Do you believe Lemmy/Mastodon can become mainstream and fully replace their centralized counterparts?
Do you believe Lemmy/Mastodon can become mainstream and fully replace their centralized counterparts?
What the title says. I think there is still a long way for that to happen but i've been hopeful. What do you think?
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No, but yes.
Lemmy/Mastodon will never overtake the corporate social media sites. Because, for as much as people say they hate facebook and reddit and so forth, they are all eager to cozy up to their favorite billionaires and libertarian techbros. And, tinfoil hat, I have a strong suspicion the "mastodon is too complicated" crowd is an astroturfing campaign.
But also? Faceobok/Threads is expected to federate with many of the more popular Mastodon instances. It sounds like bluesky also has something similar planned but with a new standard because tech bros.
Which is more or less what we saw with the mad rush to NFTs a few years back. EVERYONE wanted to make their own open NFT standard. Mostly because they saw the potential to be the de facto backend for video games and the like (similar to Steam). Just think of this as closer to "Ugh, would you really want to talk with a green bubble user?" in the SMS space where people lose their god damned minds over someone not using apple's client.
And... I think that is still a step up from where we are. Because even if facebook is the primary backend for twitter-likes, the existence of stuff like Mastodon (instances) that are outright connected means migration will be easier.
Even if it is migration to the next techbro who will do the exact same bullshit in a few years.
Lemmy? Eh, I think Lemmy is going to be a flash in the pan. But hopefully it can at least remain as something for google and all the LLMs to scrape.
I'm a seasoned internet user and am very much an earlier adopter with a very decent handle on new technologies. Mastodon is too complicated for most newcomers. Most people like to have be set up and ready to go within five minutes. Mastodon, as great as the idea is, simply isn't that simple.
It really isn't. It is literally easier than making an email account.
MAYBE for a few days after hairplugs used his apartheid emerald money to buy twitter it was a mess. But very quickly https://joinmastodon.org/servers was updated to the point that it is just scrolling for MAYBE 20 seconds, picking an instance, and making an account. And then the only difference between the instances is the URL and your account's domain name.
That is the equivalent of picking a server in an MMO/live game.
People are just looking for an excuse to stay at twitter.
It seems as though you're telling me what to find confusing. I did not find Mastodon straightforward to start on. Some of my friends found it even more difficult and simply gave up.
A large part of using Mastodon is understanding how federated networks work. That's something that needs to be explained and most people won't understand it.
I mean, I am more than a bit shocked that a seasoned internet user who signs up for betas would have difficulties understanding the concept of domain names, but I assume your friends are less tech savvy.
But the thing is: no, you don't have to understand federation any more than you have to understand how DNS servers work or MTU sizes. What you know is that you pick a "server" and then have access to the entire (federated) Mastodon.
You can be shocked but hey, that's the reality. It's more understanding the "why" rather than the "how".
but I assume your friends are less tech savvy
Precisely, which underlines what I'm saying. It's not a conpiracy. It's too complicated for the lay user right now.