Do you believe Lemmy/Mastodon can become mainstream and fully replace their centralized counterparts?
Do you believe Lemmy/Mastodon can become mainstream and fully replace their centralized counterparts?
What the title says. I think there is still a long way for that to happen but i've been hopeful. What do you think?
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Lemmy has a long way to go in terms of user experience before it can effectively compete with Reddit. The majority of new accounts in the last weeks have been spite users. That is, they're here not because they love Lemmy - but because they hate Reddit.
That's not a bad thing, per say. It doesn't matter how people get here. It's more important that they have a good reason to stay.
And the average user doesn't care if something is federated or centralized. They just want a product that works and is simple to grasp. In my opinion, app developers are going to be the gamechanger Lemmy needs Stuff like Memmy (on the iOS app store today!), Mlem, Liftoff, Thunder are pretty much better than the official Reddit app. And that's how most people consume content these days. When there's no enshitification ads or microtransactions - there's clearly going to be a winning experience.
It'll take time, but as more Federation communities build - the less Reddit is necessary. As well, it usually takes a long time before people start catching on that the tools they once loved have turned to into bots and spam.
Mastodon is in it's 7th year, and has like 8 million active users. Twitter had 200 million users by it's 7th year. On one hand, Mastodon is the biggest Federation app. On the other, Twitter was 25x as large. Of course, Twitter is no longer the relevant "town hall" it once was - and is hemorrhaging users and respect. So who knows. It only takes a few celebrity endorsements to get countless folks switching. Who knows
That is, they’re here not because they love Lemmy - but because they hate Reddit.
Anyone remember the Digg exodus? This was exactly how Reddit got big.
Anyway I do think it's a little more than just hate, though. I have poked around at Lemmy before but I'm starting to take it more seriously because I actually cannot use Reddit on my phone anymore.
In my opinion we need to make a distinction between social networks and aggregators with forum-like experiences. Reddit is easily replaceable because sharing links is like the easiest thing to do. I started using lemmy and not planning on using reddit again. So far i have abandoned all major social media. Only use whatsapp. The internet is rotten right now, however there are so many amazing things that are not social media that we are yet to discover and for those looking for information not people, the internet still has a lot to open. Social media is a cesspool.