For sure, they also don't congregate in Williamsburg much anymore.

The feedback loop is the most disturbing part, IMO. You have an algorithm deciding what gets popular, which means creatives hoping to be financially sustainable have to cater to it to some degree, which reinforces the algorithm and removes a little bit of uniqueness from society.

Creative people have always had to consider"what sells" to some degree if they want to make money from their effort, but we've gone beyond artists making "art with some degrees of marketability" into making products called "art" with little of the emotional/intellectual "challenge' that comes with unique works.

It’s like telling someone with a shitty landlord to move to a new free house which they get to own

Very well said all around, (and in many fewer words than it took me) I may actually quote you in the future! Hadn't seen that 2018(!) Esquire article before today either. Kind of sad "Twitter without Nazis" wasn't a more compelling selling point. Just speaks to the power of network effects, I suppose.

The success metric is a vibrant, happy community, not MAUs or engagement numbers, so they make decisions accordingly.

YES well said. An instance is measured by it's quality, not it's profitability.

I fear if these federated systems do grow popular enough

If an instance did grow "too big to moderate", it would surely be defederated from, yeah? I'm struggling to think of a situation where responsible admins from well-moderated instances would willingly subject their users to spammers from an instance (no matter how big) that can't control itself.

Yes my thoughts exactly. When email was too confusing ISPs included it pre-configured as a perk initially and Gmail came later.

My feelings in regards to social media are stop the bleeding first, remove society's dependence on X, Meta, and other for-profit platforms. Then we can worry about educating "normal" people on Federation, ActivityPub, etc.

If it's still too complicated for someone after reading this I think it's safe to say they're a lost cause

Thanks lol

The "mall" analogy works for Reddit because the point of it existing is to buy things there. Lemmy instances and communities only exist because people want to make space for conversation. If spaces are empty, I see that as a sign that someone, somewhere cares so much that they will happy build the space and wait for others to arrive.

You are most welcome!

This... is actually a great idea. Memes should be fun. If they're not, that's probably a sign I should put the phone down.