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Fediverse @lemmy.world
3dcadmin @lemmy.relayeasy.com

Is the Fediverse stalling?

I'm genuinely interested in people thoughts about the Fediverse because here in the UK it has massively stalled in 2025, like a lot of things. I am seeing way less posts from UK people and way less interaction and general use in fact. Most seem to have stopped social media use to be fair, and I know a lot of that is to do with my age (old fart here, 56 laps round sun and counting) but the numbers game look poor from my point of view. Do we think the Fediverse has a future now after useage appears to be going downwards? Is it a UK thing? (well I know the UK is weird but hey)

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  • The Bluesky surge happened after a massive global election result and a massive grievance from progressives/leftists over Musk and how Twitter has become

    Why didn't they go to Mastodon? (hint: some of them did in 2022)

    If Reddit fucks up, as a reaction - Lemmy would get many new users.

    Or perhaps there will be some other platform that is not so afraid of growth like Lemmy is, and people will go there, just like people went to Bluesky instead of going to Mastodon?

    • Why didn't they go to Mastodon? (hint: some of them did in 2022)

      No idea.

      Or perhaps there will be some other platform that is not so afraid of growth like Lemmy is, and people will go there, just like people went to Bluesky instead of going to Mastodon?

      Yeah, there might be. But it'd have to be pretty similar to Reddit. I don't know of any right now.

      I don't know how you think the fediverse is somehow afraid of growth though.

      • No idea.

        People went to Mastodon and faced a number of UX issues:

        • onboarding was difficult
        • "Selecting an instance" is a chore
        • How to find content
        • No algorithmic recommendations

        Because getting content was hard, they were basically thrown into a whole new ecossytem and were greeted by the OG Mastodon users, who were not at all welcoming: , complaining about "their space" being invaded, had many displays of "opression olympics", made a point of being extra loud about their extremist views as an attempt to scare normies, demanded everyone to learn "proper manners" right away, put content warnings on anything, etc.

        In other words, people didn't go to Mastodon in 2024 because those that tried in 2022 were shunned away and left with the impression that the Fediverse is not for them.

        I don’t know how you think the fediverse is somehow afraid of growth though.

        For the reasons above. It's not that they are "afraid of growth", but the general culture on the Fediverse is reactionary and averse to change. Making it more universally appealing would mean bringing different people, and this is what they are afraid of.

        • For the reasons above. It's not that they are "afraid of growth", but the general culture on the Fediverse is reactionary and averse to change. Making it more universally appealing would mean bringing different people, and this is what they are afraid of.

          What changes are people afraid of? What "different people" is the Fediverse afraid of?

          • What “different people” is the Fediverse afraid of?

            • Normies.
            • Small business who want to have a social media presence.
            • Influencers.
            • Reporters.
            • Anyone who is not 100% aligned with their political mindset

            • "Normies"? How?

              What's stopping small businesses and influencers from setting up support communities to try and boost their profile?

              What reporters?

              Anyone who is not 100% aligned with their political mindset

              Does this, by the way, not depend on the instance?

              • What’s stopping small businesses and influencers

                There is nothing stopping them, but there is no one here that wants them to come:

                • Scroll around for a bit on the federated timeline of your preferred Mastodon instance, tell me how long it takes for someone to display an anti-business sentiment.
                • There is no one coordinated movement to get creators on YouTube and tell them "hey, if you start putting your videos on PeerTube we will contribute to your Patreon".
                • Every and any effort to build a public searchable index of the Fediverse was attacked on the grounds of "I don't want my data used by marketers".
                • The majority view on "how to best fund the Fediverse" is "set up donations". Whenever I bring up "I think it's more fair if everyone paid just a little bit, this is why my instance is only for paying members", I am immediately treated as an evil capitalist pig.

                What reporters?

                There were a number of reporters from the NYT/WSJ/CNN who set up Mastodon accounts in 2022 and were harassed on Mastodon.

                Does this, by the way, not depend on the instance?

                Do you think that Fediverse is a good representation of the overall political spectrum?

                • There is nothing stopping them, but there is no one here that wants them to come:

                  People don't really respond well to advertisements and influencers on Reddit either, for context.

                  Scroll around for a bit on the federated timeline of your preferred Mastodon instance, tell me how long it takes for someone to display an anti-business sentiment.

                  So here do you just mean "people tend to be democratic socialists/communists/anarchists"?

                  There is no one coordinated movement to get creators on YouTube and tell them "hey, if you start putting your videos on PeerTube we will contribute to your Patreon".

                  Oh, well I don't know enough about Peertubes success here. I don't really use that.

                  The majority view on "how to best fund the Fediverse" is "set up donations". Whenever I bring up "I think it's more fair if everyone paid just a little bit, this is why my instance is only for paying members", I am immediately treated as an evil capitalist pig.

                  Oh for goodness sake. I simply don't believe that a paywalled system as you imagine could ever even approach Reddits numbers, or even Blueskys.

                  Do you think that Fediverse is a good representation of the overall political spectrum?

                  Not really. So? Neither are major reddit subreddits in many cases.

                  • I feel like we are talking about different things. You seem to be more focused on Reddit vs Lemmy, and I am talking about the "Closed" social networks vs the wider Fediverse.

                    People don’t really respond well to advertisements and influencers on Reddit either, for context.

                    The comparison is not to Reddit. It's Instagram/TikTok/YouTube. Maybe you heard of those: it's a place where WNBA players making $100k/year by playing can make $20k per Instagram sponsored post.

                    people tend to be democratic socialists/communists/anarchists”?

                    First, lumping together all these three ideologies as one single block is a bit handwavy. Second, I am not talking about "anti-corporate". I'm talking about anti-business. If you think that the majority of people are that extreme in their political positions, I'd guess your worldview is quite skewed.

                    I simply don’t believe that a paywalled system as you imagine could ever even approach Reddits numbers, or even Blueskys.

                    This is a strawman: I'm saying "We should not have to rely on open registration instances and hope that the admins get enough funds to keep going", which is not the same as "all instances should be paywalled".

                    I think if we didn't have as many open instances, we'd end up with more people self-hosting and running a server for their own friends, or we would start hearing from students asking their universities to run a server for them, or we would get hyper-localized instances where some group would pool resources to run a service for themselves, etc.

                    are major reddit subreddits in many cases.

                    Again, it's not just about reddit. Also, it's about having places where politics are not such a proeminent part of the discussion. E.g, Threads got a lot of their initial momentum by avoiding politics and getting sports journalists to post about NBA and football.

                    • Sorry, I'm thinking strictly in terms of Reddit vs. Lemmy/Piefed/adjacent networks because they are essentially Reddit alternatives that function the same. I don't really know much about Mastodon or other alternative networks, nor can I speak on their health - but the lemmyverse (including new piefed instances) seem to be fine overall.

                      This is a strawman: I'm saying "We should not have to rely on open registration instances and hope that the admins get enough funds to keep going", which is not the same as "all instances should be paywalled".

                      If Piefed (or Lemmy) brings in effective community migration where an entire community can be lifted from one instance to another, then I am not bothered by future lemm.ee scenarios happening. Communities can become nomadic, and that's fine.

                      Again, it's not just about reddit. Also, it's about having places where politics are not such a proeminent part of the discussion. E.g, Threads got a lot of their initial momentum by avoiding politics and getting sports journalists to post about NBA and football.

                      That's on people needing to do that. You don't need to convince me of that. I'm doing it with music and TV. People have to be the change they want to see. But there's not really anything anyone can do about that with regards to how the audience here interact, or how much interest they have in things outside of politics.

219 comments