Is the Fediverse stalling?
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Tbf Idk what you imagine Lemmy can somehow do to entice new people
wrote last edited by [email protected]Better UX I think would help slightly, not easy when we have such good decentralization. Maybe PieFed will end up hooking people better?
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I mean Bluesky had 1 million registered users in September 2023, and 3 million in February 2024. It clearly had a higher base level footprint than Lemmy has ever had.
But why are you comparing Bluesky's numbers with Lemmy's. A more apt comparison would be against the whole Fediverse. We had ~2 million people in early 2023, and we've gone down since then.
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Bluesky blew itself up cos they failed to be sufficiently decentralised and became an echo chamber. Activpub systems are less echo chambery but still have a very strong left lean that is significantly effecting out ability to grow especially among the centre who represents the majority. We need more right wing opinions and allow said right wing opinions if we want the majority of people to adopt it.
The fundamental failure of the fediverse that is limiting us is that accounts are not transportable. We need some decentralised ledger of accounts that can be cryptographically verified with a zero trust system. U just set up a oidc server to do that auth and that plugs into every single fediverse application everywhere.
The fundamental failure of the fediverse that is limiting us is that accounts are not transportable. We need some decentralised ledger of accounts that can be cryptographically verified with a zero trust system. U just set up a oidc server to do that auth and that plugs into every single fediverse application everywhere.
I've never felt this was as important as people say, at least here in the Threadiverse I don't see it being important. Can you explain how this would help Lemmy/PieFed?
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But why are you comparing Bluesky's numbers with Lemmy's. A more apt comparison would be against the whole Fediverse. We had ~2 million people in early 2023, and we've gone down since then.
You initially made the Bluesky comparison. And to be clear, by "Lemmy" I did mean the wider Fediverse.
In any case, Bluesky itself is also flatlining and declining anyway.
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Interesting. So like federated foss xenforo?
Yeah I think so, although I'm not familiar with Xenforo.
Here's what it looks like https://community.nodebb.org/category/2/general-discussion
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Ahh I see I've never looked into how atproto works might need to look into it and sees if some of its systems can be adapted for Activpub. Thx for the info
If you are keen on working on something like that, let me know. I've done some preliminary work to get a DID system that would work like did:plc but I got a bit stuck trying to use a decentralized database based on IPFS as the "ledger" mechanism.
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You initially made the Bluesky comparison. And to be clear, by "Lemmy" I did mean the wider Fediverse.
In any case, Bluesky itself is also flatlining and declining anyway.
Bluesky itself is also flatlining and declining anyway.
Yeah, but my point is that they were a lot more effective in capturing mindshare when it was needed, and they didn't see growth as compromise on their values like people do here.
When the next fuckup from Big Tech comes around, do you think that people will think about going to Mastodon/Lemmy/PieFed, or they will just look at Bluesky?
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Bluesky itself is also flatlining and declining anyway.
Yeah, but my point is that they were a lot more effective in capturing mindshare when it was needed, and they didn't see growth as compromise on their values like people do here.
When the next fuckup from Big Tech comes around, do you think that people will think about going to Mastodon/Lemmy/PieFed, or they will just look at Bluesky?
wrote last edited by [email protected]The Bluesky surge happened after a massive global election result and a massive grievance from progressives/leftists over Musk and how Twitter has become. Indeed, if you think lemmy is politically partisan - then Bluesky is no different.
The Reddit -> Lemmy surge happened because of some poor Reddit admin decisions. The scale of the events were on different levels.
When the next fuckup from Big Tech comes around, do you think that people will think about going to Mastodon/Lemmy/PieFed, or they will just look at Bluesky?
It would depend on the site origin of the fuckup. If Reddit fucks up, as a reaction - Lemmy would get many new users.
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There usage numbers are dropping alarmingly. And all the famous people on it went back to twitter.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Wow... I wouldn't have expected that. I much prefer the fediverse but that's still a real shame
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Me and most others
The "most others" here is a heavily self-selected group of people who don't want to compromise on any of their values and treat any effort to grow as a threat.
All of this to say, it's fine if you say "Yes, we are small and I want it that way because if it gets any bigger we will be surrounded by people who do not uphold the same values we do". The problem is that you're arguing "We are only small because of $random_reason (network effects/evil capitalists/not enough funding/etc)", as if "being small" was determined by external factors and not something that you can control.
That's the point of disagreement. I think we can control this and we can bring more people here, but it's just that you don't want to do it if means sacrificing your ideology.
group of people who don't want to compromise on any of their values
Of course I don't want to compromise my values in order to see growth of a platform that I use precisely because it aligns with my values.
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Yeah I think so, although I'm not familiar with Xenforo.
Here's what it looks like https://community.nodebb.org/category/2/general-discussion
Oh wow this is cool!
I have one last question. How do you see other servers from one nodebb forum. I can’t find lemmy for example when scrolling through a nodebb instance.
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Bluesky blew itself up cos they failed to be sufficiently decentralised and became an echo chamber. Activpub systems are less echo chambery but still have a very strong left lean that is significantly effecting out ability to grow especially among the centre who represents the majority. We need more right wing opinions and allow said right wing opinions if we want the majority of people to adopt it.
The fundamental failure of the fediverse that is limiting us is that accounts are not transportable. We need some decentralised ledger of accounts that can be cryptographically verified with a zero trust system. U just set up a oidc server to do that auth and that plugs into every single fediverse application everywhere.
A lot of right-wing beliefs have become so extreme that I am frankly happy to not be around them, regardless of how important I feel it is to avoid echo chambers (very). Its one thing to want to be able to have conversations with people you disagree with even though it's challenging, it's another thing to constantly have to contend with people who would like to debate whether you're a human and deserve basic human dignity because you're a minority.
But I would appreciate if we could at least manage not to attack other left wing folks over not being left wing enough, or over what methods are a productive way to solve the problems we're facing.
It's kind of just a microcosm of the infighting and purity testing of the left more broadly (at least in America, I have no idea how things are with the culture of leftwing communities or voices in Europe or the rest of the world), but it still sucks and I'd like to hope we can find a way to do better.
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Isn't it a little bit sad to think that the best we can do here is to wait for everyone else to get pissed at Big Tech's fuckups?
I mean everyone already has platforms they're largely comfortable with and fediverse platforms are less accessible, smaller, and usually clones of existing formats. The primary place we compete is on not being total dogshit, so when people can forget that their comfortable platforms are dogshit, it doesn't surprise me that people wouldn't be going out of their way to venture out into a new unfamiliar thing, with a different culture and much smaller userbase
️I'm happy to be here regardless of whether we're growing personally. In spite of Lemmy's challenges I enjoy it here, and that's enough for me.
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Oh wow this is cool!
I have one last question. How do you see other servers from one nodebb forum. I can’t find lemmy for example when scrolling through a nodebb instance.
Actually I'm not sure that's possible yet! Seems like you have to use Lemmy or something to browse them in that way.
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group of people who don't want to compromise on any of their values
Of course I don't want to compromise my values in order to see growth of a platform that I use precisely because it aligns with my values.
When I say "compromise", I am not saying "sacrifice them completely". I am talking about in terms of Big Fedi vs Small Fedi, regardless on where on the scale you want to stay, there are trade-offs to be made.
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I mean everyone already has platforms they're largely comfortable with and fediverse platforms are less accessible, smaller, and usually clones of existing formats. The primary place we compete is on not being total dogshit, so when people can forget that their comfortable platforms are dogshit, it doesn't surprise me that people wouldn't be going out of their way to venture out into a new unfamiliar thing, with a different culture and much smaller userbase
️I'm happy to be here regardless of whether we're growing personally. In spite of Lemmy's challenges I enjoy it here, and that's enough for me.
Always cool to see you around!
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The Bluesky surge happened after a massive global election result and a massive grievance from progressives/leftists over Musk and how Twitter has become. Indeed, if you think lemmy is politically partisan - then Bluesky is no different.
The Reddit -> Lemmy surge happened because of some poor Reddit admin decisions. The scale of the events were on different levels.
When the next fuckup from Big Tech comes around, do you think that people will think about going to Mastodon/Lemmy/PieFed, or they will just look at Bluesky?
It would depend on the site origin of the fuckup. If Reddit fucks up, as a reaction - Lemmy would get many new users.
The Bluesky surge happened after a massive global election result and a massive grievance from progressives/leftists over Musk and how Twitter has become
Why didn't they go to Mastodon? (hint: some of them did in 2022)
If Reddit fucks up, as a reaction - Lemmy would get many new users.
Or perhaps there will be some other platform that is not so afraid of growth like Lemmy is, and people will go there, just like people went to Bluesky instead of going to Mastodon?
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The Bluesky surge happened after a massive global election result and a massive grievance from progressives/leftists over Musk and how Twitter has become
Why didn't they go to Mastodon? (hint: some of them did in 2022)
If Reddit fucks up, as a reaction - Lemmy would get many new users.
Or perhaps there will be some other platform that is not so afraid of growth like Lemmy is, and people will go there, just like people went to Bluesky instead of going to Mastodon?
Why didn't they go to Mastodon? (hint: some of them did in 2022)
No idea.
Or perhaps there will be some other platform that is not so afraid of growth like Lemmy is, and people will go there, just like people went to Bluesky instead of going to Mastodon?
Yeah, there might be. But it'd have to be pretty similar to Reddit. I don't know of any right now.
I don't know how you think the fediverse is somehow afraid of growth though.
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I mean everyone already has platforms they're largely comfortable with and fediverse platforms are less accessible, smaller, and usually clones of existing formats. The primary place we compete is on not being total dogshit, so when people can forget that their comfortable platforms are dogshit, it doesn't surprise me that people wouldn't be going out of their way to venture out into a new unfamiliar thing, with a different culture and much smaller userbase
️I'm happy to be here regardless of whether we're growing personally. In spite of Lemmy's challenges I enjoy it here, and that's enough for me.
I’m happy to be here regardless of whether we’re growing personally. In spite of Lemmy’s challenges I enjoy it here, and that’s enough for me.
I think this is a fine attitude if you are an user who just wants to enjoy a "slow web" kind of experience, but as someone aware of all the ill effects of Big Tech and Surveillance Capitalism, I wish we were more ambituous and aimed for a bigger slice of user share.
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Always cool to see you around!
Always lovely to see you too blaze, hope you're doing well
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