I don’t know a lot about lemmy.world, but it seems to be running on “a server”. The person that wrote this may have used it as a simpler way to mean “the overall infrastructure that runs lemmy”.

However, if it really is “a server”, there will eventually be a breaking point where continuing to scale gets a lot harder, more complex, and more expensive. A lot of people don’t really understand that a site like Reddit has a massive infrastructure as its foundation. That’s how it can handle millions of connections, billions of comments, and stay - more or less - available.

It’s expensive to run.

Lemmy can’t ever hope to replace Reddit without some kind of significant investment in infrastructure and possibly development. If the code isn’t written to support scaling out (as opposed to scaling up and just throwing more RAM, CPU, and storage at a single system), it can’t replace Reddit.

That’s not to say that I’m not loving Lemmy. I do. I have barely opened Reddit since Friday after apollo died. At some point, though, money will become a factor here as well.

I don't want lemmy and mastodon specifically traced their centralized counterparts. I only want the average person to have access to and knowledge of their options.

Imo we don't need to replace anything, this is really nice the way it is. Yes some users for more interactions and content definitely of course would be nice for more people to use it.

It's possible but we need to be careful with META, they can mess things up

https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-launch-twitter-like-app-threads-2023-07-04/

https://fabulous.systems/posts/2023/06/meta-is-a-danger-to-the-fediverse/

https://fediversereport.com/meta-plans-on-joining-the-fediverse-the-responses/

I believe it can, at least Lemmy. Not saying it will or won't, just that it can. I don't use Mastodon (or Twitter) enough to have an opinion on that.

By the time it’s gained adoption with a more flexible and strongly principled user base, I’m sure there will be a next thing to dethrone fediverse apps.

Software development principles and modern conventions are surprisingly cyclical, I’d argue that in 5-10 years’ time, if the fediverse picks up, some startup is going to say “are you tired of the same old fractured, fragmented ecosystem? Meet consolishare, a revolutionary idea of taking all the features you know and love from the fediverse and consolidating them into one sharing platform.”

Who knows though.

Tooling/apps will help dramatically. At the moment, it’s nowhere near as rich as the ecosystem that once was around platforms like Reddit.

If the mods don't fuck it up like removing the instance, banning people for some nonsense and people donate so that they can keep their servers up and running

Mastodon: No. It's a very shitty alternative to Twitter where the quality depends wholly on the instance you join. The discoverability of federated content is so bad that if you go into that tab, you just see nothing but porn.

Lemmy: Possibly... It feels like a far less astroturfed alternative to Reddit.

unfortunately, probably not

it has nothing to do with how the coummnities are ran or what technology/apps we have, the issue is that decentralised networks almost always have worse infrastructures compare to centralised ones. lemmy.world is already lagging quite a bit, and eventually the admins will be overwhelmed by the shear number of users.

Unless federation figures out a way to distribute load or monetize for server cost, I dont think it will become mainstream

I have both a Lemmy and Mastodon account besides my Twitter and Reddit account. Every person and channel I follow on both Twitter and Reddit, I immediately follow on Lemmy and Mastodon once they have an account and channel over there. But it's all about content and interaction. Keeping track of the Ukraine war, for instance, was difficult on Mastodon. But posting on Mastodon was a much nicer experience in regard to interaction with members over there.

I think we can... If we think about Disneyland.

Disneyland is a very complicated place with endless things to do and different directions to choose, but you walk in through one simple front door after buying one simple ticket, so it's not as scary to make first approach. Once you're in, you can craft your own adventure, but you have to get in to have the chance.

I know it's somewhat in conflict with a federated future, but for the "mass migration" portion at least, there are just a LOT of choices to make before you've experienced a single benefit out felt delighted by the familiar features of these communities. For that reason, many will be too intimidated to even start.

In the short term it will keep us small and keep certain low effort people out (maybe why energy is fairly ideal here, for now at least). In the long term though, may mean we never gain the mass to threaten the reddits of the world.

Amateur radio never became mainstream. It's doing fine.

Maybe. Pre-centralization, it was very similar - forum boards run by different people on different servers. A system like Lemmy is basically the same but without the inconvenience of having to make a new account every time, which should make it more accessible in the long run.

What it would need in addition to that is discoverability - if just a few major instances show up high enough in major search engines results it'll be a huge draw. Right now discoverability is kind of abysmal, which worries me a little, but I know people are working on solutions.

Imo what we regular users can do right now that will have an impact is contribute to communities and keep them active, and encourage reddit-based communities to switch over. If we all can prove that this is an effective way to run communities, the people will come.

It's not about what company has the best system and most control, it's about what we as groups of people with shared interests gravitate towards. Lemmy fixes some barriers to running forums and might enable more individuals and small groups to start running their own servers again.

It might get a huge boost in usage now that Meta released Threads. In the main page, it said that the app will be able to connect to the fediverse and specifically mentioned Mastodon as an example. Maybe someday I’ll be able to stop using reddit altogether. But that day is not today.

Yes

It's unpredictable though. Too many influences on that. People, interaction, systematic. Reddit has the size it could remain, or rebound. Lemmy as a project or platform could fuck up.

Lemmy/Fediverse is a sizeable niche now and has a chance to - over time - scale up significantly.

this kind of setup was mainstream before the VCs decided to try and buy it all out.

problem for them is, you can't really monetize the commons so you can only throw money at things like this while rates are low.

yes, this will be the new mainstream and the protocol will likely endure well beyond many social systems, including this one. However, as its a standard protocol, whatever system you use in the future will be very likely able to host your entire history from here

I think, as others in here have already mentioned – There needs to be either inclusion of Federated services on current search engines, or a new search engine that natively incorporates the Fediverse. Though the issue with the second option there is it basically moves the goal posts a little rather than aims to tackle the core issue.

Having more users does not (always) mean a good thing... so I hope not. It's good enough as is, thank you very much.

Need the money to work out; definitely not the same dynamics. Maybe more of the people who care for their communities.

I don't think it will go mainstream due to the Reddit drama but I do think it will hit critical mass due to it, and hiring critical mass will give it a chance to go mainstream. The biggest issue I've seen people have with Lemmy and the fediverse is the onboarding process, and that is a very solvable problem.

Honestly, it just needs to be large enough to have decent activity; social media becomes garbage as soon as it goes ‘mainstream’.

We used to say the same thing about GNU/Linux on the desktop, and we were/are ridiculed constantly. The fact is that it is. While Android isn’t the same as Linux, it (and every other consumer platform besides MacOS, iOS and Windows) is based on Linux.

When Instagram Threads is released in a day-and-a-half, (and if it lives upto it’s potential and isn’t just a case of Embrace-Extend-Extinguish), ActivityPub and the Fediverse will be mainstream.