this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
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I'm genuinely interested in people thoughts about the Fediverse because here in the UK it has massively stalled in 2025, like a lot of things. I am seeing way less posts from UK people and way less interaction and general use in fact. Most seem to have stopped social media use to be fair, and I know a lot of that is to do with my age (old fart here, 56 laps round sun and counting) but the numbers game look poor from my point of view. Do we think the Fediverse has a future now after useage appears to be going downwards? Is it a UK thing? (well I know the UK is weird but hey)

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

It could be a reducing interest in posting totally public stuff. Perhaps people want to just use group chats in Signal instead?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Also British, trying (somewhat failing) to avoid more of the political stuff and that seems to be most of the national specific stuff that gets posted.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Why does everything need to expand? I’m happy with where we are. It feels cozy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

It doesn't, but stalling is different than just sitting roughly the same. I am talking about my experience, with my peers and clients... most of whom have just upped and left

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

Kiwi here, originally European so I get content in two languages and from people with some interests in similar. Good percentage of local and international stuff generally keeps me happy. (Not too concerned/glad about overall numbers - there's no continuous growth on a finite planet)

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

I think because Emperor has vanished, might be a factor

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

A very active britposter

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (4 children)

I have enjoyed this discussion but some of my UK peers have added that the fediverse in general (like most social media to be fair) when it is new seems to "american" for them. Bluesky suffers from this criticism as well. This puts a lot of UK users off. Heck even threads is described by many as too us focused right now (see the I'm in the UK is anybody else posts on threads)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Feddit.UK is kinda nice as there's the little british bubble in Local

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

It's an interesting perspective. Historically the fediverse was more European; Mastodon is based in Germany and initially got a lot of traction in France, NLNet has contributed a lot of the funding, and there's historically more adoption by European governmental organizations than US. But these days a lot of the energy is being driven by corporate interests (Flipboard, Wordpress, Meta, Ghost) which are primarily American (Ghost being the only exception), so that's leading to a change of dynamics. Distressing, especially given what's going on here in the US!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That's really interesting. Australian here, and I've remarked several times how the userbase of the fediverse isn't dominated by American voices like most other social media platforms I've used.

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

Yes, it's nice to see German, Canadian, Australian, French and all the other instances blossom

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Yay I was included in a list!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (2 children)

https://feddit.uk/ has 400 monthly active users and is as British as you can get

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

I think most of us are based on different instances too, the main UK community is showing more than double that per day.

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

Aye it is.... but 400 users seems really small compared to others

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

again - no bias but that seems tiny compared to other "things"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

What other things? For the Fediverse, there doesn't seem to be a large UK mastodon instance: https://mastodon.fediverse.observer/list

For corporate social media, is there any UK based social media?

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

Nope.... us Brits are a strange lot. Heck it is why I asked the q to start with because brits ARE so strange

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

Still, what other UK "things" have more than 2500 monthly active users ?

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

All the meta products, reddit, old fashioned forums... plenty of things. Discourse (pah) tik tok. Different but have way more users. I'm genuinely curious how they get so little traffic in this day and age against other methods. And yes, I know I'm asking on Lemmy, but I'm new here, and I still cannot fathom why they are so quiet

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

All the meta products, reddit, old fashioned forums… plenty of things. Discourse (pah) tik tok. Different but have way more users

Aren't all of those US focused?

I’m genuinely curious how they get so little traffic in this day and age against other methods. And yes, I know I’m asking on Lemmy, but I’m new here, and I still cannot fathom why they are so quiet

Network effect. [email protected] if you want to help spread the word

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

nope they have plenty of UK focused things. Run by a US corp of course, but plenty of local content. I welcome the debate, but for the majority of people not in the fediverse ecosystem, the numbers just look awful and that is a massive reason they don't either look here, or stay. Herd mentality is strong. Most of them are in no way shape or form techy either

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

If they're OK on corporate social media, there's not a lot of reason to switch here indeed

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

That's an interesting question. I don't think the advantages of the fediverse are part of any zeitgeist so are not attracting new and diverse users other than maybe through places like Flipboard and maybe Ghost. The future of social media is certainly going to remain fragmented and the fediverse fragments itself by default anyway. I do think that how people use social media is changing; people are tired of overuse to some extent. Does the fediverse have a future? I think it'll remain its own niche as corporate offerings come and go. Increased Interest may come from an unexpected growth in a specialism that is federated. I think my idealism for what the fediverse could achieve is now muted as I probably no longer have faith in open networks as the cultures are way too different so I probably now see the fediverse less through the email analogy and more through the linux analogy. If fedi plods on refining itself in its own slow way (volunteers and no money make for slow progress) then who know the next time a corp offering destroys itself and people search for a less awful and exploitative environment then it might just win out in the long term though I'm not entirely convinced about that. Does that mean i'm off to corporate networks. Not really. I'd rather just stop altogether than fall down that rabbit hole again.

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