Everyone I've talked to about joining Mastodon/Lemmy/The Fediverse

Most people just wanna doom-scroll, they have no interest in having conversations.

I went to Reddit for the first time this month to speak up in a relevant thread about it and got a bunch of tone deaf replies about they‘d rather join Threads cause "its popular and you sound like crypto bros with the decentralised stuff" and also some "Lemmy was made by tankies" and so on.

You know what, I don‘t care, don‘t want these short sighted people here, let them get screwed a few more times by the corpos if they enjoy it so much.

Honestly? I think a big issue with getting more people over here is kinda the attitude. This place is really elitist and condescending when the real reason go to threads or stick to twitter is cause

1. Thats where their friends are
2. The sign up+finding communities process is way more intuitive and 3) Folks over here shit on them a lot

I like it here, its been my prefered site, but between the stale memes and elitism the Fediverse has been like the Linux of social media. Probably better, but not really worth it for the average user.

Like, I know that wont win me any friends, but it's the truth. People are usually going to go the path of least resistance, and Lemmy instances being confusing to navigate for an average user, or looking at Mastodon.world and seeing they banned shitposts and not understanding that they can use a different one or spin up their own is going to turn people away.

If you want a more niche userbase that's fine, I certainly do, but it's wild to insult them for being stupid for not joining while actively keeping them away lol

Edit 2: Removed the first edit

Watching this whole thing go down has made me realize that regardless of what people say, it's not about the number of people, the quality of the experience, or anything like that.

A lot of people actually want to be surrounded by "brands" and "influencers". Some people even get a kick out of "hate following" people who they don't like, which blows my mind.

That's why Threads feels so right to them. Threads has been designed for one thing, and one thing only: connecting companies to customers, often via influencers and eventually through traditional advertising.

Permanently Deleted

The truck is not to tell them all the complicated shit. Just tell them it's another social media site that you browse. Don't need to tell them about the fediverse. Don't need to tell them it's independent. All that stuff is like a Naruto headband is to girls.

They'll discover all that stuff afterwards.

"nobody drives in New York, there's too much traffic".

Quality > quantity.

I'm not interested in seeing cringeworthy posts or paid posts to ruin healthy conversation here.

Cool, the community is big enough. I’d welcome more, but I like social media better when the techies are the majority.

Its the same as how the vast majority of the US citizens hate both main political parties, but the majority also says "I wont vote for a third party because they could never win."

Everyone is still using corporate shit because everyone is still using corporate shit

Be the change

The same problem is in politics in Germany. They vote only for the big politicians who have already a big group of supporters and so a high chance to win. Like „ I don’t vote for xyz because they have only 0.5% of voters in Germany and can’t change anything by that“ . With this attitude they also grow very slowly.

Honestly, I'm fine with the normies staying on Reddit and Twitter, while all of us 'new cool' folks explore our rebel alliance.

Tell them it's a secret club that you've formed with friends. Set it up for them on their computer or phone. It might make it seem fun.

it's not that small compared to 7 weeks after reddit started

Lots of my friends are going absolutely nuts trying to get into Bluesky asap because a bunch of big queer/left voices went there and they want to get in "before too many people join and it starts to enshittify". It's hard to compete with people that a lot of others want to follow dictating the direction with their influence. I must admit, so far my Mastodon feed is not all that interesting. Lemmy does entertain me, though.

Lemmy is more like the old school Usenet than modern social media, and I would like it to stay that way. I don't want the average doomscroller to come over here, I like the cozy atmosphere.

Tbh I kind of don't want everyone here with us lol

Ok but I don't post on twitter. I only view posts on Twitter, and they're pretty much all from relatively big people. So before I can move away, the people with big follower counts needs to move first. The only people on Mastodon that I follow are tech people. All the other people are on Twitter, Threads, or have just straight up left twitter altogether.

People have gotten used to content being served to them. Meanwhile I still enjoy discovering something new.

This is the ”insurmountable” challenge of almost every tech platform from Google to Reddit to Twitter and so on, the competitive advantage is the user base. So without a notable performance advantage (like Google usurping Yahoo) or tangible user experience benefit (Facebook replacing MySpace), these platforms will remain the dominant player in their niche.

Good news is the shitification of tech has really presented some opportunities in some of the niches. Obviously we’re all aware of reddit’s recent actions, Twitter is trying its best to fail, Facebook went the cable TV route and made itself uncool, and Insta keeps flirting with real bad ideas.

Fediverse might not be the answer, but there hasnt been a better time for viable alternatives in a very long while.

The onboarding experience still sucks.

My feeling is that most of the social media platforms are just turning into cess pools of right wing hatred and evil. Reddit was left leaning, but their recent move just seemed obvious they want to go the way of twitter and be a shithole of a website as well. Just another money maker by exploiting the dumber people.

collective action problem is not a joke Jim, billions suffer every year

I might be a weirdo here but I enjoy both kinds of social media mainstream social media is cool because all your friends and family are there and you can fellow famous people but the fediverse is fun because of all the fun nerds and weirdos activists and people whose massage would be squashed anywhere else

Same guy goes and signs up for lizardman's Threads

Yeah there’s no way in Hell I’m telling average people to jump on the fediverse train. This place is niche af - just like Reddit was in the early days.

I mean it's kinda true. I have an account but...I have no one to follow...and no one to follow me.

I'm here cause I'm tired of mainstream Social media. Why the hell would I want to bring them here?

I tend to have a really bad mindset where I avoid places with little to no activity because I worry about giving the owner false hope. If nobody else shows up, I think that my presence might hinder their progress by preventing them from making necessary changes.

I need to get over it cos it's obviously wrong but keeps on my mind

Maybe what people think of as popular in their physical world is different than the popular that they think about in their abstract thoughts: "I'm going to be popular" or "I'm going to write a book" type thoughts.

Both things are different so no reconciliation is possible.

I just want my favorite video game to have a sublemmy :( why is it impossible to get anyone to talk about even the most popular video games here?

IMO, the fact that those people aren't here is the best part of the fediverse.

Well that defeats the purpose doesn't it?

Exact same for linux

She's just not that into you man.