[redundantly]

> Federated services will never become mainstream

That's kind of the point

Mastadon, Lemmy, Etc, they're not replacements for Reddit or Facebook. They're an alternative.

A social network doesn't require millions of users to be useful. It's okay that they're not for everyone.

> Centralization works. It's convenient. It doesn't require a user guide. It's approachable for laypersons.

For a technically inclined person on a largely technology focused forum, you sound an awful lot like a luddite.

There used to be a high barrier to entry for accessing the internet and making use of it. That changed over time. The same will likely happen for these types of non-centralised services.

[nullityrofl]

> you sound an awful lot like a luddite.

I'm not sure if this is meant to be some kind of childish insult or gotcha but no: I'm talking in representation of luddites.

> A social network doesn't require millions of users to be useful. It's okay that they're not for everyone.

That might be true if you only ever want to read technical things with a technical audience in a technical forum. But that's not why Reddit is valuable or popular. Lemmy is an alternative to Reddit like water is an alternative to beer. Sure, they exist in the same kind of universe, but no sane person would tell you to switch from water to beer because they don't meet the same needs.

Reddit is popular because I can read /r/netsec one day and /r/lawncare the next. Because when I wanted to learn to make my own coffee at home I knew I could just go to /r/espresso and get a 101. When my 3D printer broke, I knew I could go to /r/bambulab and ask for help. When the historic winter we just had in NorCal ripped shingles off my roof, I knew I could go to /r/roofing to ask for advice.

Sure, you might want to live in a world where you only talk to software engineers about software and maybe Lemmy is a good fit for that.

That wasn't my point, though.

[redundantly]

> I'm not sure if this is meant to be some kind of childish insult or gotcha but no: I'm talking in representation of luddites.

No, it's an observation.

You're insisting things have to work a certain way in order for them to have value and be usable. Things don't have to operate in a specific, fixed way.

Saying decentralisation will never catch on because it doesn't fit your description of accessibility is like saying someone won't be able to operate in society without knowing how to read or write cursive.

Things change. How people learn about stuff, how they use technologies, how they think about them, it all changes. It was once a widely shared opinion that computers would never catch on. Or that the internet wouldn't catch on. Or any other number of things wouldn't catch on. And they did, despite anyone's objections that it would.

As people's mindsets change, as technology advances, so will how it's used. And you don't seem to be open to that idea. Hence the luddite comparison.

[nullityrofl]

> You're insisting things have to work a certain way in order for them to have value and be usable. Things don't have to operate in a specific, fixed way.

No, I'm not. I'm staying on the topic of the thread you're posting in: Reddit's future and where people may or may not migrate to. You're doing exactly what I accused the creators of Fediverse technologies are doing: fixating on the ideology and taking an opportunity to preach.

I see the value of the Fediverse. I see the intent. I understand it. It's not complex.

But it isn't a replacement for Reddit. I don't even think you're arguing that. I think you're trying to get me to debate some strawman. I never said the Fediverse has no value. I said it has no mainstream appeal so long as people prioritize the ideology of the technology over the use case.

> Things change. How people learn about stuff, how they use technologies, how they think about them, it all changes. It was once a widely shared opinion that computers would never catch on. Or that the internet wouldn't catch on. Or any other number of things wouldn't catch on. And they did, despite anyone's objections that it would.

This is an argument that things _can_ change not that things _will_ change. Plenty of things never caught on. On that note, Diaspora existed as a widely available alternative to Digg when Digg died.

But people ended up on Reddit anyway.

[redundantly]

> Federated services will never become mainstream

> Centralization works... It's approachable for laypersons.

You are arguing that things will not change because it doesn't work in a very specific way. I'm replying to what you said. This isn't a straw man argument.

There doesn't need to be a direct replacement for Reddit. Things don't have to continue to work like that. Your assumption of what's difficult to do isn't an absolute. People have shown they're able to adopt new ideas, new ways of doing things.

> I'm talking in representation of luddites.

You're not giving enough credit to society. They're not cattle. They don't just sit in a field and chew cud.

Mindsets and ideologies change. How technology is used changes. Your insistence that there has to be a direct, fully equivalent replacement for Reddit to be successful is incorrect.

[nullityrofl]

I'd take a wager that we'll see Digg 3.0/Reddit 2.0 before we'll see widespread adoption of the Fediverse.

I don't think people are cattle and I think that is a deliberate attempt to misrepresent my position. I don't think people are cattle. I think they are anything but: I think they have made a conscious decision about what they want and value.

What I think is that people have become accustomed to having a wide array of information on a wide array of topics easily indexed and accessible. What I think is that people value that accessibility of information. And I think that products like Lemmy don't meet that requirement and so something like Reddit will always exist, regardless of the centralized corporate ownership.

[redundantly]

> I don't think people are cattle and I think that is a deliberate attempt to misrepresent my position.

I'm not attempting to misrepresent you, that's just how you're coming across. You're effectively saying that people are either too lazy or not competent enough to use services that aren't packaged up and served directly to them. Hence the analogy.

> something like Reddit will always exist, regardless of the centralized corporate ownership.

Maybe, but that's not the point. You're claiming that decentralised services won't see wide spread adoption because it doesn't conform to how things work on Reddit. My point is it's narrow minded to have that mindset.

[jangxx]

>There used to be a high barrier to entry for accessing the internet and making use of it.

While this was a bit before my time, I can definitely relate to spending hours or days to get something to work that I want to use. I think the difference is just that all the fediverse services don't really seem all that useful. If I open the frontpage of any "reddit alternative" right now, the top posts have a few hundred votes and a few dozen comments at most. There is simply too little activity here (that I care about) that would make it worth it for me to really get into it. I browsed reddit for entertainment and discussions and right now, none of the fediverse services I've looked at actually provide that.

[moffkalast]

> A social network doesn't require millions of users to be useful.

Well unless you want to cover some only some very specific niches, yes it very much does.