[klabb3]

Well we may learn the hard way. Lots and lots of good old regular people have quit Facebook and stay off Twitter and many other engagement-optimized platforms. These companies have a poor reputation, for good reason. It’s just not 2010 anymore, and the cracks are starting to show. If a new platform such as bluesky, activitypub or Nostr becomes dominant, people will certainly point to this era in particular as a precursor.

Network effects are real, but appear insignificant until they’re in our faces. The fact that it’s currently a minority is expected, that’s just how network effects work. It was just a minority on Reddit when Digg was the place to be as well.

Obviously I don’t have any magical predictive abilities. But the “vocal minority” argument has bitten a lot of people before. Including those that have stake in the game and are paranoid about competitors.

[rchaud]

But seeing as it is no longer 2010, what is the public's appetite for yet another twitter-like app?

[klabb3]

Right, I probably won’t use bluesky as I never used Twitter. The format was always fomo- and hot-take oriented to me, so I stayed away. I don’t understand why people are desperate to remake that particular product.

[Sunspark]

There is still a large appetite, but people won't use their real names anymore.

And they shouldn't. Part of being a kid is exploring interactions and learning from mistakes. Can you imagine growing up in a society where your account follows you from elementary school and anyone can review it? Even if you are the utmost in social propriety, but have a hobby that you enjoy, someone is going to disapprove of it or your fandom and penalize you accordingly. Post too much? Penalized. Post too little? Penalized.

The world is not a fair or equitable place, and so, we should not design systems that enable bullies.

[oldandboring]

People, largely, aren't staying off Twitter and Facebook because they're fed up with engagement-optimized platforms or because those companies have poor reputations or because they want decentralization. They left (or never joined) because their peer group left (or never joined). Take a casual poll of the teenagers and early-twentysomethings in your orbit, if you can: they're all probably on certain platforms and not on others. If you asked them why they aren't on Facebook they'd probably look confused and tell you that none of their friends are.

[klabb3]

I never said that. But it’s an important point nonetheless, which I believe you are right about. If a transition happens, it will be in the layers where these things matter.

For instance, a fire department may switch from Twitter because it’s rate limited. A community for visually impaired may move from Reddit because it’s dragging its feet with accessibility. Journalists and media houses may switch because they get censored by a billionaire who’s on a quid pro quo relationship with entities they investigate. Regular “content creators” may switch when they get copyright strikes or demonetized by an automated system. In all of these cases, the small minority of “providers” take a large amount of “consumers” with them. Cumulative resentment looks just like apathy, until suddenly it doesn’t.

Most people are followers. Other liberties like freedom of the press are inapplicable to most people, directly. But the indirect effects, usually shepherded by “vocal minorities” has been shown again and again to add up and transform society rapidly, in something like S-shaped curves. If you accept the rapid growth phase of network effects you need to also acknowledging the rapid death phase on the other side of things.