Could federation be a turn-off for more 'mainstream' users?
Hey everyone, I'm honestly really liking Lemmy so far. Maybe that's because it feels so much like browsing reddit 10 years ago and I think it's safe to say many of us have migrated from the blackout. I'd been a Reddit user since 2010 so I've witnessed the slow decline over the years but popping here has really driven home how corporate it started to feel--less like a genuine hub of community and more like a manufactured product with low effort content and some genuine discussion/input peppered throughout.
That said, does anyone feel the idea of a federated platform might be confusing to some less network-savvy users? There's other successful multi-server platforms like Discord but somehow for me the idea of a 'chatroom' versus something more like a forum/board seems like it would make more sense to a less informed user. I could see hearing that posts are aggregating from other sites or being cross-visible confusing to individuals who understand web usage as, 'visit site--post to site--view content on site'.
Does that make sense? lol Anyways, loving the site so far--hope to see it grow!
Someone will eventually get smart and stop talking about the fediverse and just build their platform on the fediverse. Then, people will flock to that platform and it will happen to be fediverse connected, allowing people to share content via an open standard.
Yeah i think people don't really need to understand how the fediverse works but just use it. When it's properly integrated into the search it doesn't really matter if you know or not
The issue with bluesky is it creates its own proprietary protocol. Nothing else is compatible with it. Lemmy and Mastodon (and countless others) use the ActivityPub protocol.
This. I mean, you have to expect the community who built the thing to be excited by the thing, but if they want it to be a broader community, then the emphasis has to be on what gets the crowd engaged.
Having said that, I don't think this or any platform should try to be all things to all men. It should have an identity and a focus, and it may not be for everyone - other communities will be right for other people.