Why should someone join the Fediverse?
from retiolus@lemmy.cat to fediverse@lemmy.world on 24 Feb 2025 20:54
https://lemmy.cat/post/1173257
from retiolus@lemmy.cat to fediverse@lemmy.world on 24 Feb 2025 20:54
https://lemmy.cat/post/1173257
I want to write an article that answers the question ‘Why should YOU join the Fediverse?’, which would basically be an exhaustive list of arguments for joining the Fediverse, each argument linked (LINKS PLEASE!) to an article/publication that illustrates it. I’ll translate it into several languages.
Can you help me?
threaded - newest
There’s stuff you want to interact with there.
Because you’re sick of being toyed with by billionaire’s algorithms designed to wring everything last drop out of you they can.
The fediverse is the public commons of the internet; a truly democratic institutional framework unlike any commercial alternative. It is the 21st century internet of the present and the future.
This sounds more like a dreaded VC pitch! (But true in substance.)
It is the principal fulcrum to leverage the masses, stated simply enough for most to understand.
Yeah you definitely forgot the word “leverage” in the v1 pitch
To procrastinate.
The Fediverse is diverse. Do you want something looking like the original Instagram? We've got it. Just a Twitter-clone (without algorithms)? We got it too. Something like Reddit? Sure thing, why not! Something to track your books with? Yeah, that's around as well. Something doesn't exist yet? Don't worry, it eventually will! 😋
And the fun thing... Most of the platforms can interact with each other since they speak mostly the same language on the same network! You don't like the interface of Mastodon? No worries, go use Misskey or Akkoma or whatever! Mastodon-users will still be able to read your posts! No more moving to a nicer looking platform and finding out that all your followers have to move along too or you'd be shouting all alone into the void!
Good luck with “exhaustive” because people have different unique reasons to come to the fediverse. It would be a very long list.
For the average user I’d approach it with points that affects everyone:
It’s harder to onboard and figure out by the common people but it would be the final platform switch. You may move instances over time but you will never be left looking for a new platform because the old one enshittified. You just move to an instance that hasn’t, done.
Just don’t tell 'em all that or they’ll never come.
Yeah the best campaigns I’ve seen for the Fediverse were reactionary to something happening on big socials: Lemmy when the API fiasco happened, Mastodon when Elon bought Twitter, recently Pixelfed to replace Instagram, and Loops the last 2 weeks before TikTok was about to get banned.
People don’t change because it’s better, they change because they’re pissed off at their current platform.
Except if you try to display Mastodon posts on any significantly different platform, Mastodon users will lose their shit and harass you until you shut it down.
@retiolus Foreword: I didn't write this answer. I am currently experimenting Deepseek it is shockingly good 🙄
Absolutely! The Fediverse is a fascinating and growing ecosystem of decentralized social networks, and there are many compelling reasons to join. Below is a structured outline of arguments for joining the Fediverse, along with suggestions for linking to articles or publications that illustrate each point. This will help you create a comprehensive and well-supported article.
Why Should YOU Join the Fediverse?
1. Escape Corporate Control
2. Privacy and Data Ownership
3. Interoperability
4. Community-Driven Moderation
5. No Ads or Tracking
6. Resilience Against Censorship
7. Diverse and Inclusive Communities
8. Ethical and Sustainable
This is such obvious AI slop that nobody is going to read it.
@xigoi The question was equally inspiring so you know …
I can host it and have 100% what I consume and who I don’t interact with.
It has no ads and never will.
I usually just show them videos/videos without the Algorithm and a couple come on over. We also have !aww@lemmy.world and that helps.
Instead of trying to sell the Fediverse, I just sell the site without any ads. Quite a few are interested. Then I post on discord on different sources. A couple have come around. They technically dont know they are on the fedi.
Yeeeah, if you have to write a network of interconnected arguments in multiple languages the answer you're transmitting may not be the one you want.
Federated apps and communities may be better off spending more effort working to be appealing and less explaining why they think they already are.
Star Trek memes. I didn’t even know I liked Star Trek until 2 years ago.
Because the Fediverse is the exclusive home to my confusing but entertaining long winded rants. Look, I bought a great keyboard, and when I get home, I just like typing. So I shut my brain off and just GO OFF on someone, or some situation. My fingers get to type and type and type on a keyboard which I can only describe as “pleasurable”.
Usually the rants are just me taking some minor thing I noticed or had happen to me and doing a deep dive rant. Just letting my inner monologue out into the world in text form. Or maybe an idea I have. I think my posts in /r/crazyideas are my favorite.
Here’s a taste of me trying to buy hot chocolate.
Memes and furries
The centralized social media have demonstrated again and again that content moderation at scale can never work well the way they do it. They are a menace to society. The problem isn't that Elon Musk is the wrong person to decide how a billion people should be allowed to talk to each other and which of their voices should be amplified, it's that nobody should ever have that power.
A diverse network of smaller instances where each is free to take its own approach is the future of social media, if it has a future.
My pitch is:
At the end of Web 1.0 and the start of Web 2.0 there was a rich ecosystem of forums, blogs (micro and macro), wikis, etc. However, you needed a different login for each one and the large social media companies, Big Web, saw their opportunity and made a more convenient offering - a site where everyone could go and talk to each other. That seemed great until a critical mass of people joined and then they found themselves locked into a walled garden, imprisoned by the network effect. That’s when the enshittification started.
What the Fediverse is doing is rewinding to before the takeover by the Big Web and asking where the Small Web would have evolved to if it hadn’t been sidelined. The answer is a protocol that would allow all those sites to speak to each other. And right there are the first glimmerings of the direction we should have taken - diaspora* and Friendica started in 2010, in fact it is felt in some quarters that Google+ (2011 until it was finished off by Facebook and Google’s short attention span) lifted some features from them. Unfortunately, the Big Web smothered such innovations, and it is only now that the Fediverse’s time has come.
The beauty of federation is you don’t have to believe someone who is running an instance if they say they won’t be evil, federation acts like a Ulysses Pact. y You can’t be evil because the barrier to moving is so much lower because the network effect doesn’t handcuff you to one instance. If an Admin starts power-tripping, you can move to another instance and carry on where you left off.
Do you like communism? Scratch that, do you like China? Then Lemmy is perfect for you!
Its free and fun
“last week tonight” just published an episode on that topic
Because they were banned from Reddit for saying that “If you have the chance to punch a Nazi, you should always punch the Nazi.” 😅
It’s constantly evolving. New communities are getting constantly added, and new servers spun up for different reasons and ethos’ are being spun up every day.
No one CEO can ruin it.
Right now we're seeing a cycle of people jumping ship from one corporate-owned platform to another, until that new platform inevitably turns to shit. But as long as people keep doing that, corporate-owned platforms will inevitably turn to shit. The only true solution is to cut corporations out of the picture with platforms that are designed to be unruinable.
This is it. I’m currently at a point where I don’t want to be tied to corporate owned shit.
If you use Reddit, but don’t like the direction it’s going, (more extractive, less user control) Lemmy is a good alternative. Same thing for Instagram or Twitter, pixelfed or mastodon are good alternatives for those. And they have the advantage that it’s harder to make them universally worse in the future, since the infrastructure is more distributed.
Because everyone miss the old OpenWeb ! We don’t like closed API ! We don’t like opaque and imposed algorithmes ! We don’t like centralized closed plateform ! We don’t want to be enslave to create data. We don’t want their addicting mechanism, digitalizing heroin. We don’t want blockchains to record every interractions we have !
All we want is Web0 ! And the Fediverse might be part of this better Open Web.
I can’t give you sources or scientific evidence but I can give you my top 3 reasons apart of the obvious:
To be fair these will all be gone when there is more popularity
No ads is a monumental reason to join
Yeah, everyone loves the fruits of free labor.
I donate to my instance.
Do you?
No. Did you read my message? If I wanted to pay I’d expect quality lmao.
<img alt="" src="https://midwest.social/pictrs/image/3ad7ea58-b91c-42c9-899d-c97596024351.png">
Xkcd 918
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It’s wrong to propose it as something to “join” or a movement or an idea. Just tell the facts about it. People get turned off on “joining” things. Fediverse is going to be slandered in the media very soon as people like John Oliver cover it. So turning it into some kind of movement especially a “left” movement will keep droves of people away. When I left reddit and came to lemmy it was because I was tired of the old thing and wanted a new thing. That’s it. The other stuff that makes fediverse great was a bonus but I didn’t join for some idealogy reason.
Sell the facts leave out everything else.
Need to get your own links lil bro we can’t do your homework for you lol. Nice try though.