Fediverse

I think picking an instance is just something people will have to learn and get used to as that's very essential to the fediverse experience.

I personally hate algorithms picking shit for me and that's why I use lemmy and why I used reddit back when it first came out. I search out and pick what content I see on my feed.

I definitely agree with more marketing. It's insane to think there's a lot of people that still use reddit and never even heard of lemmy

Stop addressing them as “normies” would be a great start.

Can’t speak for rest of the Fediverse as I’m not super active on microblogging anymore, but at least here on Lemmy, there is such a strong “in” culture and quirky skewed perception of the world, and often times come off as actively hostile against those that do not share the same quirky skewed world view. The anti-AI, anti-corporate, would rather shoot myself in the foot if it’s not FOSS, etc kind of views, with their own strong vocal proponents, comes off as unwelcoming. People are addicted to socials because of the positivity they can get, not the negative sentiments that’s often echo’ed.

Amongst those that doesn’t share the kind of view, you’d already be looking at an extreme small minority that might be willing to give the platform a try, but as long as the skewed perception of the world dominates the discussions, you can expect them to go back to main stream centralized platforms where they can get more main stream view points based discussions.

Bluesky is FOSS tho...

With all due respect, fuck the normies. The fediverse is better off without them.

I guess this ties into marketing, but I think rebranding the “fediverse” as the “social web” would be a good start. It has a broad neutral tone that I think is easier for regular people to latch on to.

By permitting advertising.

"Normies" are not "microbloggers". Most people just want to follow what their friends and family and news organizations and "influencers" are posting.

My biggest gripe with the fediverse (indirectly) is that all the information I would get on Twitter about my city is not available to me - concert announcements, restaurant specials, road closures, major news, hobby meetups, etc. They're posting on Facebook and Instagram (which is IMO the worst of all social platforms) and slowly adopting Threads. My issue with these platforms is mostly regarding the algorithm deciding what it thinks you want. This is driven by advertising.

Twitter didn't really pick up steam until celebrities and news outlets were posting and engaging on the platform. Then they pushed hard for ads to increase revenue and expand features and stability (for better or worse). Then they just got greedy. Then they were sold for the dumbest amount of money in the history of sales.

Getting normies here means getting influencers here. Influencers want to make money for being assholes. If you don't want influencers and ads here, don't ask for the normies to come. Accept the beauty of this micro micro blogging platform. If you want to share outside the open fediverse, embrace cross posting to the closed platforms. That's kind of the whole point of it. You can post in your tiny little corner while still engaging with the more popular platforms.

TL;DR: be careful what you wish for.

More people would be great, especially for niche communities.

I don't see #2 as that big of a problem. Do we want people who won't expend any effort to join? I guess everyone sees the line between accessible and "dumbed down" a little bit differently. I'm not saying #2 is great. I recognize it is an obstacle. But it's also kind of the point of Lemmy...in the sense that this is not a monolithic corporate one-size-fits-all kind of endeavor. In a way, the obstacle also serves as a teaching moment, if you will, of how this thing even works.

Item 4 seems a bit chicken-and-egg to me. But my guess is, not being able to find those communities isn't nearly as big of a problem as those communities not having any content / participants. I can see the argument that one causes the other, but I haven't found it very challenging to find those empty places. It's just not much fun to hang out there by yourself.

I'm a developer, and it was a pain picking an instance. You start reading about them, and it turns out one's censored, the other one's communist, third one doesn't cooperate with the other ones so you can't see anything...

As long as it is like this, I don't believe mass adoption is feasible. I would've given up because it takes a lot of time compared to just registering and off you go, but I was interested to see what's all the ruckus after reddit started with censorship. Maybe interesting to mention that I was never an active reddit member (not one post there).

I'm guessing a lot of comments will be of the "why do we want to?" variety.

@dch82 first, "normies" have to not get harassed when they come here.

Unfortunately the biggest Fedi software refuses to add automated reporting of offensive posts so if it's not reported, the admins won't even see it.

People coming from corporate social media are used to ignoring the report button because in their experience, it either doesn't work, or gets ignored by admins anyway.

We need automated reporting.

@fediverse