I've had more than one person tell me they don't think microblogging is worth any learning curve whatsoever. They'd rather not use anything than have a single conversation about federation or feed building.

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.

In order to get more people on Fedi, we have to get more people on Fedi. People will go whereever everybody else already is. That's the only thing keeping Twitter alive, even though almost everyone there will openly admit they hate it, no one will actually leave Twitter because everyone else is still on Twitter.

It's a chicken-and-egg problem that I don't think Fedi can actively do anything to solve. Or rather, I think it's too late to solve. If there's any competitor that has a chance, BlueSky has established a much bigger userbase in far less time, and that's enough momentum to potentially get there. Anyone who's leaving Twitter will go to BlueSky before they ever look at Fedi.

I'd like less focus on the network and more on individual servers, with their own names, policies, and reputations. Then users aren't thinking about whether to join one huge network - they're thinking about whether that server is the kind of place they want to be. (https://wandering.shop is a good example of an instance that is explicitly going for certain vibes.)

It would allow individual pre-existing communities to create their own spaces, ones which would prioritize those communities' experiences and needs over their connection to the rest of the fediverse. I'm imagining something like Dreamwidth or Fur Affinity or the many old-fashioned forums out there, just with the ability to follow users or navigate to topics on other instances if you know their names or URLs. I'm really not worried about discoverability outside the instance - to me, the instance is the platform, and anything outside of it is just an additional thing I can get to if I want it.

That being said, I think this approach is probably incompatible with trying to create a general-purpose social media site that also attracts a large number of users, at least not without a hefty marketing budget.

@dch82@lemmy.zip @fediverse@lemmy.world

With better design and better branding. These poorly illustrated mouse lookin icons are not helping us in any way.

Bluesky is FOSS tho...