cross-posted from: https://europe.pub/post/372863
cross-posted from: https://metawire.eu/post/61363
The right-wing billionaire’s platform has recently lost about 10 percent of its European user base.
Just a reminder that politico is owned by the Axel Springer group which is a real force of bad for Germany and Europe. Their media campaigns often try to push the public opinion in a right wing conservative direction.
Their biggest shareholder (35%) is KKR (an American global private-equity and investment company) that use the might of the media group to sway the public opinion against climate friendly actions/policies.
As an American I think I have a good way for the fediverse to gain momentum as people flee fascist US tech companies.
achem….
“Europe! Canada! Fucking HELP! We broke everything again!”
Seriously though, while government-run and “official” instances may not be a fit for many of us here, it could make huge strides with mainstream users. Maybe getting a large percentage of people invite onboard in a small country or two could be the seed that gets it to spread.
Biggest problem with twitter/X is so many companies mess you around until you call them out on it, then things tend to get resolved how they should have been.
I truthfully have always seen that as Twitter/X’s only use
It was the same on the municipal level for me. I can call 311 or write to them, but it was kind of nice to be able to tweet at my neighbourhood and have people interacting with them and me on local issues.
Fedi is doing fine whether or not Nazi platforms crumble.
They’re all going to bluesky because for some reason as soon as social media gets involved, the wonderful human ability to pattern match just gets switched off.
For most people it’s unfortunately just " is it like Twitter" - both in terms of accessibility and algorithmic content suggestion.
I think a sad part of this is due to people wanting that vapid dopamagic response the algorithm provides.
Is it bad for us? Yes.
But addicts are going to addict 🫤
I know lots of people who made a fediverse account easy enough, but just end up back on the algorithm platforms as there’s no effort required for discovery.
For the longest time there just wasn’t enough activity so you’d get bored and stop checking back. There’s enough people now that this isn’t an issue anymore.
I think it’s more going to be more like twitter than they’re bargaining for.
Except for the fact that most people dont like jumping through multiple hoops to register an account / need to do research beforehand to do it.
You said multiple, so name three hoops
If you Google “sign up for mastodon” the first result you get is a sign-up page for mastodon.social which is the default instance. The sign up page is straight forward. I get we’re all coddled by iPads or whatever but this argument evades me.
What is instance? There are two buttons - sign up for mastodon or choose another instance, I just want to register etc etc.
People dont care for decentralization, they want to sign up and share a link.
Listen I just don’t have sympathy for it at this point. If people insist on maintaining iPad-only tech literacy then they can catch up with any average intelligence 4 year old.
Cool. Doesn’t change the fact that for a regular joe, “sign up” is what they want to click and then share a link or follow some guy. Not do research on what platform to join, what instance, what’s an instance, what happens if you join a wrong one. The fediverse is a gimmick that most people don’t need.
Trump’s gaggle of tech bros loves this opinion
Loves this fact. Fify
People don’t like to read.
personally i prefer bluesky just because the interface is more natural to me (and it’s just easier - but also because aew twitter is there and there’s more fandoms over on it) but i wish more people would embrace bridgyfed so that we don’t have to choose.
I mean I get it. And network effects are a thing. But these VC backed/owned firms (like bluesky) are cancer. Fascism promoting, lying, grifting, you name it. Can we please just try a little harder to support the community efforts?
Have you tried using elk.zone? It mimics Twitter’s interface and has some great additional features (like zen mode)
oh i do like elk.zone and i do use fediverse, i just find myself more active on bsky just because i follow lots more. i have accounts on both and share on both for different reasons.
Maybe they just don’t like your pattern, huu-man
What, the VC funded tech firm makes lots of noise about not being evil before eventually just becoming evil yet again pattern? Yeah I don’t like it either.
Let the pessimism flow through you
Kind of like how I’d be pessimistic about sticking my fingers in the closing boot of a cybertruck yeah.
A lot of our biggest communities still have like two mods taking care of everything and are prone to cherry picking. It‘s the same old forum structures where the internet bubble effect is just as strong if not stronger than on larger, already problematic platforms. Some of the things I‘ve seen and experienced lately bring back memories from those internet forum days. Good ones but also the worst ones. And I have to admit it makes me doubt the Fediverse is actually scalable. There‘s just a lack of accountability in the end.
Which is not to say a federalized platform isn‘t an alternative to giant corporations. Those have their own problems and fair share of fuck ups. But I think I‘m already starting to see the limits of the Fediverse. At least in it‘s current stage.
The fediverse is much more than just lemmy. That being said i also disagree for lemmy. Drama between mods and communities was a regular thing on reddit. Still reddit managed to grow quite big before the bots took over. And companies are in no way more accountable to the users. Look at what happened with twitter under Musk. The only realistic choice you have as a normal user is to leave. And in the fediverse leaving a shitty instance still allows you to connect with all the other content from a different instance.
The fediverse is about options. If you don’t like how someone else runs their platform or community you can create your own. It’s awesome because you don’t get locked into one platform. And in the future I think we will see more big companies and organisations running their own stuff. But I agree that at the moment it is not what “normal people” are looking for and it will take quite some time until it develops. But to be fair the same was the case for reddit.
Instance admins have crashed out before and things keep working
I guess there is a hope that if more people join the Fediverse existing instances and communities won‘t just become more bloated but people create their own alternatives. However I have to say that I have no interest in running one myself. I‘m mostly here to discuss things that pique my interest. Running a community just isn‘t what I‘m here for and I‘m afraid too many people are just like me in that regard and we‘ll create an environment that‘s all too similar to Reddit.
I also don‘t think it‘s good for the platform when people leave a community with a grudge to create a competition „with blackjack and hookers“ style. I want people to come and just create communities because they want to. That‘s where I see a future for the Fediverse.
But I also wouldn‘t want to subscribe to 5 communities about the exact same topic because that would just spam my feed with the same threads probably. However I would actually like to hop between them easily so I don‘t stick around the same few people or have to abandon one for another. A lot would have to change about the way we interact with the platform (UI) and how it‘s connected for this to work though. I‘m thinking about subscribing to topics and it shows you a good mix of communities where overlapping threads are kind of stacked or something and you could swipe cards to see comments from different communities about it or something. This is a tough one to figure out. Might not even be possible at all.
I‘m thinking about subscribing to topics and it shows you a good mix of communities where overlapping threads are kind of stacked or something and you could swipe cards to see comments from different communities about it or something.
This sounds like PieFed
Haven’t heard of that and will look into that. Thank you.
More people = more people that can moderate
Could you elaborate on the scalability problems of the fediverse in comparison to corporation owned platforms?
I fear communities are lacking resources and structure to handle the masses. It‘s something corporations already struggle with but they house like 10000 times more active users. One way to go around that was mentioned above and suggested that new users may keep creating new instances and communities so a few places don‘t just explode in size. But from my experience, if a community already covers a topic, there won‘t be much competition and we end up with a power mod environment (Reddit) at best and instances going dark from overload (hug of death) at worst.
But I don‘t want to sound too bleak about all of this. In the end these are challenges that someone might already work on.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer piece of shit.
The right-wing billionaire’s platform has recently lost about 10 percent of its European user base.
It’s a good start but we gotta pump those numbers up.
remember 80% of instagram is bots according to a study reported by german media.
so X id even say it could be more giving the vast hatred increase and content change over the last years. so basically they lost 90%
EDIT/additional bit: funk’s german post referenced this Imperva Bad Bot Report 2024
The rest are bots and Russian troll farms.
Don’t go to BlueSky !!! They’re not better than X. They obey to the same leaders… MONEY, GREED, AND POWER. A few weeks ago they restricted 72 Turkish protesters the access to their BlueSky accounts on simple request of the Turkish Government. So, BlueSky cannot be trusted they will secure the accounts of their customers. If Trump would ask BlueSky to block all accounts of members who are against him, they’ll do it right away.
Make mastodon more accessible then.
Which accessibility standards does Mastodon break?
Oh boy, where do I even begin:
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Federation. People have no idea what it is, which means that they have to familiarize themselves with all these technical concepts just to create an account.
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Servers. Most mastodon servers are locked, and you have to petition the admins to let you in, which often implies waiting more than a day. In other sites, you can create an account in 5 seconds, so mastodon is at a disadvantage.
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Lack of an algorithm. This implies people won’t see the content they like, which means they have to go and actively look for content. Most people don’t want to spend time doing that, they just want to log in, laugh at funny memes ans look at pretty pictures.
3 is a feature to me. The “algorithms” seem to create bubbles, and I want to decide myself.
and bluesky doesn’t have a default algorithm either, but allows you to subscribe to algorithms created by other people
being able to choose how the information is presented is the way
That seems like a good way, to give the user the option. In your opinion, are these algorithms transparent enough to understand or even verify for regular users?
yes and no… essentially they’re http services that people run, so they can either be closed or FOSS… i could see a future where there’s like those 1-click “run on <serverless platform>” on github pages and you can audit the code if you want, and self host
they call them “feeds” if you’re interested in going deep
Some people want to make social media account to browse illustration or photography.
Unfortunately, that’s not doable on fediverse. You follow anyone, and suddenly your feed filled with content that you are not interested in. Example: your favourite artist also post a lot of game screenshoot, but you’re not interested in the games. You just want to see the illustration.
You can follow hashtags and also block them.
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The same is true for Bsky but people don’t complain about it there. It asks you what server you want when you sign up, etc., which is what people complain about in the Mastodon journey.
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Most people aren’t on locked servers. By which, I mean the majority of mastodon users are on the .social instance which is the default when you sign up on the official app/site and is open to anyone.
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Not an accessibility issue.
Are we sure that the people that complains about “what’s an instance?” don’t have an agenda?
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I’m pretty sure Mastodon is made of algorithms, mate
- So what?
- Damn straight they are locked. Other wise you get Nicole spam on all of them, instead of just a few.
- So what?
This is exactly the dismissive attitude that has shaped Mastodon development, and why it will never have broad appeal to replace any traditional social media.
The much, much bigger issue is people just flocking to where there’s the capital for marketing. The feature sets/philosophy could be precisely 1:1 swapped and people would still end up on the platform with all of the money to throw around.
So, you don’t know what accessibility standards are. You’re just using a term, “accessibility”, to mean “the way that I want it to work”.
and you’re just using the term accessibility to mean a11y… the word accessibility is far broader than simply accessibility standards for people with disabilities
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BlueSky may not be ideal, but anything is better than X.
X is just a machine for turning billionaire cash into political domination.
So “you don’t have to eat shit. Only drink piss”?
bluesky is just early twitter, and it wont stay that way for long. they’ve already removed people from there that the Turkish govt doesn’t like and there is nothing at all stopping some billionaire like musk from swooping in and buying it all up.
Europeans don’t like Nazis.
Americans, well…
AfD Is Now Germany’s Most Popular Party For The First Time Ever.
I wish the ‘Europeans don’t like Nazis.’, would be true, but we maybe just lagging behind.
Europeans don’t like Nazis.
I wish this was true.
Greetings from Austria, where a far right party is the strongest, although not ruling (yet)
The Americans inspired them after all.
Let me guess, they’re moving to Bluesky?
I tried moving to Mastadon first a few years ago and it was a pretty shit experience, Bluesky however has stuck in my app rotation pretty well.
Because Bluesky is centralised. You went from one serial killer’s house to another. You don’t know which serial killer owns your new house, but you’re hoping they’ll be nicer than the previous one. But at least their house is nearly as nice as the old serial killer’s house.
Because Bluesky is centralised.
You say that like that isn’t exactly what the majority of people want. When I first left Reddit, I was trying to explain Lemmy and federated services to some friends and one of them immediately replied with “why would you want that?” And this was from a guy who owned and operated his own TeamSpeak server just for his friends to use.
The average person wants a service that’s easy to use first and foremost, and that is always going to be easier to do with a big centralized one owned and operated by a large company. They just want to be able to make an account and connect with friends and content. They don’t care about things like privacy until it actively harms them.
I’m not saying it “like” anything. I’m stating that they are not escaping anything but moving from problem to future problem.
Isn’t email easy to use? Do people know that it’s federated? Probably not, but it’s easy to understand because they have been exposed to it for so long that it’s natural to them without knowing how it works. Why do you assume the same cannot happen for the fediverse? It’s basically social media built on top of email.
The major mistake people make is trying to explain technical stuff to people who don’t give a fuck. “Look at your email account, it’s YOURNAME@WEBSITE, well, that’s the same for lemmy and mastodon, pick a website you like, create an account, and that’s it”. Everyone knows what a website is, everyone knows what email is, everyone knows (but probably hasn’t realised) that they can send emails to SOMEBODYELSE@OTHERWEBSITE, that’s it.
I mean, I don’t even think it’s a matter of privacy, and moreso a matter of spreading out the amount of influence that one person can have as a whole on a public platform. If it’s more spread out, there is less direct control that billionaires and corpos will have on these platforms that have basically become very important in terms of public discourse and public opinion.
Dunno why you’re being down voted so hard. Didn’t Bluesky literally cede to Turkish demands of censorship or some shit?
Yep. That’s exactly why I’m saying it’s centralised.
General advice regarding open source: even if you tried something out years ago and didn’t like it, it may be well worth giving it another shot. Open source projects often need some time to mature and take their time to improve, but only get better over time.
Unfortunately until they implement a For you algorithm across all instances and abandoned their archaic hashtag following system I will not be re-attempting
Do you need someone holding your hand while you cross the street too?
Which is incidentally the opposite of proprietary products, where if you give it another go in a few years it either doesn’t exist or is enshittified.
That’s were the marketing dollars are
Ayyy, gotta have that monaaaay!
Or meta because its better? Like getting run over by a small car instead of a bus.
Ewww people actually use Threads? Last time I saw it, it was like LinkedIn 2.0 filled with sigma grindset “chase that bag” crap.
I’m.on Lemmy and mastodon. Anything else is pure sarcasm. I sarcastically browse for TV’s on Amazon. But will I buy? No. All have spyware on them, so no. I wouldn’t touch meta with a 300ft pole.
This is not a particularly relevant comment, but you reminded me of when I was a kid and a friend had a TV on a stand opposite her bunk-bed. She didn’t have a remote control, but she did have a long stick, and she was amazing at pressing the buttons from like 2m away. Proper life skill.
In my day you had to turn the knob. I made a geared motor adapter to change the channel remotely. DIY when I was 10.
Threads sucks compared to bsky don’t know what you’re talking about there. Bluesky has way more features and posting quality.
Unironically yes sadly :(
It’s not just X; American social media has been gradually turning into such a shit show for the last 10 years: censorship, misinformation, consensus manufacture and creeping enshitification. I jumped ship to the fediverse and never looked back!
deleted by creator
Where did you read that? 80% would be insane if true
how can you respond to my deleted comment. I instantly deleted it after seeing a comment where I could add the same message under, so the discussion is more bundled
either way
funk’s german post referenced this Imperva Bad Bot Report 2024
EDIT 74% not 80%, doesnt change anything tbh :D
I would try deleting it again, sometimes edits/deletes don’t federate.
well now its too late, might aswell
I still see it too, interestingly
I see it too. I’m using the Voyager App on iOS. Maybe because of that?
Thanks for posting!
Anecdotally, I watch reels on Instagram (i know) and the vast majority of meme pages that it shows me are the exact same setup around a slightly different premise, with the same purchased comments pinned from the same accounts or the accounts comment saying something like they’re too broke for paid comments please like.
80% is probably high but I wouldn’t be that surprised.
What’s the quality like of the people who are still on Twitter in 2025? Does the fediverse want them? (These are real questions, I have no idea if there’s still any decent people on Twitter.)
Every massive influx from Twitter has brought a deluge of people I want nothing to do with in any way shape or form, and a small sprinkling of cool ones. Fortunately like 4/5ths of the crappy ones leave again, but that other 1/5th is a big number when you’re talking an influx of hundreds of thousands.
There likely are (I quit Twitter over a year ago), just because it does unique coverage on many topics.
ik some good people that are still there because some of their friends are.
It is humanities responsibility to make the rest of this man’s life miserable
