60
A Plan for Social Media - Rethinking Federation
(raphael.lullis.net)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
60 points (95.5% liked)
Fediverse
28530 readers
623 users here now
A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!
Rules
- Posts must be on topic.
- Be respectful of others.
- Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
- Follow the general Lemmy.world rules.
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
You start out by bemoaning the onboarding experience and then move on to portability and then speak up the idea servers should just be relays and browsers should be the new world order.
Yes, onboarding definitely needs to be improved.
Yes, portability can be improved. Lemmy falls short of Mastodon and not even Mastodon is perfect.
But, what mastodon does so is foster does do excellently is foster the idea that social media is a tool and that users shouldn't be overly attached. Also, perhaps if we learn to value servers, so not treat them as mere relays, perhaps we'll be able to teach value and independence.
The problem is, too many people keep trying to think, how can we make the Fediverse relevant in the modern world? And the better question is, how can we redefine the modern world? How can we normalize the idea of cooperative servers? Whether friends, towns, cities, etc. How can we make it so the people running the servers that host our communities are committed and engaged and not running them at a deficit? I would even go as far as to say that there should be government schemes to repurpose old computers into mini servers and that governments should give everyone a domain like NAME.TOWN.CITY and everyone can run a personal server and get used to it and then they can grow from there.
I agree with pretty much everything you've stated except for:
I dont think this is a problem. The fediverse accomplishes exactly what it sought to do, a decentralized social network. This is uncharted territory and has been working out surprisingly well. I thought I would be off this 2 months after reddit killed 3rd party clients, but here I am!!
the minute we start to push growth at any cost is the minute the fediverse quality declines, in my opinion.
My idea is actually instead of marketing lemmy and mastodon, like "join Lemmy!" Or "Join Mastodon!" Market each individual instance separately.
After speaking with non-technical friends, I began to think how the key to marketing, onboarding, and growth will be to reduce the friction of the fediverse. The technical aspects of the fediverse (such as instances) and even the word "fediverse" itself should be behind a curtain.
Unfortunately, Lemmy's current default frontend does not do a good job at welcoming non-technical users (i.e. needing to find and select instances, fediverse jargon, etc.). Not to mention the lack of common accessibility features
Ultimately, I think the 3rd party devs building accessible and frictionless frontends will be key in this respect.
With that being said, I think a better marketing strategy is to say "join this app" (which connects them to the Lemmy/Mastodon network) because I imagine the bounce rate of the default Lemmy onboarding is not great.
Also instances aren't really helpful in this regard either. "Feddit" just sounds like "fake reddit" and it carries that reddit baggage. "Lemmy.world" and "lemmy.ml" has lemmy in the name so you have to explain lemmy which is off-putting. Stuff like Beehaw, Sopuli, etc, do well. I think Beehaw is actually a good example as well as it has it's own personal identity as well as being a federated forum.
If you want to be independent, the only thing that matters is the ability to able to roam around and port our identity and data wherever we want. Where you are doing your computing doesn't really matter.
We don't need any of that. Computing power and storage is so cheap nowadays that even people in middle-income areas can afford to collect piles of used smartphones on their desk drawers. If there was any type of economic demand for what you are saying, we would have seen by now some company trying to make a business out of it.
Domain registrars do indeed make money off of this.
Did you read the next post on my series, by any chance? ;)
I think that's a dangerous assumption to make. Not everyone is as well off as ourselves. Some people can't even afford a desk, let alone have a desk drawer full of old phones.
On average, we are rich enough to have plenty of gadgets around.
Those in extreme poverty need access to more important things than access to these gadgets.
We're going down a sidetrack here but this is just false. A smartphone these days is a ticket to many things required to live. Applying for jobs, applying for government services, buying essential items cheaply, cheap/free education.
None of these things are even close to be available to people in extreme poverty.
Think "no access to running water or sewage systems" levels of poverty, not "living in a ghetto area of an European or North American country".
Yes, even for them, the information they can get through a phone is lifesaving. They can learn how to build water supply and sanitation systems and shelter. They can learn how to farm and forage for food. They can find the best way to cross international borders and become a refugee. And so on, they can improve every aspect of their lives. Information is power, and with a smartphone they have access to the entire world, rather than just word of mouth knowledge in their local community.
Obviously, places without any form of electricity are screwed, but satellite internet is rapidly becoming cheaper and more accessible so soon they won't even need cell coverage.
I was using old smartphones as an example of the amount of excess computing power available which goes unused, not what people can do with it.
Your argument is just missing the point and annoying sophistry. Can you please just drop it?