I feel that it is time to have an honest discussion on the state of the fediverse.
Mastodon was founded a decade ago, and since then has roughly 1 million monthly active users. That is 0.25% of the MAU of twitter/X currently (which has itself seen declines over the years).
Pixelfed has 250k monthly active users, which is 0.008% of Instagrams 3 billion MAU.
Friendica has 5000 MAU which is essentially 0% of the 3.1 billion MAU that Facebook has.
Overall, even if you combine every fediverse platform together, and count bluesky as a part of the fediverse as well, it’s still less than 1% of the MAU of X.
Which is all to say, alternatives to corporate owned platforms does not exist at this point in time, on a statistical basis. Not in any meaningful way.
So why is this do we think? Why does the most popular social media site in the world not even have a decent competitor out there, when we have the technology to build one? It’s certainly not from a lack of user interest. Search terms like “facebook alternatives” have absolutely skyrocketed to unprecedented levels in the last couple years, as the realities of corporate oligarchy have become to hard for the average person to ignore. Governments and organizations around the world have started discussing the alternatives to American owned tech companies. And yet, growth of the fediverse platforms is essentially flat. People try a platform, and then quickly bounce off, either returning to old platforms or quitting social media all together.
That second one is not a problem in my mind, but let’s dive a bit deeper into the first point. Why do people not tend to stick around on the fediverse? Here are some potential root causes I can think of:
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The choices are overwhelming. There are dozens of fediverse platforms that provide every function under the sun. Even within a single platform, users are asked to pick a server, which is an instant friction point for users.
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Functionality on the fediverse is subpar compared to larger platforms, and the functionalities that do exist are disjointed between multiple platforms. We have events, but no standard event functionality integrated into mastodon. What does exist is a hack/workaround, rather than an actual implementation. Pixelfed does not have stories. There is a marketplace website for the fediverse (Flohmarkt), but no marketplace integration for friendica. Etc, etc.
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Users are afraid of losing their history and friends on other platforms. Every social media platform is required by law to provide a GDPR export of a users social media data, but no platform that I am aware of is using this to integrate a users post history or subscriptions to rebuild users social graph and profile on the fediverse. There are technical hurdles there for sure, but there are a lot of opportunities being left on the table.
So those are, imo, the biggest stumbling blocks to the growth of users on the fediverse, and why 99% of users bounce off when they try it. I am building some solutions to these problems myself, but I’m curious to hear what others think about this, and the honest state of the fediverse. Any issues I overlooked? Should we care about user growth at all? What do we think?
The alternatives do exist and the 0.1% of people that want to use them, are. If more people want to use the fediverse in future thats great, but I don’t want to just get people lumped under a particular umbrella because it’s what I personally want. The fediverse doesn’t need to be the biggest social media platform for me to feel validated.
The fediverse is a tool. I don’t choose what tool to use based on what everyone’s favourite tool is. I base it on the job at hand
The Google trends I have seen are far more than 0.1% of people out there. I know many people personally who would love to leave Facebook, but there is no good alternative, and the issues I mentioned above are contributing factors. We can keep sticking our head in the sand and saying that it is what it is, and the fediverse will never grow because no one wants it, or we can try to understand why users are not being retained and seek to address those issues. It’s less about validation and more about providing real alternatives for people. I kind of thought that was what this whole thing was about.
But these are real alternatives. They’re real alternatives that by the nature of them being non corporate are more difficult to market, stick in a neat box for consumers. But that’s not a negative.
I agree with anything that removes friction and helps people get away from corporate captured social media but fundamentally at some point where this is what the fediverse is and it’s why it’s the way it is.
Yeah I don’t know if a lot of people remember. But the rise of much of current social media was not organic or natural.
I’ve been accessing the internet since the very early 90s. Started out through fidonet if anyone remembers that. Was on Usenet, IRC, ICQ, AIM, MSN, Jabber, GeoCities, MySpace, tumblr etc. So it’s not like I’m completely out of the loop with things going on on the internet Etc. I remember first time really hearing about Twitter. Was while watching cable news. One day all the guests and hosts started bringing it up constantly. And talking about it and how everyone should use it. I found it strange then and I still find the system strange today. It isn’t really much for the average person. At least for many it doesn’t do all that much more for them than a simple WordPress or geocities site would. Apart from feeding into a larger API that can be mined for data by a company.
Exactly. Corporate social media is too much of a money making machine, for the corporations, advertisers, and influencers. The fediverse doesn’t add to anyone’s bottom line. I’m convinced that there is nothing that could make the average person leave Meta’s platforms.
Are you saying that none of the points about the current structure of the fediverse are valid? That we should not try to have more streamlined and functional platforms for users to migrate to? The fact that these platforms are hard to market by their very nature would seem to be even more of an argument for a more fully featured and frictionless experience, would it not?
All else being equal? Sure. But even the way youre speaking right now would seem to imply some kind of overhead control, new standards, agreements, things of that nature that are already possible, but if imposedvwould go against the nature of the fediverse.
By that same token, there is a very real market out there clearly for a user friendly onboarding into the fediverse so, go build it? There isn’t anything stopping anyone from addressing the issues you’ve raised other than tech and adoption.
But you’re putting the cart before the horse IMO.
I am not suggesting to impose any standards on anyway. Thus why I made a post about it to spark discussion, rather than making some declaration one way or another. It needs to be collaborative and democratic, like the rest of the fediverse.
I am building alternatives, as I said in my post. I just thought I would put it out there for discussion to see what others think. Dismissing the conversation and refusing to engage with the actual points on the weaknesses of the fediverse in its current form is not productive, imo. I respect your opinion, and I’m glad you enjoy how it is now. Based on the numbers though, that is not universally the case.