At the moment of writing this there are 90 comments, none of them even considering the idea that this whole Fediverse thing is never going to be a worthy contender for a healthier Internet if we keep treating it as some hippie, amateur, "community is all you need" project.

"You get what you pay for" is still true. If the thousands of people using kbin contributed with $10/year, you can bet that the developer wouldn't be in this situation.

We might come up with all the schemes to try to mitigate the issues and warts of federated software, but it would help a lot more if most people understood that software developers and instance admins are still professionals who still have ambitions and would like to be paid for their work accordingly.

Please don't take what I'm about to say as individual call-out, but your comment really will go to "reasons software developers should not listen to the users (unless they are paying for the privilege)" file.

You have a developer who started the project by themselves, got reasonably popular, does more than what Lemmy is doing and when they need help to be able to keep going, the reaction from the people is "don't bother, just move on to this other fork".

I know this is not your intention, but I can't stop picturing a bunch of locusts flying to the next crop.

Works with Jitsi just fine...

This has nothing to do with branding or simple preferences. It's about ethics. Some people are here not because they think it is the best alternative, but because it has the potential to be good.

No one really depends on these corporate services. People are just too lazy and conformist to give up on the convenience that they bring.

I am talking about the ethos of open source and decentralized systems, not the general ethics or the values of particular people or instances that are here.

mass numbers of people means success

It's not so much about "attracting mass numbers of people", but becoming more than just a point for fringe groups. IOW, can we make it minimally interesting for normies? Can we go beyond the "techie/anime-manga/pretentious college student/socially awkward/neurodivergent" demographic? Could we perhaps make the Fediverse a place that can be attractive for, e.g, photographers? Car Enthusiasts? Fashionistas? Wood workers? Amateur triathletes?

IMO, reddit's value was never in the large communities. Aside from /r/soccer, none of the subreddits I joined had more than 500k subscribers. But the thing is: the reason that Reddit managed to have so many interesting communities in the long tail was because they managed to attract such a large number of people that even those in far tail end could still find like-minded people.

Yeah, hiding the post would be good.

But like I said in the post... It's not about "internet points", it's about visibility of "minority" and niche content getting completely eclipsed by the majority.

As the Fediverse grows and more people come with their own niche interests, there will be more and more smaller groups. If the people on the majority side thinks it's fine to downvote because "they don't care about that", then it stands to reason that every minority will be outnumbered and then the whole system becomes a popularity contest, only "common denominator" topics will get enough traction. This makes the whole system super bland and boring for everyone.

caddy can serve the files and deal with SSL certificates in case you put this in a public domain.

The only space that is truly "yours" in the Fediverse is the one concerning your feed and the data you create.

No. You are thinking of Discord.

There are vulnerable groups of people who have a harassment risk against them.

People that are at risk for what they write on the public internet should be protected and empowered by having better privacy tools, not by pretending that they can have a "safe space" on the public internet.

There is no such thing as privacy on the internet. The Fediverse makes it seem that it mitigates the surveillance problem by spreading the information around and not having it under the control of one single large entity, but the truth is that the Fediverse makes it actually easier for dedicated malicious actors to collect data and reach their targets.

A little basic road rules so that they aren’t behaving "unpredictability " to cars.

The moment you start adding these rules for "safety", the quicker car drivers will find themselves exempt of guilt if they get involved in an accident that could be avoided if the driver was paying more attention.

Most importantly I want helmets actually being enforced. Normalized.

Take a look at the Netherlands, see how many people use helmets.

The more barriers you require from people to use a particular mode of transportation, the less people will use it. We need to increase the amount of requirements to drive cars, less from cyclists. "Enforcing helmets" is counterproductive.