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 @noodlejetski@lemm.ee 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?

  • lemmeBe@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    262·
    2 months ago

    I’m a developer, and it was a pain picking an instance. You start reading about them, and it turns out one’s censored, the other one’s communist, third one doesn’t cooperate with the other ones so you can’t see anything…

    As long as it is like this, I don’t believe mass adoption is feasible. I would’ve given up because it takes a lot of time compared to just registering and off you go, but I was interested to see what’s all the ruckus after reddit started with censorship. Maybe interesting to mention that I was never an active reddit member (not one post there).

    • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgEnglish
      12·
      2 months ago

      Indeed, nowadays I just send people to Lemm.ee

      • neutral name (sorry SJW)
      • second biggest instance
      • almost no defederation
      • no topic or country specific (I mean, technically Estonia, but everything happens in English, compared to feddit.org for instance)
      • SorteKanin@feddit.dkEnglish
        9·
        2 months ago

        almost no defederation

        I don’t think this is really a good thing. Most people don’t want to bother curating their feed and if they get lots of bad stuff from instances that ought to be defederated, then they will leave.

      • Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        71·
        2 months ago

        -Neutral name (sorry SJW)

        Boo this person! (I kid, don’t boo them, they’re doing good work and I understand if not everyone wants to be a sh.it.head)

    • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
      71·
      2 months ago

      Just send them to Lemmy world… Edge and shit lords will get banned and figure how this bitch works lol

      Normies being on Lemmy world is better than. Reddit in my book

      • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        14·
        2 months ago

        Just send them to Lemmy world

        I agree that having a “default instance” would greatly help with onboarding new users, but as many others have said before, centralizing on the largest instance is not a good idea.

        There are several other “general purpose” Lemmy instances. Why not send everyone to lemm.ee, until its size is close to lemmy world? At that point, start sending everyone to lemmy.sdf.org or lemmy.zip.

        • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
          51·
          2 months ago

          Great point!

          I don’t know what other instances are viable bit we should have a place to get current preferred.

          I just tell my peeps Lemmy.world it is like reddit with out going into details about fediverse since they ignore me once I start talking “federation”

          • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.worldEnglish
            72·
            2 months ago

            The problem with this approach is that your peeps won’t see any reason to go there if it’s the same as the R-site only exponentially less popular.

            There needs to be an understandable USP.

            Perhaps: “But without ads. Ever. Anywhere.” Works for me and I know what an ad-blocker is, unlike a ton of normies.

            • lemmeBe@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              5·
              2 months ago

              Sincere question: what does “normie” exactly mean in the context of Lemmy? Is it a person that couldn’t get past setting up Lemmy account?

              The term sounds like it has kinda elitist connotations. I mean I’ve set up Lemmy, but I don’t feel like I’m god given - maybe I should. 😆 (kidding, of course)

      • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
        6·
        2 months ago

        And then we will get more communities being created on Lemmy world, and then the whole Fediverse depends on one single instance. This seems like a good idea at first, but won’t stand the test of time.

        I am trying to convince more instance admins to install Fediverser on their servers, so that we can have a way to point people to one site that can distribute the users and help with onboarding and discovery. But so far none of the admins really seem to be interested in the having to deal with the potential influx of users from Reddit.

        • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          3·
          2 months ago

          I am trying to convince more instance admins to install Fediverser on their servers, so that we can have a way to point people to one site that can distribute the users and help with onboarding and discovery

          What does Fediverser from an admin standpoint? Does it just enable a “Login with Reddit” option for onboarding new users?

          • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
            2·
            2 months ago

            That is the main thing, yes, but it would also allow for better coordination among the instances for migration efforts. “Fediversed” Instances can keep of redditors that migrated, can have more attributes to display for people when selecting a instance, can accept or reject a Redditor based on certain criteria (e.g, account is too new, or was flagged as a spammer, or is posting a language different from the main language in the server, etc)