There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

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?

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.

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

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.

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)

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.

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.

deadcatbounce ,
@deadcatbounce@reddthat.com avatar

Make it look like a centralised system initially. Provide a portal to a pre vetted/chosen instance that is accepting new members in their locale/country, that is the same for everyone.

At least they can get in easily to see what it’s about.

Cadeillac ,
@Cadeillac@lemmy.world avatar

How hard would it be to create a little quiz that directs or chooses an instance based on your interests?

smeg ,

I think the hard part would be keeping it up to date as instances change

Cadeillac ,
@Cadeillac@lemmy.world avatar

True. I forgot how easily an instance could disappear overnight. Happened to me in another instance

Usernameblankface ,
@Usernameblankface@lemmy.world avatar

Don’t.

I like what this is, I don’t want it to become everything for everyone

lightnsfw ,

Agreed. Look what Reddit turned into. Better to have fewer but higher quality comments than a sea of the same tired jokes and ancedotes over an over again.

Lost_My_Mind ,

I said since I got here that the actual sign up process IS the hardest part. For exactly the reasons you said.

Each instance has it’s own personality. As much as EVERY user here will hate to hear this, you need to centralize the decentralized. Have a single point of entry. Signup at Lemmy.com

Now you’re [email protected]. and you’re told that you have 6 months to pick an instance. And here’s a guide to all known instances, with a wiki style explaination of what each instance’s personality is. With an expandable list of each federated and defederated instance.

Now once they switch to their new “home” all their comments stay in their comment history. Everything in their profile comes with them. EVERY instance in the fediverse needs to adhere to a set of protocols. So that when they move instances, the only thing that changes is if you look at a post they made last week, it no longer shows [email protected] it now shows [email protected]. and if in 2 years you move again now it says [email protected] even for posts you made 2 years prior. It always lists your current account. Even if you move to Mbin. Now it says [email protected]

It’s a learn, and grow as you go situation.

Oh, and if an instance ever shuts down, those profiles aren’t lost. They revert back to Lemmy.com, and the 6 month rule is back in effect.

But you have to anticipate the user. Not control the user. And right now the user understands centralized. So centralize the decentralized, and THEN teach them slowly how it works. I understand today leaps and bounds more than I did 4 months ago. I’m still not sure Lemmy.World is my final home. I’m trying out piefed. I’m probably going to try out Mbin. And I’m sure I’ll discover new things. But on day 1, I was like “…do what now? What’s an instance? What’s decentralized?”

And NOW I can see that the Nintendo account I follow on Mastodon for the past year isn’t really Nintendo. It’s [email protected] and EVERY post gets auto “boosted”. A year ago I thought that was literally Nintendo. I was surprised they were not only OBSESSIVELY active, but that they had a Mastodon account at all.

You gotta remember, this is how most people will walk into the fediverse on day 1. Not knowing how shit works, and if it doesn’t work for them, they’re out. You can teach them later. But also right now the fediverse as a whole is fragmented as shit. There’s decentralized, and then theres disjointed.

You’ll notice that I post regularly to THIS community. With constant questions. I’M taking the active approach to learning. The average user won’t know that they’re stupid. They’ll think the fediverse is stupid because it doesn’t work the way they’re used to. Most people don’t have the self reflection I have, nor the constant curiousity. If I don’t know a thing, it bothers me. If most people don’t know how a smoke alarm works, they fon’t give a shit. Whereas I watch a youtube video for almost an hour. Did you know there’s actually several different types of smoke detection? And that one type is very much more prone to false positives, and worse, lack of positive positives due to light? See, most people will find that boring, not give a shit, and move on. So YOU gotta teach them with annoying popups. “Hey, the fediverse is actually self hosted, and right now you’re on the instance of Lemmy.com! Whats that mean? Well…” blah blah blah, you guys already know this part, but that’s the message they should get on day 1. Teach them they need to understand what an instance is, and how to pick an instance that works for them. Then they can migrate there. If that instance is ever no longer good enough, they can migrate elsewhere. Even to Mbin, even to piefed, wherever! One account, all the fediverse.

And here’s the best part. They can go to fediverse.com and log in regardless of which instance they’re on. Just type user is [email protected] password is ********* and login.

And now all the decentralized is centralized. Without losing the benefits of being decentralized. Because it IS still decentralized. But most drivers aren’t mechanics. They use the service, but they don’t need to know the ins and outs. They just need to be able to use it, without it being confusing for THEM.

The hardest thing I’ve noticed is that linux user types don’t grasp is that just because THEY understand something as easy, doesn’t mean EVERYONE finds it easy. And there are a LOT of linux mindset people here. You may “get it”, but that doesn’t make it naturally intuitive. The fediverse is confusing as shit. Each part works differently. Has a different layout. Has a different interface. Operates differently. Which is a stark contrast to facebook users who just say “DO THE THING!” and suddenly 70 boomers are giving them thumbs up and emojis for a quilt they sewed and sharing the patchwork on.

Everyone here is saying to defederate from Threads, because it’s facebook, and I get why. But are you seriously going to cut off the biggest by far userbase to federate with you, simply because you don’t want corporate integration? Facebook still wouldn’t own the fediverse, but now something like 80 million users will start asking questions about the fediverse. Yes, it’s all old people, and people we would rather not interact with, but guess what. They don’t want to interact with you in [email protected] either. They don’t want to be in [email protected] either. They’re going to create their own communities, which have no interest to you, but boost the fediverse’s numbers. By the millions. And now maybe facebook as a whole integrates. Maybe reddit sees the momentum and they integrate. Maybe hoogle sees the momentum.

And pretty soon the fediverse becomes the default layout of how the internet works. And the decentralized nature means that no corporate entity CAN own it. They can put ads on individual instances that they own…but they can’t control all the instances. And people who don’t care about those ads will stay there. People who don’t will go to other duplicate instances.

But to defederate from threads before ANY of this takes place is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, while daily seeing those same people ask “How do we grow the fediverse?”

THATS HOW!!! Ok, I’ve ranted enough…

Blaze ,
@Blaze@feddit.org avatar

Now once they switch to their new “home” all their comments stay in their comment history. Everything in their profile comes with them.

Very difficult technically. Mastodon doesn’t allow this either, I don’t know any Fediverse platform which allows this. If someone knows one, please share

Mastodon currently does not support importing posts or media due to technical limitations

docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/

About Threads, have you been to Facebook lately? The level of conspiracy, bigotry etc is over the roof.

And on top of that, millions of users federate here from Threads

  • they start upvoting, commenting in the established communities, drowning every existing user with their numbers
  • previous Fediverse users start to recreate their own communities without the Threads users, just because of the population differences
L0rdMathias ,

You don’t. If they don’t wanna be here, don’t take on this huge crusade to get them here. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. They must take the final step themselves.

Focus on making lemme a desirable place to be, less on getting people to use the communication tool you happen to prefer.

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.

maegul ,
@maegul@lemmy.ml avatar
  1. Fix picking an instance. It’s an irredeemably bad UX, even for tech people who could run an instance if they wanted to. Gotta remove that as an initial UX barrier first, which would require a new layer of system with integration with all of the clients.
  2. Accept that this isn’t like mainstream social media and likely never will be, even if instance picking becomes easier for newcomers. So instead focus on what can be done well here. IMO it’s customisable community building.

Currently all the big fediverse platforms kinda suck at this, in part because it likely requires a bunch of features, but also because they’re all made in imitation of big social platforms that were always less “homely” and more engagement farms.

To bring normies, something new and unique needs to be offered. IMO there could be a rich ecosystem of content and structures and communities that draws people in.

My fear is that the protocol and federation are the limiting factors on this, and so I suspect some restructuring or redesign is necessary.

FeelzGoodMan420 ,

The Fediverse needs a hell of a lot of work before we can even consider mass adoption.

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.

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

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •