Because most people just don’t understand it. It’s has a high barrier of entry (relatively speaking) and there aren’t really any good mobile apps. While I love the idea of the fed Ivette I just can’t imagine trying to explain it to everyone that’s isn’t tech savvy.
I think what would end up making this a viable platform for the average person is an elegant app (Think Apollo) that initially obfuscates the whole concept of federated servers. One where you create from within it a “Lemmy” account/address and pick what domain you want. Defaulting to lemmy.ml perhaps? Or suggesting a server based on a short questionnaire, like what Twitter does to recommend accounts to follow. Being able to use that same account on various federated platforms would also be pretty cool. Most people will need to have their hand held or they’ll never leave behind what they are accustomed to.
after I found out about the fediverse I’ve wondered why not more people use it and why it wasn’t already popular
For most people it’s just a bit too arcane.
I think that’s true for mastodon, but I suspect it’s going to be way less true for Reddit
Twitter’s value proposition is roughly “one big giant conversation with everyone” and the federation stuff adds some complexity to that.
Reddit already acted like a federation. There are ui and discoverability issues but they seem very solvable.
Because most people just don’t understand it. It’s has a high barrier of entry (relatively speaking) and there aren’t really any good mobile apps. While I love the idea of the fed Ivette I just can’t imagine trying to explain it to everyone that’s isn’t tech savvy.
I think what would end up making this a viable platform for the average person is an elegant app (Think Apollo) that initially obfuscates the whole concept of federated servers. One where you create from within it a “Lemmy” account/address and pick what domain you want. Defaulting to lemmy.ml perhaps? Or suggesting a server based on a short questionnaire, like what Twitter does to recommend accounts to follow. Being able to use that same account on various federated platforms would also be pretty cool. Most people will need to have their hand held or they’ll never leave behind what they are accustomed to.