has grown since the first time I saw a Lemmy instance (way before Reddit API drama), or since the first time I snooked around Mastodon (before Twitter exodus) for that matter. So I guess I'm inherently optimistic by the fact that where newer users might see little activity as a bad sign, I see a little activity as a huge improvement on what the status quo was not so long ago.

On a technical side, open source projects also tend not to benefit from growing too fast. It seems to me Fediverse platforms currently have a healthy activity level for the stage of completion they are in. Lemmy certainly grew faster than it could handle for a while, and arguably Mastodon suffered from the same.

The main reason I'm hopeful about the social web is, however, that it makes no sense any more to create a new platform that does not support it. No matter what kind of social networking site you're making, proprietary or open, you're going to want to make it ActivityPub enabled, simply because it gives you a user base right off the bat.

And furthermore, it encourages the development of new platforms, precisely because you don't need to establish yourself with a whole bunch of users. According to fedidb my platform of choice, PieFed, has 124 active users right now. It would not have been a very interesting corner of the old web.

I don't think the established user base here is going anywere, and I think future developments will feed into the ecosystem. So I'm pretty hopeful. But it is going to take time before all sorts of niche communities have made themselves a federated home.

Bluesky and Threads will fight it out over microblogging, while Mastodon will stick around as a smaller less corporate alternative. A year from now people on both platforms can probably follow my Mastodon handle anyway, so I don't really care all that much.

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

The only problem of excessive optimism is that you might end up alone in a hill which is not worth fighting for.

As a whole, ActivityPub servers have been losing users since its peak in 2022. We were given all the opportunity in the world to build on that momentum with the Reddit fiasco, but were absolutely afraid to grow. Until today, the discourse reeks of elitism with the "I don't redditors here".

Meanwhile, Bluesky has focused on building a product that can be used by the masses, without acting pretentious about who they wanted to be there. They were already getting a.sunstantial crowd from Mastodon, now they are taking the Brazilians we well.

The momentum is not in our favor, and our reactionary, anti-growth culture is not helping.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm mostly going to talk about Lemmy here as you mention the Reddit fiasco.

but were absolutely afraid to grow

We were not afraid to grow, the instances did not even exist when Reddit disabled the API. LW, lemm.ee, sh.itjust.works were all created around the time of the Reddit announcement.

Until today, the discourse reeks of elitism with the “I don’t redditors here”

New joiners getting welcome by people on Lemmy

Which examples do you have of what you stated above?

Bluesky has focused on building a product that can be used by the masses

BlueSky got 8 millions from investors, expecting Lemmy, Mbin or Piefed so have the same level of development is unrealistic: https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/05/bluesky-announces-its-8m-seed-round-first-paid-service-custom-domains/

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

For every "welcome" post, you can find 10 other comments that amount to "I left Reddit because their users are toxic/suck/stupid".

One of the biggest complaints about the Reddit mirrors is "if I wanted to see Reddit content, I'd go to Reddit".

Go check the posts about Fediverser, see how many people are opposed to it on the grounds of "I don't want to bring more people here".

BlueSky got 8 millions from investors, expecting Lemmy, Mbin or Piefed so have the same level of development is unrealistic:

So now you understand why it matters to value the work of developers?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

For every “welcome” post, you can find 10 other comments that amount to “I left Reddit because their users are toxic/suck/stupid”.

I provided examples, you did not, but okay.

One of the biggest complaints about the Reddit mirrors is “if I wanted to see Reddit content, I’d go to Reddit”.

The biggest complaints about mirrors were that they were posted by bots which

do not filter content, so they repost the same karma farming posts than the ones from Reddit
never answer back (obviously), which makes no sense for communities where people are sharing experiences

Go check the posts about Fediverser, see how many people are opposed to it on the grounds of “I don’t want to bring more people here”.

I had a look at the most recent one, most of its discussion derailed about the correct usage of downvotes: https://lemmy.world/post/18249058

I had a look at another one (https://aussie.zone/post/12244073 ), it just seemed like the admins didn't want to have to manage additional software. They are still struggling with federation (https://aussie.zone/post/13429731 ), so that's probably on their priority

Older posts from a year ago aren't probably reflective on how people feel about the topic today, a lot of the people left and joined in the meantime

So now you understand why it matters to value the work of developers?

I never denied that having massive financial investment would improve software.

What I said is that it is unrealistic to expect the Lemmy userbase to raise the same amount than investors looking for the next Twitter (and I stand by that point).

Thinking about it, it's interesting that no other company tried to create a new Reddit, in the same way BlueSky did for Twitter. Probably because forums are less profitable than microblogging.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Fedi's daily active users actually went up for the last two months after hitting a low of just under 1,000,000. That's a lot of people, and on a platform that likely has the ability to carry on like a cockroach in a nuclear winter.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

AFAIK, the increased users on fedidb are from Threads.

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

Threads doesn't show up as an instance (https://fedidb.org/software/mastodon) nor as a software of its own

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

Yeah, it's weird. It is showing on popular accounts, though.

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

Weird indeed

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

@rglullis @cabbage I feel like it's only a matter of time until they have their own Elon Musk moment. Then their users will have to make some tough choices again.

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

What are you basing these feelings on?