lovingisliving

I also switched to Ubuntu from windows not too long ago, but in my case it was from windows 10. It is a night and day as far as the overall experience.

I feel that it is time to have an honest discussion on the state of the fediverse. Mastodon was founded a decade ago, and since then has roughly 1 million monthly active users. That is 0.25% of the MAU of twitter/X currently (which has itself seen declines over the years). Pixelfed has 250k monthly active users, which is 0.008% of Instagrams 3 billion MAU. Friendica has 5000 MAU which is essentially 0% of the 3.1 billion MAU that Facebook has. Overall, even if you combine every fediverse platform together, and count bluesky as a part of the fediverse as well, it’s still less than 1% of the MAU of X. Which is all to say, alternatives to corporate owned platforms does not exist at this point in time, on a statistical basis. Not in any meaningful way. So why is this do we think? Why does the most popular social media site in the world not even have a decent competitor out there, when we have the technology to build one? It’s certainly not from a lack of user interest. Search terms like “facebook alternatives” have absolutely skyrocketed to unprecedented levels in the last couple years, as the realities of corporate oligarchy have become to hard for the average person to ignore. Governments and organizations around the world have started discussing the alternatives to American owned tech companies. And yet, growth of the fediverse platforms is essentially flat. People try a platform, and then quickly bounce off, either returning to old platforms or quitting social media all together. That second one is not a problem in my mind, but let’s dive a bit deeper into the first point. Why do people not tend to stick around on the fediverse? Here are some potential root causes I can think of: The choices are overwhelming. There are dozens of fediverse platforms that provide every function under the sun. Even within a single platform, users are asked to pick a server, which is an instant friction point for users. Functionality on the fediverse is subpar compared to larger platforms, and the functionalities that do exist are disjointed between multiple platforms. We have events, but no standard event functionality integrated into mastodon. What does exist is a hack/workaround, rather than an actual implementation. Pixelfed does not have stories. There is a marketplace website for the fediverse (Flohmarkt), but no marketplace integration for friendica. Etc, etc. Users are afraid of losing their history and friends on other platforms. Every social media platform is required by law to provide a GDPR export of a users social media data, but no platform that I am aware of is using this to integrate a users post history or subscriptions to rebuild users social graph and profile on the fediverse. There are technical hurdles there for sure, but there are a lot of opportunities being left on the table. So those are, imo, the biggest stumbling blocks to the growth of users on the fediverse, and why 99% of users bounce off when they try it. I am building some solutions to these problems myself, but I’m curious to hear what others think about this, and the honest state of the fediverse. Any issues I overlooked? Should we care about user growth at all? What do we think?

*totally not a genocide though

The problem with friendica (at least from my perspective) is that it is a janky piece of software and the UI is very difficult to figure out. Sure there are events, but damned if I could figure out how to make one and invite someone to it in a way that makes sense and is easy to use. Same with groups, it’s there, but in a way that seems held together with glue and duct tape. That is not to say that it did not have its place in the history of the development of the fediverse, but like walled garden platforms that have gone the way of the dodo, the same applies for the fediverse, not all will survive. Just because one platform failed to fully implement these features in a clean and user friendly way does not mean it’s impossible or that it is not a goal worth pursuing.

Oh wow, I was not aware of that! Very cool.

I have not heard about gancio, I will check that out, thanks!

True about the empty room problem. That is a problem with the fediverse in general with new features, which is why I think it is better to try to integrate these features with existing platforms, or to consider building new platforms that are additive with regard to features, rather than isolated. A classified ad site for the fediverse is nice. A site that lets you post microblogs and classified ad posts would be even better. One that allows all of that plus private groups and events would be even better still. It seems platforms are relatively resistant to adding new features and prefer to stay isolated as individual feature platforms, which is a losing strategy imo.

Well, that leads to another possible feature to look into: geographical posts. So potentially creating more local communities for mutual aid rather than just making all transactions digital. So while there would still be these posts from some random guy in india looking for $10 usd (which tbh is not really a huge ask to redistribute money from a wealthy nation to a poorer nation if you can spare it), I would hope that local communities could start supporting each other more directly. This happens on Facebook already thanks for marketplace and groups, but very little exists on this in the fediverse. I agree that there is plenty of room for grifting when it comes to online exchange of goods, and it is probably why it has taken so long to make it to the fediverse, but I think it is important and worth pursuing, despite past failures.

I feel that decentralized social networks can help to realize some important functions for communities with regard to mutual aid and community building, but I do not see much action happening on that front, or at least I have not heard about them.

Specifically I would like to discuss how we can build mutual aid networks on the fediverse. What sorts of interactions or platforms would be needed to make this a reality?

Feature 1: Classified ads - “I need” or “I have” identifiers on posts allowing users to provide or request resources or services from other people

Possible existing platform - Flohmarkt

Feature 2: Events - Time, Date, Place, Location, allowing users to organize events, such as food not bombs, demonstrations, etc

Possible existing platforms - Mobilizon

Feature 3: Private groups - Invite only groups that allow for private discussion, classified and event postings, allowing users to organize in a private and secure way, without having to rely on a public forum like the current fediverse is.

Possible existing platforms - Bonfire

What does everyone think about these features for building mutual aid and real community building on the fediverse, what other features can you think of that would be useful for this, and what platforms/initiatives exist already to implement these features?

They remade Riven, and it got a sequel, Obduction.

It appears to indeed. A frontend bug with piefed.social. I was able to login without issue on p.piefed.social, but blorp seemed to also have issues, not saying I was banned, just never loading once I logged in.

I have tried on multiple devices and browsers. So it’s not an IP ban, since I cannot access it no matter what IP I am connecting from. I haven’t tried a different front end, but I will give it a go.

I am experiencing a strange situation where when I try to log into piefed.social, I get a notification that says “You have been banned.”. I initially took this at face value, and assumed I had somehow broken a rule, but upon trying to see why I was banned, I could not find any evidence that I had actually been banned, besides my login credentials producing that message. The first anomaly was the inability to find any entry in the modlogs for my username (korendian or robert.meyer86@piefed.social). So there was no record of me being banned, but perhaps it was an incomplete log, so I continued my research. I looked for an e-mail that said I was banned, and I could not find one, but I did see e-mails from just recently, after I was banned, from piefed with notifications of activity on posts/comments. I am still getting these e-mails as if my account is still active. Lastly, my profile itself is still active, and still registering upvotes on comments and posts. I can successfully send messages from other users to my previous account, and overall it seems like an active and functional profile. So am I crazy, or is something weird going on here? Where can I learn more about my possible ban, and why are all signs pointing to it being more of a glitch than an actual thing? I was not trolling or doing anything really out of line that I could see warranting a ban, but I also don’t know if there was some rule I broke somehow with how I was posting/commenting. Any insight into this situation would be a appreciated. Here is my old profile for reference, let me know if it looks active to you: @robert.meyer86@piefed.social@lemmy.zip