But the fediverse isn’t ready. Not by a long shot.

I, really, do not believe in the strength of this statement. There has been a huge injection of people into the Fediverse and this will continue. This wave has brought in an enormous amount of highly qualified programmers, sysadmins and the like. And these people are contributing to Lemmy and a bunch of mobile apps for the Fediverse.

I am excited to participate and watch as the Fediverse explodes.

I really don't want to sound snobbish, but people are really entitled these days.

"Omg you have to pick a server?! I'm going to have to spend more that 30s figuring out how this works? There is no alternative!"

When did everyone become a spoiled toddler? Just calm down, take some time to figure things out, and be patient.

/rant

The Fediverse has this really organic, underground feel to it that I don’t think I want to lose.

If people want to leave Reddit/Twitter/Facebook/whatever and come to Fedi, I don’t mind there being a 1-hour learning curve to read an intro, find an instance, and sign up.

Peeps who aren’t willing to do that are probably better off on other social media.

Is there a reason to want to compete with Mainstream Social Media?

All this pearl-clutching makes me want to punch a wall.

I initially rejected Mastodon, being overwhelmed by its decentralization. I even proclaimed it “too complicated.”

Not even 8 months later and I’m fine. It’s all fine. My hysteria was sound and fury, signifying nothing. This hysteria is also pointless.

Is the fediverse the exact same experience Twitter and Reddit were? No. Do they need to be? No.

No one pearl-clutched when Facebook wasn’t exactly like LiveJournal or MySpace. No one pitched a fit when texting replaced IM. Folks organically flowed from one platform to the next as need and want allowed.

Technology solutions change and evolve. No platform rules forever.

The conspiracy theorist in me leans towards this being manufactured “concern” because the monetization solution to decentralized architecture isn’t ready for prime time, and “Late Stage Capitalism” is trying to herd the sheep into a temporary enclosure of fear until their new “farm” is ready. This explains why all the financial and corporate entities are singing the praises for Bluesky, and casting doubt on Mastodon. Last I saw, there is no word on how Bluesky is going to be supported, but it has a Board of Directors, which tells me it will be ad and subscription based, which means it needs a lot of people.

Having a Board also means that Bluesky can go public and can be sold to yet another nitwit.

So if long term stability means I am going to have to wake up and do a bit more to shape a fediverse solution to my needs, it’s worth more to me to do that than to go all in on a platform that is going to force ads on me and wind up being sold to the next billionaire imbecile.

“Mastodon isn’t ready,” I read every day, posted on Mastodon.

I never interacted much with Twitter and I'm not a hardcore Mastodonian either, but I don't understand why people say it's hard to join.

For me, the process was simple:

1. Install Mastodon app
2. Create account
3. Select a server from the list presented in-app

That was it. There was only one step (selecting the server) that is different from any other site. And it didn't require SMS verification like Facebook, Twitter, and even Google do nowadays. It was objectively easier than signing up for Twitter.

Am I missing something, or did these people just shit their pants at the server selection screen? I get that it's a little unfamiliar but...just pick one. It doesn't really matter. That's the whole point.

I didn't know what the Fediverse was a week ago, and now I'm active on Lemmy and Mastodon. I think people are dramatically overstating how difficult it is to sign up. It's not hard, it's just new.

And besides, I don't think the fediverse needs to take over at all. It just needs to have active, viable, engaging communities. As Iong as enough people end up here to sustain that, it doesn't really matter if they overtake the places we're coming from.

Go outside

That so many people think Mastodon is hard to join makes me think that there are a lot of people on the internet now who have never learned how to use the internet

The fediverse is ready, if you build it they will come!

I think there needs to be a sensible way to crowdfund the server costs, but I can’t see any other reason why it shouldn’t succeed

Neither is Kbin, which doesn’t even have mobile apps

not everything needs a mobile app, sheesh. both kbin and Lemmy have great mobile websites.

My only issue with Lemmy is that it's not a true Reddit replacement, especially when places keep defederating from one another. Like I spend far less time here on Beehaw because it's defederated from some of the major instances - I understand the administrators' concerns about moderation but over time a lot of the activity will center itself around the most active instances (i.e., users may come from a diversity of instances) but only interact with content on Lemmy.world.

This feels like the same anti-FOSS FUD that was there 20 years ago against linux: 'it's not ready!' and 'who will provide support?' and 'it's too hard for people to figure out!' and 'how can you make money if it's free?' and so on.

Of course, the whole world runs on Linux now and it's eaten the lunch of every single proprietary competitor... it just took more than a week to do it, which is far too long of a cycle if you're a clickbait "journalist" on corpo-owned media.

Nothing to it but to do it. How is the Fediverse supposed to accommodate growth before it grows?

It's a ridiculous catch-22 to expect there to be a fully-scaled replacement for any dying platform to already be ready to go.

This article's argument against Lemmy is nonsensical, which is why they try to reinforce their point by focusing on Kbin instead, which actually isn't ready because it's much harder to create and run an instance of.

how hard it is to join the platform

I seriously don't belief the learned helplessness that makes it hard for people to join Mastodon or Lemmy. It's literally one signup page. People have just completely lost any semblance of tech literacy.

I don't think the Fediverse will or should "take over". It already exists in a highly-usable form. I suggest the author stick with Reddit, Twitter, and Discord.

It seems like the author is asking “why isn’t there a just-like-Reddit or just-like-Twitter site that was totally ready and waiting for this moment, and even though we’d never heard of it before now has everyone using it?”

Fediverse is different, and that’s a good thing. Because note how all of these corporate social media platforms are ending up…