Fediverse

Does Fediverse even have what your friends want from a social media? Even the answer is yes, share that content with them and hope they will be intrigued. Unfortunately, the most likely is no in this case. Fediverse is only good for like five topics and everything else is "too niche".

It would change if we had more people on here but the problem is, Fediverse just isn't appealing to most people. They don't care about decentralization and open-source. What they do care about though is algorithms and low barrier to entry - and neither need is fulfilled by the Fedi.

We are truly the Linux of social media haha.

i'm a non-technical user and it is a pretty awkward position to be in tbh. i have been floating around various fediverse platforms for quite some years now and it is just very isolating. i can do all the right things in terms of curation and maybe find a tiny handful of cool people but i am still missing out on things like information about local community events, because a huge proportion of those pretty much only get posted on instagram.

so for me it is not even about friends being on there or needing to yap at brands but like..when is the popup art market on, oh there is a call for volunteers for beach cleanup, there is a blood drive on, the tattoo shop i like has a flash day coming up. and before someone yells at me: i dont currently have an instagram account and havent for a while now. but like..i do miss having access to that sort of information because it would get me out of the apartment and involved in local community events. and now i never know what is going on in my city and don't go out as much. :/

so yay for not using evil meta bullshit that is increasingly janky and many kinds of fucked up. but like. if i had friends over on insta as well, it would make switching to a fedi platform a very hard sell: "come to this place where your friends are not, and probably no local information is available, and people will be continually pissy at you for not caring enough about technical things, and almost nobody wants to hear about the things you are interested in, and people dont want you there anyway because the low userbase is considered a feature not a bug". ya know? it is just a non-starter.

there are good things about fedi platforms too, but some of those good things are things normal people will simply not understand or care about no matter how frustrated it makes technical users. i wouldnt tell a friend to come here, i would simply tell them to use what they are using less often. and i am sure there will be people in this very thread thinking "good, we dont want idiots like you here", and that is indeed another part of why it is isolating for me to be here. :)

Keep it really simple. Don't talk about federation or how it works under the hood. Just say something like "hey I see you like Instagram - try Pixelfed I think you'll like it. It's in the app store".

Don't get them to try to find the perfect pixelfed instance, just use the default main one. They can move later if it clicks for them.

OK, so I replied to a couple threads, but I’ll put my direct answer here. You have to frame it in terms of something they ALREADY care about, not try get them to care about decentralization.

I’m a non-technical Fedi user. I didn’t give a damn about decentralization or FOSS when I first joined. I only vaguely understood what those things even meant. (I do understand and care now, but that came later after I kept seeing people talk about them in Fedi spaces.)

I joined Lemmy because I cared about getting away from the big tech billionaires, basically. I’m sick of AI and don’t want to use Reddit as long as it’s partially owned by Sam Altman. I wasn’t thinking in terms of joining the Fediverse, I was thinking in terms of “Reddit alternative that doesn’t directly support Sam Altman/OpenAI.” The “choose an instance” thing was a barrier, but that faded after I found out I could change it later and decided to just default to the most popular instance for now.

Your non-technical friends probably don’t care about decentralization (yet), but they might care about:

-Fuck AI companies and the big tech billionaires

-Avoiding psychologically manipulative algorithms that make social media addiction more likely

-More human interactions, fewer ads and bots.

etc.

This part is harder, but you’d need to find communities on here they’d be interested in. I joined when I was thinking about deGoogling, and the thriving tech communities on here appealed to me for that reason even though I wasn’t a techie. This might be easier with a different part of the Fediverse, depending on the person’s interests. Lots of creative people of all stripes are on Mastodon, for instance.

I get the feeling but you will need to build some patience here.

It's really hard to move people from social media and they have to do it willingly otherwise we just create a ghost town here. What I do is try to share links when I see something someone might enjoy so they see there's other social media and sometimes I got asked like: "what was this social media like a twitter alternative?" And then you explain because they are interested but even then, the majority of cases they won't switch just because of that.

The only thing we can do is keep using it, keep improving it and when things get even worse than they are on monopoly land, we will be ready to take them :)

Don't sell them on the fediverse. Sell them on a particular instance. It's a LOT less intimidating and they'll still be interacting with fediverse content.

No dice.

It needs to be completely for dumb-dumbs. A phone app named "Fediverse" or something that's even easier to set up than the official Mastodon app.

It needs even bigger dopamine kicks and even worse brainrot than Instagram and TikTok.

It needs influencers and other hyped-up online celebs with millions upon millions of followers and tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of likes every week.

The only other alternative would be the big corporate silos being shut down or blocked with no other corporate silos to take their place so that your friends can't get their kicks from corporate silos anymore. Even if that amounted to cold turkey.

1. No algorithm.
   They come in, look at all posts, upvote down vote still see 99% of the content they DGAF about and leave.
   * teach them to curate?
   * create tech to curate? Starter Packs? Meta Communities?
2. No niche communities
   We've got cats and dogs and mildly interesting and greentext, but the gaming subs are dead, the automotive and sports and will just about any other community a normie would want either don't exist, are squatted on by someone who made them 3 years ago and left or they're owned by one toxic crackpot mod
   * If you have any interests or hobbies, it's a good time to start some communities, get a couple people to help content. Maybe borrow some stuff on reddit.

If the come here and they can't find what they want, they'll leave

The curation part may make this a fools errand. They want the doom scroll, unending entertainment on tap. This place isn't like that, it's 2003 in here and we want to read what's new then GTFO and go do something else.

People have strange and strong brand loyalty for proprietary things. It's like a culture for them. I have seen it especially on iPhone and Whatsapp. Not only they refuse to use alternatives (Android; RCS/Signal/XMPP etc.). They will think you are a loser if you don't use them. Or, even worse, will try to convince you to use them and that those are the best and anything else is a shit. I believe it's the same for social media. So good luck!

Threads is not part of the fediverse, it's part of Big Tech's attempt at Embrace, Extend, & Extinguish strategy!

I just pointed them over to mastodon.social, pixelfed, and some others. Andvi dont tell them its fediverse, its just another site that anyone can spin up. They can dig if they want to. One out of 4 initially stay. Some come back.

What helps is friends and family on the platform.

For the Instagram people, if they're also using Threads, poke them to enable ActivityPub. Several medium/large instances defederate, but it's an entry point for them.

Also, don't be forceful and try not to pass a sense of superiority. Apply pressure when you see opportunities, such as if they complain of a platform, how a given alternative solves that, but know your boundaries. And all the while, be patient, for it could be a years-worth endeavor.

I think the broader idea is how to grow the Fediverse.

My suggestion is not your close friends, but instead what is your hobby? What is your interest? Because an interest group could build a social-network in the fediverse to keep hobbyists in contact and give them a place to share content they enjoy.

I don't see the Fediverse as dethroning the general generic networks that big social media networks make, that are all about engagement. Instead the fediverse can become a space for multiple niche networks pulled together by shared interests instead. Not all of them may choose to federate but they would drive overall uptake of the technology and platforms. From there other parts of the fediverse can grow.

yo what's "threads" doing there

Tell them to turn on fediverse sharing in the Threads account they already have.

I can already hear "No! Not like that!". Fair enough, but that's the thing most of your non-technical friends will actually do if you ask them. Be sure you have an account somewhere that can interact with it. Perhaps some will get interested enough to make accounts somewhere better.

Treat the fediverse as a pre 2007ish internet and don't expect them to be there just focus on making new friends and creating a good space. If successful they might come but don't put yourself in a position where you require it to use the fediverse.

Whenever I suggest the fediverse to a non-tech friend, I point them to a piefed feed of low-politics low-tech communities:

• https://piefed.social/f/highsignal
• https://piefed.social/f/highmemecontent

Just say it’s a less toxic reddit clone then talk about how Reddit sucks. I’m 0% tech inclined and I’m here cause the Voyager App made it easy. All I had to know was Reddit sucks (and got perma banned oops 🟢) and installed the voyager app and the rest is history.

In the first half of the 2010s, Friendica appeared to have the solution for this problem.

People needed a Twitter account to keep up with what's going on on Twitter. They needed a Facebook account to keep up with what's going on on Facebook. They needed a Tumblr account to keep up with what's going on on Tumblr.

And they had to log into these three websites separately.

In came Friendica with the goal to connect to anything that moved and then some.

You could run your Twitter account, your Facebook account and your Tumblr account through Friendica.

Perk #1: Three commercial, corporate, popular services, three accounts on commercial, corporate, popular services, but all on one website. With one login. All at once. Plus a better-than-Facebook Facebook alternative that was fully capable of long-form blogging on top.

Oh, and if you were interested in that diaspora* thing, Friendica had you covered there as well.

Even if you wanted to get into contact with folks on (pre-pump.io conversion) Identi.ca or elsewhere on StatusNet, again, Friendica had you covered.

Perk #2: You could use Facebook without actually using Facebook. You could interact with your Facebook friends, but you didn't have to log onto facebook.com and let Zuck spy on you through that website in order to do that.

Perk #3: You could crosspost to everywhere all at once. You could send literally the same post to Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr. And diaspora*. And Identi.ca/StatusNet. Oh, and, of course, Friendica itself. And LiveJournal and a WordPress blog and Dreamwidth and Libertree.

Not by copy-pasting and sending the same text ten times. But by actually only sending that one message.

And you only had one comment tree under that message with comments from everywhere. Of course, Twitter users couldn't see comments from Facebook etc. But you, you could see them all in one place.

However, and I know this from personal experience, this didn't work. Either it was too technical, or people didn't needed alternatives to stuff that just worked for them, or both.

Also, after a couple of years, Facebook no longer let third parties extract data. If you, as a Friendica admin, were caught doing just that with the old Facebook connector, then Facebook terminated not only the dev license you needed to run the Facebook connector on Friendica, but your entire Facebook account. (For a time reference, all this was before Mastodon was launched.)

The harsh truth: most people don’t care about decentralisation, protocols or who owns the server. They care whether their friends, memes and creators are there. Don’t sell them the Fediverse as digital vegetables.

Find them a great app, help them follow 20 interesting accounts, and make it fun. Network effects beat ideology every time.

I’d start with Loops.video: TikTok already proved that vertical short videos are basically social media crack, so don’t ask your friends to suddenly become Mastodon power users reading federation essays.

Give them a familiar format without the TikTok ecosystem: Fediverse adoption probably needs to feel boringly familiar before anyone cares that it’s decentralised.

That reminds me that I really must finally mention this on: Fedizen.EU

I always wanted to write a 1 minute ad for Mastodon. Any artists want to animate it? I figure images of social media posts and a cute little mastodon tooting (from his trunk) might be worthwhile.

If anyone does, here's the copy I was thinking:

So your social media is changing and you don't like the direction it's going. Maybe it's the owner, maybe it's the algorithm. The good news is there's an alternative. It's called Mastodon.

Mastodon works like other social media. You follow people, and they follow back. There's sharing, likes, replies, and everything else. Only, you see your timeline in order, not based on an algorithm made to sell you things. AND Mastodon lets you pick your server based on an interest. So in addition to following your friends on their servers, you can also browse your own virtual neighborhood, choosing from things like video games, music, or even your real life city or country.

You can even create and host a server if you don't see one you like.

Mastodon also offers extra features like hidden posts just for your followers, and content warnings so you can hide triggering content, or use them as spoiler warnings if you don't want to run a new movie for everyone else.

To see list of servers, head to Join Mastodon dot org, and join the herd.

Threads logo

Threads isn't part of the fediverse in any meaningful capacity xD

My chosen, tender way to motivate non tech people to leave big Tech platforms for the fediverse is to post sth nice (nice pics, family info,...) on Friendica, Pixelfed or Lemmy, and then paste the link on Facebook, so that my Facebook friends see it, like what they see, get curious what's that strange platform they had never heard of, register.

Problem 1: Sometimes FB shows the linked posts picture, sometimes it doesn't. Problem 2: Some instances deactivate that content can be shown by external platforms like FB.

So far I did it three times; 1 (my friendica instance) didn't show the pic though. So far, the success count is still on 0. But I still hope it will work :)

get them to sign up to whatever instance you're on and dont even bother telling them there is other stuff out there until they're settled in.

People only get "less addicted" if they want to or if they are getting their dopamine from some healthier alternatives. If you meet your friends and they all prefer to scroll IG for 1h instead of talking with each other, you need to find more more interesting things to do together.

send them links to good content they would be interested in?