Not sure I agree with all of his points, but it’s a start that we’re at least publicly acknowledging this as the end of an era (for good IMO)
Not sure I agree with all of his points, but it’s a start that we’re at least publicly acknowledging this as the end of an era (for good IMO)
I don’t agree with the author’s conclusion. I believe that Fediverse and FOSS software will eventually become better and less daunting for users to use. They will eventually rule the social scene.
Why? Enshittification. Capitalist platforms objective is to make money. As long as that’s their objective, they will always become worse. FOSS projects are truly social project where the ultimate objective is to create libre software for the sake of human connection. Money is not the ultimate leitmotiv of FOSS.
I would love this to be the case. But as a greybeard, I seriously doubt it. The masses will usually gravitate to places that explicitly cater to them. That usually means good UX and reliability. That usually means an org (read: company) spending lots of resources keeping things up and improving on UI.
That said, I’m personally willing to sacrifice a lot to be out of a walled garden. My hope is that the fediverse at least has a strong community, maybe ideally without the masses. Gotta start somewhere at least.
Agreed, but many 3rd party Reddit apps are making Lemmy versions, so all that refinement is already done, and comes with the user base of “masses” that you’re describing.
E.g. I’m here because the Boost for Reddit app creator is going here.
There are still issues that come with the fedi model that are beyond UX a polished app can solve. Many of these will need to be solved with lemmy itself(like account migration if an instance plans to shut down). Some of them just can’t be fully transparent, like the inherent issue of having to choose a server at all. Unfortunately not all will want to give it a try because of this.
It can be done. One example comes to mind (not talking about the backend) is Blender. It’s a FOSS software that became one THE 3D animations tools to use.
Perhaps I’m a bit of an optimist but I truly think that Fediverse will begin to shine.
Didn’t they say they were bullish on fediverse long term?
Yeah it was the one platform they were optimistic about.
Think they were right on the short term issues but we’re already starting to see apps developed and make the signup easier for less tech savvy people so I think we’ll see more and more come.
Also helps that Twitter and Reddit did their changes around the same time so more people are willing to move since others are as well.
Fediverse can win. But, it has to be dead simple to use. It has to be smooth. It has to be easy to grok. Literally, nothing else matters when talking about user adoption. My belief.