I feel like if you scroll through any area outside of the fediverse you will here MASTODON SUCKKKKS OMG I HATE IT SO MUCH, it’s gonna fail. or comments saying mastodon will only exist for another year tops. Keep in mind I know in terms of microblogging apps for the fediverse mastodon is not the best, calckey is likely the best but most people only know mastodon
I’ve no clue where are you coming from. Never heard anything like that.
There are quite a few reasons outsiders may feel the fediverse is doomed to fail:
- The lack of monetization. Without any profit or income (beyond donation), people may feel Mastodon is bound to fail due to lack of funding. I disagree with this, but I can see why people assumes this.
- The confusing (or at least, unorthodox) nature of federation may give the illusion that Mastodon (or Fediverse in general) is too complicated for most people so that no one will use it. While it’s not too hard to understand, many people come with the preconceived notion and refuse to try to understand.
- I know at least one big youtuber saying that the name “Mastodon” sounds like a joke.
- The smaller userbase and fewer content. While content quality > content quantity, many people do judge social media by its userbase size, and people feel Mastodon is too small for people to care about.
- The community in Fediverse generally leans more nerdy/fringe. More mainstream content are rarer and nerdy stuff like programming, furry art, or queer content are more common. So there’s probably a bit of preconceived notion that only nerdy people use fediverse, while the more general public don’t.
- Most prominent people and creator, like celebrities, companies, youtubers, larger game devs, etc haven’t moved to the fediverse, so people feel that the fediverse is pointless overall without their and most people’s favorite.
Those are the few things I can think of. To be honest, I disagree with most-- if not all of them-- because those factors don’t affect my enjoyment here as much and they can be overcome with a little bit more exploration, but I can see how some-- if not all of them-- can be a roadblock to some outsiders from liking the fediverse.
People downplay the “fringe” aspect, but it istheo most common complaint I hear, that Mastodon/Lemmy are the “crazy left wing” versions of Twitter/Reddit. And while I’m not necessarily right-wing myself, as someone who’s not far-left, in any sort of political or social discussion, yeah I kinda see it. Non “fringe” people don’t want to be on a platform where anything not “fringe” gets flamed/downvoted to oblivion, even if it’s not technically a rule that the communities are “fringe” it can feel like an unwritten rule. Then if anyone tries making a not de facto “fringe” instance everyone else defederates from it, effectively killing it before it can get off the ground. Let’s be real, there are plenty of valid reasons to defederate from Threads, but a common one I do hear is because most Threads users aren’t “fringe” enough. That’s not going to attract a lot of people to Mastodon or Lemmy itself.
Maybe bots. But right now, it’s the best twitter alternative.
People have gotten so used to the “simplicity” and “ease” of other platforms that any change to them is a nuisance.
I haven’t seen a lot of hate on it coming from regular people, but rather from those who try to cultivate an audience online. Content creators, influencers and others alike seem to see mastodon (and potentially any decentralized system?) as worse because it inherently prevents them from being guaranteed to be reachable by the whole community all the time (in case of defederation for instance), or to migrate their following along when switching instance
Not sure where you got that impression. I recently joined Lemmy after reddit exceeded my tolerance for suckiness and bullshit. I still use reddit occasionally (my 3rd party app still works) and i have only ever seen people posting suggestions to move to the fediverse, not posting that lemmy/mastodon are bad. There is a lack of mature apps (memmy is the only ios one i think) but this will improve no doubt. I think the main long term risk is around funding. Hosting a popular instance will quickly get more expensive as the userbase grows.
yeah lack of mature apps is real, it’s a big issue on android. on iOS at least they have that paid client ivory which is pretty good
Same reason people fanboy over anything. They have made a personal investment in something, be it time or money, and are now trying to justify it by saying everything else is trash.
Then this gets reinforced by their bubble and more and more extreme opinions form. Reasonable people don’t behave this way.
People have gotten used to centralization. With most current social media, you download one app, create an account, and start following. So when people try, say, Mastodon, they expect it to be a Twitter clone. Then they have to deal with things like instances and 8t goes counter to their expectations.
I think that over time, development of more beginner-friendly clients will smooth out the expectation vs reality disconnect newcomers experience, as the advantages of decentralization become clear.
Users: Lack of knowledge
Companies: We can’t bleed the users dry
It’s hard to understand and the average person doesn’t want to think about any technical details when using a social media platform.
Fediverse apps require you to know what’s going on a lot more than something like Twitter or Reddit.
open my note bla bla bla tankie bla bla bla commie . somthin like that i think. joke asside fediverse ect dont work with algorytme wich mean no one here take your hand and be like : hey look that cool no?. you need search yourself place you like. like… well internet 10 years ago. like on deviant art.
Most likely a couple of reasons: Stupidity Ignorance
