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How do we get "normies" to adopt the Fediverse?

This is a follow-up from my previous thread.

The thread discussed the question of why people tend to choose proprietary microblogging platfroms (i.e. Bluesky or Threads) over the free and open source microblogging platform, Mastodon.

The reasons, summarised by @noodlejetski are:

  1. marketing
  2. not having to pick the instance when registering
  3. people who have experienced Mastodon’s hermetic culture discouraging others from joining
  4. algorithms helping discover people and content to follow
  5. marketing

and I’m saying that as a firm Mastodon user and believer.

Now that we know why people move to proprietary microblogging platforms, we can also produce methods to counter this.

How do we get “normies” to adopt the Fediverse?

BeAware ,
@BeAware@social.beaware.live avatar

@dch82 first, "normies" have to not get harassed when they come here.

Unfortunately the biggest Fedi software refuses to add automated reporting of offensive posts so if it's not reported, the admins won't even see it.

People coming from corporate social media are used to ignoring the report button because in their experience, it either doesn't work, or gets ignored by admins anyway.

We need automated reporting.

@fediverse

Blaze ,
@Blaze@feddit.org avatar

Federated reporting would help too

AterNox ,
@AterNox@atergens.com avatar

@BeAware @dch82 Maybe im a little lost. Isn't there a block and report button on Mastodon? I'm using Misskey and both buttons seem to work. I mean im reporting to myself, but the button seems to work. What kind of automated blocking are you trying to do here?

BeAware ,
@BeAware@social.beaware.live avatar

@AterNox @dch82 blocking and reporting work fine.

However, people from corporate social media won't report posts because in their experience, it either doesn't get taken seriously or the admins ignore it. Corporate social media sites don't exactly act on reports in a timely manner.

I'm on my own instance, I moderate for myself. I don't want slurs to exist on my instance at all. However, if I don't see them with my own eyes, I cannot ban the user.

PS. I'm talking about banning users that are harassing others on the instance level. These are user actions. I am an admin. I run my own instance.

@fediverse

AterNox ,
@AterNox@atergens.com avatar

@BeAware @dch82 So Mastodon not have a wordlist you can populate that "removes" posts with the keywords you provide? It took me a while to find it in Misskey, works like a charm,

BeAware ,
@BeAware@social.beaware.live avatar

@AterNox @dch82 doesn't exist for admins. It works on a "user" level. But that won't remove the post or data from the instance, it just "hides" it so the single user can't see.

@fediverse

cm0002 ,

I’m confused, do you mean like automated enforcement rules/algorithms like big SM has? I.e. if user gets reported for breaking Y rule X amount of times ban user for Z amount of time and forward to admin for further action?

BeAware ,
@BeAware@social.beaware.live avatar

@cm0002 no, I want automated reports.

A user using the n word, full on with the hard R, isn't gonna be a good post. It should be automatically reported to me so that I can judge context and take action.

If a user doesn't report it, I won't see it.

I'm on my own instance, I am the user.

If I don't report it, nobody sees it.

That's dumb.

@fediverse

cm0002 ,

Ah, makes sense now, that is dumb. I can totally see why they would have issues with automated enforcement, but what you described I don’t see why anyone would be against it lol

ALostInquirer ,

By automated reporting do you mean something like filters on the backend to flag offensive posts per some custom settings?

osaerisxero ,

I unironically think it would be easier to train users that the report button works now than it would to get automated reporting that was worth a damn implemented.

Lost_My_Mind ,

We need automated reporting.

I’m fine with auto REPORTING, but the actual moderation needs to be a human. Auto moderation is bad. It gets things wrong. It’s how I got banned from both twitter (calm down, this was back in 2018 before it was an elon owned nazi cesspool), and reddit.

On twitter I saw a funny video that was posted, and I replied “Aw man, that killed me”.

I was banned for “inciting death threats”

BeAware ,
@BeAware@social.beaware.live avatar

@Lost_My_Mind yeah, just reporting.

I want to do the actual judgement, but if I don't know the post exists, I can't judge anything and it makes me so mad that possible racist stuff can exist on my instance without my knowledge because I havent "seen" it.

@fediverse

shortypig ,

I’m guessing a lot of comments will be of the “why do we want to?” variety.

stsquad ,

Quite. Go to the big services that know how to moderate and maintain (and importantly pay for) a public square. But also encourage the interesting ones enable federation for wider coverage.

lemmeBe ,

I’m a developer, and it was a pain picking an instance. You start reading about them, and it turns out one’s censored, the other one’s communist, third one doesn’t cooperate with the other ones so you can’t see anything…

As long as it is like this, I don’t believe mass adoption is feasible. I would’ve given up because it takes a lot of time compared to just registering and off you go, but I was interested to see what’s all the ruckus after reddit started with censorship. Maybe interesting to mention that I was never an active reddit member (not one post there).

sunzu2 ,

Just send them to Lemmy world... Edge and shit lords will get banned and figure how this bitch works lol

Normies being on Lemmy world is better than. Reddit in my book

rglullis ,
@rglullis@communick.news avatar

And then we will get more communities being created on Lemmy world, and then the whole Fediverse depends on one single instance. This seems like a good idea at first, but won’t stand the test of time.

I am trying to convince more instance admins to install Fediverser on their servers, so that we can have a way to point people to one site that can distribute the users and help with onboarding and discovery. But so far none of the admins really seem to be interested in the having to deal with the potential influx of users from Reddit.

threelonmusketeers ,

Just send them to Lemmy world

I agree that having a “default instance” would greatly help with onboarding new users, but as many others have said before, centralizing on the largest instance is not a good idea.

There are several other “general purpose” Lemmy instances. Why not send everyone to lemm.ee, until its size is close to lemmy world? At that point, start sending everyone to lemmy.sdf.org or lemmy.zip.

sunzu2 ,

Great point!

I don't know what other instances are viable bit we should have a place to get current preferred.

I just tell my peeps Lemmy.world it is like reddit with out going into details about fediverse since they ignore me once I start talking "federation"

JubilantJaguar ,

The problem with this approach is that your peeps won’t see any reason to go there if it’s the same as the R-site only exponentially less popular.

There needs to be an understandable USP.

Perhaps: “But without ads. Ever. Anywhere.” Works for me and I know what an ad-blocker is, unlike a ton of normies.

maegul ,
@maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

Yea, instead of a default instance, I think there should be a default system that assigns you to one of a set of participating “general” instances without you having to decide or think about it.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@feddit.org avatar

Doesn’t join-lemmy.org do that?

maegul ,
@maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

AFAICT, it helps you pick an instance based on your interests, which only barely helps with the problem. If you’re new to the ecosystem, you typically just want to join in and see what’s going on before making any decisions. And you probably don’t want to bother with selecting criteria for a selection guide at all.

What I’m suggesting is clicking a button “Sign Up”, enter credentials, verify and done. Then allow the whole finding an instance process pan out naturally.

Part of the issue IMO is that how an instance advertises itself isn’t necessarily how it will be seen by someone … they need to see it for themselves.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@feddit.org avatar

Indeed, nowadays I just send people to Lemm.ee

  • neutral name (sorry SJW)
  • second biggest instance
  • almost no defederation
  • no topic or country specific (I mean, technically Estonia, but everything happens in English, compared to feddit.org for instance)
Cracks_InTheWalls ,
@Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works avatar

-Neutral name (sorry SJW)

Boo this person! (I kid, don’t boo them, they’re doing good work and I understand if not everyone wants to be a sh.it.head)

Boozilla ,
@Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

More people would be great, especially for niche communities.

I don’t see #2 as that big of a problem. Do we want people who won’t expend any effort to join? I guess everyone sees the line between accessible and “dumbed down” a little bit differently. I’m not saying #2 is great. I recognize it is an obstacle. But it’s also kind of the point of Lemmy…in the sense that this is not a monolithic corporate one-size-fits-all kind of endeavor. In a way, the obstacle also serves as a teaching moment, if you will, of how this thing even works.

Item 4 seems a bit chicken-and-egg to me. But my guess is, not being able to find those communities isn’t nearly as big of a problem as those communities not having any content / participants. I can see the argument that one causes the other, but I haven’t found it very challenging to find those empty places. It’s just not much fun to hang out there by yourself.

oxjox ,
@oxjox@lemmy.ml avatar

By permitting advertising.

“Normies” are not “microbloggers”. Most people just want to follow what their friends and family and news organizations and “influencers” are posting.

My biggest gripe with the fediverse (indirectly) is that all the information I would get on Twitter about my city is not available to me - concert announcements, restaurant specials, road closures, major news, hobby meetups, etc. They’re posting on Facebook and Instagram (which is IMO the worst of all social platforms) and slowly adopting Threads. My issue with these platforms is mostly regarding the algorithm deciding what it thinks you want. This is driven by advertising.

Twitter didn’t really pick up steam until celebrities and news outlets were posting and engaging on the platform. Then they pushed hard for ads to increase revenue and expand features and stability (for better or worse). Then they just got greedy. Then they were sold for the dumbest amount of money in the history of sales.

Getting normies here means getting influencers here. Influencers want to make money for being assholes. If you don’t want influencers and ads here, don’t ask for the normies to come. Accept the beauty of this micro micro blogging platform. If you want to share outside the open fediverse, embrace cross posting to the closed platforms. That’s kind of the whole point of it. You can post in your tiny little corner while still engaging with the more popular platforms.

TL;DR: be careful what you wish for.

Boozilla ,
@Boozilla@lemmy.world avatar

By permitting advertising.

Reaches for pitchfork.

TL;DR: be careful what you wish for.

Puts pitchfork down, embarrassed cough.

Today ,

I don’t work in tech and I’m not a video game player. Am i a normie? I stay on Facebook because of the things you mentioned - i want to know how my old aunt is doing, get the link to my cousin’s music performances, see what play or concert is showing this weekend, and post to my neighborhood when my dogs escape. I only used Twitter to follow local bars, restaurants, and music venues for happy hours and event info. That kinda died with covid so i closed my Twitter account. I don’t really understand influencers. I’d love to see more local content here but I’m not sure we have the people to support it. I guess the way to start is to share the local info i get from Facebook to the Texas and dfw communities here, but that doesn’t draw more people. Among my friends, r/ is sort of made fun of as something their husbands follow for jokes, memes, and boobs.

oxjox ,
@oxjox@lemmy.ml avatar

I should edit my comment and add “post rage bait”.

You’re absolutely right. I’d describe myself similarly to you. I even created a local community here for my city. But it feels like I’m speaking quietly on top of a mountain while the nearest person is a time zone away. Perhaps a handful of people would stop by and subscribe to the content but this isn’t about subscribing - it’s about engaging. Communities are about exchanging ideas. Posting something that compels people to engage is one way to increase activity. As more people notice the community, they’ll be more likely to engage when there’s enough noise around that doesn’t single them out too much.

The major social platforms know this. This is why they promote trash over quality information. This is why I get frustrated on Instagram because it continues to show me posts from two or three days ago notifying me that I missed an exciting event.

You can post all the great informative content you want on your little corner of the fediverse but without engagement, is it really there?

Blaze ,
@Blaze@feddit.org avatar

I even created a local community here for my city.

Which city is it?

UnaSolaEstrellaLibre ,

Exactly why fediverse will never go mainstream with the normies.

veeesix ,
@veeesix@lemmy.ca avatar

I guess this ties into marketing, but I think rebranding the “fediverse” as the “social web” would be a good start. It has a broad neutral tone that I think is easier for regular people to latch on to.

WatDabney ,

With all due respect, fuck the normies. The fediverse is better off without them.

sunzu2 ,

We all love bashing out less techie friends but dunking on them is counter productive!

Like it or not they make the main/lame stream. We need fedi to go mainstream to deny corpo trash profits.

Like it or not, normies must be onboarded!

crawancon ,

but once there is a big pond with a lot of fish, there will be sharks.

sunzu2 ,

bots, feds and shills will always fall a school of fish for hunting :/

lightnsfw ,

We need fedi to go mainstream to deny corpo trash profits.

Why? Who cares if we don’t have to interact with them? Becoming mainstream was the downfall of Reddit.

sunzu2 ,

If you don't forge your own destiny, then somebody will do it for you aka reddit.

Reddit failed due to governance and centralization issue. Not BC it was mainstream IMHO

lightnsfw ,

You don’t think the massive amount of repetitive jokes and reposts and overall shitty attention whoring content was a problem on Reddit?

sunzu2 ,

I would posit that the main/lame stream is not the actor doing that shit but rather that their presence attracts bad faith actors.

kbal ,
@kbal@fedia.io avatar

Maybe I don't want the "normies" around, whoever they are, but personally I would like to see a lot more people joining in such as Go players, Skyrim modders, situationists, auto mechanics, British panel show enthusiasts, death metal guitarists, discordians, card sharks, magicians, acid heads, skydivers, xylophonists, and amateur zookeepers. This part of fedi has more than enough politics and computers and too little everything else.

WatDabney ,

Just be patient.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@feddit.org avatar

Feel free to have a look at !newcommunities for active niche communities

gregor ,

Bluesky is FOSS tho…

dch82 OP ,

what are you talking about? bluesky isn’t open source, the protocol is, and it reeks of embrace, extend, extinguish by branding itself as an open network

Tywele ,

How can it be EEE if it’s their own protocol?

Also there is much more open source from Bluesky: github.com/bluesky-social

dch82 OP ,

I don’t actually mean it’s EEE but that whatever they are doing feels similar; besides, with one big server controlled by a corporation in the centre of their ecosystem, they could “defederate” any rising AT-compatible competitor servers out of existence.

They might not now, but don’t ever trust a company to not do this.

Tywele ,

What would be the point of putting in the effort to make Bluesky or other ATProtocol apps selfhostable if they didn’t want people to do that? Doesn’t make any sense

dch82 OP ,

The danger (as they can see) are not selfhosters, but larger competitive instances. They don’t allow AT servers of over 10 users and 1500 events a hour. This is clearly targeted to prevent large-scale instances (fediverse style) from being created.

How many bluesky users actually selfhost?

Tywele ,

As your link states these are just early access limitations.

chiisana ,
@chiisana@lemmy.chiisana.net avatar

Stop addressing them as “normies” would be a great start.

Can’t speak for rest of the Fediverse as I’m not super active on microblogging anymore, but at least here on Lemmy, there is such a strong “in” culture and quirky skewed perception of the world, and often times come off as actively hostile against those that do not share the same quirky skewed world view. The anti-AI, anti-corporate, would rather shoot myself in the foot if it’s not FOSS, etc kind of views, with their own strong vocal proponents, comes off as unwelcoming. People are addicted to socials because of the positivity they can get, not the negative sentiments that’s often echo’ed.

Amongst those that doesn’t share the kind of view, you’d already be looking at an extreme small minority that might be willing to give the platform a try, but as long as the skewed perception of the world dominates the discussions, you can expect them to go back to main stream centralized platforms where they can get more main stream view points based discussions.

GBU_28 ,

Lots of content here feels like someone beta testing their manifesto the FBI will find

nondescripthandle ,

Thats the neat part, you don’t. Social medias value isn’t determined by it’s tech. Its value is determined by who and what you can interact with. For example, people wont leave Facebook because everyone they know is on facebook because people won’t leave Facebook. Twitter is literally run by a nazi at this point and still it’s the same story where Mastodon and Bluesky aren’t even close. Same thing for reddit and lemmy. Lemmy simply doesn’t have the content reddit does, look no further than sports subreddits where any given game has a live game thread with a hundred or more unique commentors.

If you want mode people to come here you’re going to need to do two things. One you need to post content people want to see, and two you need to get very very lucky because as it stands if you don’t care enough about decentralization to lose out of a lot of content, theres literally no reason to be here. Its a long slow road and you’re still going to need reddit to do something stupid before we see another growth spike.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@feddit.org avatar

if you don’t care enough about decentralization to lose out of a lot of content, theres literally no reason to be here.

Officially supported clients which are not the Reddit app

nondescripthandle ,

Ahh good call, I hated their official app.

secret300 ,

I think picking an instance is just something people will have to learn and get used to as that’s very essential to the fediverse experience.

I personally hate algorithms picking shit for me and that’s why I use lemmy and why I used reddit back when it first came out. I search out and pick what content I see on my feed.

I definitely agree with more marketing. It’s insane to think there’s a lot of people that still use reddit and never even heard of lemmy

hendrik , (edited )

Create a nice atmosphere.

Make it simple and remove any technical barriers. They should be able to google "Fediverse" click on the first link. Choose a username and be on their way. Find the app with the same name and install it in 2 minutes.

The network effect is a thing. They need to already find lots of their friends, interesting people and their favorite stars there.

And it has to be easy to discover them, if we don't have an "algorithm" that suggests content.

The_Picard_Maneuver ,
@The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world avatar

Since most people are talking about the sign-up barriers, I’ll mention culture and reputation.

I love Lemmy and Mastodon, but whenever I’ve seen the fediverse brought up elsewhere, someone inevitably shuts down any curiosity by suggesting that it’s a political echo-chamber. I don’t think that’s accurate for all of it, but if that reputation is out there, we probably need to make an effort to show that there’s a broader appeal. If the average person is expecting the fediverse to be the left-wing equivalent of something like “Truth Social”, I could understand the reluctance to adopt it.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@feddit.org avatar

Nowadays, I point to show that it’s more than just politics, news and tech

monobot ,

Every social media has the same problem, reddit is on one side, twitter on the other, facebook is filtering by their own goals.

People here are just a bit different angle. But each instance is a little different, lemmy.world is more reddit like, lemmy.ml is leftist, hexbear is… something too, there are probably some right wing instances. Much more diverse than other networks and I enjoy seeing all those different point of views.

This is current problem in society that we don’t tolerate different opinion.

The_Picard_Maneuver ,
@The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world avatar

This is current problem in society that we don’t tolerate different opinion.

Exactly this. When online platforms become too homogeneous, any deviation from the typical opinions that are shared seems like a terrible, inexcusable offense that someone must do something about - thus, reinforcing the bubble.

We need to be able to disagree with each other and still get along.

earth_walker ,
@earth_walker@lemmy.world avatar

Fedi client app developers need to design fedi client apps in a holistic way to include a custom server (as with Mammoth’s moth.social) or create an account for the user on one of a curated selection of other servers, without forcing the user to choose one.

It’s a severe problem with trying to grow fedi that general users are expected to understand how servers work and make an informed decision about which one to join. General users don’t care about this topic and will quickly turn away when it is forced upon them. That’s why the client app needs to handle this for the user without making a fuss about it.

These apps also need good discovery features and feeds with posts that are trending generally and for specific topics. Then devs need to make money with those apps somehow, then they need to market those apps (at this point, it goes beyond just “devs” and expands into an organization with a marketing department, etc.).

Then, hopefully fedi’s inherent advantages of interoperability and resilience will naturally cause people to choose these user-friendly, effectively marketed fedi client apps over things like Instagram, Tiktok, etc. After all, if it can’t compete on its own merits with all other factors being equal, there’s no point to it for most people.

breakfastmtn ,
@breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca avatar

To do that in the short term, the Fediverse probably just needs more money. The competitors have a fuckload of it and can introduce features way faster because of it. I think Mastodon’s been “exploring/planning” quote posts for like 18 months and haven’t even begun working on it. I’d love to have user-controllable, optional algorithmic feeds in Mastodon (not replacing the main reverse-chron feed) but I can’t imagine it existing in less than 5 years.

Mods cracking down on the plague of ‘polite’ harassment (ex. passive-aggressive FYIs about CWs) wouldn’t hurt. It’s not as bad as it used to be but it’s chased a ton of people away.

I think in the long term the Fediverse has an advantage. The only real goal Fediverse services have is to get better for users. At some point, Bluesky and Threads will have to make money or die. I don’t think they have a way to do that without damaging the user experience.

mozz , (edited )
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar
  1. Stop calling it “the fediverse”
nokturne213 ,

Every time I hear Fediverse I imagine a universe full of nothing but different versions of Kevin Federline.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@feddit.org avatar

It’s already happening.

People say Lemmy when they mean the link aggregator part of the Fediverse.

People say Mastodon when they mean the microblogging part.

And really okay, at least people get it: one name, one concept

GBU_28 ,

It sounds like a furry cinematic universe

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