This is a follow-up from my previous thread.

The thread discussed the question of why people tend to choose proprietary microblogging platfroms (i.e. Bluesky or Threads) over the free and open source microblogging platform, Mastodon.

The reasons, summarised by @[email protected] are:

  1. marketing
  2. not having to pick the instance when registering
  3. people who have experienced Mastodon’s hermetic culture discouraging others from joining
  4. algorithms helping discover people and content to follow
  5. marketing

and I’m saying that as a firm Mastodon user and believer.

Now that we know why people move to proprietary microblogging platforms, we can also produce methods to counter this.

How do we get “normies” to adopt the Fediverse?

  • The Picard ManeuverEnglish
    31•11 days ago

    Since most people are talking about the sign-up barriers, I’ll mention culture and reputation.

    I love Lemmy and Mastodon, but whenever I’ve seen the fediverse brought up elsewhere, someone inevitably shuts down any curiosity by suggesting that it’s a political echo-chamber. I don’t think that’s accurate for all of it, but if that reputation is out there, we probably need to make an effort to show that there’s a broader appeal. If the average person is expecting the fediverse to be the left-wing equivalent of something like “Truth Social”, I could understand the reluctance to adopt it.

    • Admiral PatrickEnglish
      11•11 days ago

      someone inevitably shuts down any curiosity by suggesting that it’s a political echo-chamber

      I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I think .ml acting as the official or at least de-facto “flagship” instance is doing more harm than good. I’ve seen the same arguments you mentioned, and it always seems to go back to either of the two .ml instances or Hexbear. When political ideology is forced into every interaction, it always seemed it was coming from one of those three.

      I’ve shown people Lemmy World as an example that it’s not all political circlejerks, but I don’t know how many of them stuck with it.

      • @JubilantJaguarEnglish
        7•11 days ago

        Completely agree. I had no idea how bad this phenomenon was until very recently, when I fell foul of a virtual lynch mob and its political-commissar mod who behaved like a religious inquisitor even in private conversation. It’s real.

    • @[email protected]English
      6•11 days ago

      Every social media has the same problem, reddit is on one side, twitter on the other, facebook is filtering by their own goals.

      People here are just a bit different angle. But each instance is a little different, lemmy.world is more reddit like, lemmy.ml is leftist, hexbear is… something too, there are probably some right wing instances. Much more diverse than other networks and I enjoy seeing all those different point of views.

      This is current problem in society that we don’t tolerate different opinion.

      • @[email protected]English
        1•7 days ago

        Twitter was quite diverse actually (it might still be, I can’t say). You had the far left, far right, and everything in between on there but it worked somewhat because the algorithm kept people mostly in their bubbles unless they went seeking it out.

      • The Picard ManeuverEnglish
        6•11 days ago

        This is current problem in society that we don’t tolerate different opinion.

        Exactly this. When online platforms become too homogeneous, any deviation from the typical opinions that are shared seems like a terrible, inexcusable offense that someone must do something about - thus, reinforcing the bubble.

        We need to be able to disagree with each other and still get along.