Curious what you all thought for what things like Lemmy, Revolt, Mastodon, PeerTube, Bluesky, Flashes, etc would need to be able to grow fast and well to get many users joining up
Because it’s high time everyone drops all the way less than ideal platforms/apps/websites/news sources
I’ll add on too:
Content creators that are engaging, clear, & entertaining explaining things with great videos showing Fediverse, etc stuff will help in various ways
More instances. Should make it super easy to roll your own. Lots of small instances just takes me back to 00s message boards, it was a good time.
Money, donate money to the projects.
It all needs to get a lot less complex and confusing. I know the complexity is a byproduct of the defederated nature of the whole thing, but it’s also the primary thing limiting growth. The fediverse is never going to grow to anything other than a tiny niche if it isn’t immediately understandable to people who have 0 background in tech.
i think normies could understand federation no problem if they really wanted, just like they did with email.
Word of mouth and time. Lots of it. All the ones that need you to be your own algorithm will take longer to gain acceptance with the general public. We’ll need a few more Muskerbergian s-storms to motivate people away from the silos as well.
I don’t think there is a future without algorithms, but I do think it’s important to implement them in a way similar to how bsky did where they’re opt-in and configurable by individual users.
As someone who doesn’t know the first thing about bsky, IMO as long as they’re centralized and closed source, it’s not possible to call their algorithm opt-in, nor configurable. You simply can’t know how they’ve arrived at the content they are (or more importantly, are not) serving you.
But yes, I do think lemmy and ActivityPub services in general need to prioritize user control over custom “algorithms” for filtering and prioritizing content.
Yeah it def is opt in. The only two default feeds you get are literally an algo free timeline and discover timeline, it defaults to the algorithm free timeline iirc.
Sure, their discover tab is closed source algorithm but you don’t have to use it. In addition, you can create and import your own algorithms (which becomes necessary because you can’t follow hashtags, which is frustrating)
But how do you know the “algorithm free timeline” is algorithm free? Are they just in chronological order, only shows you direct follows, and never leaves anything out?
Yes.
Lack of an algorithm makes finding new content much more difficult. And most people don’t want to spend time actively looking for stuff, they just want to log in, laugh at funny memes and look at pieces of art.
