To be clear, the Fediverse doesn’t mean that everything is interconnected. It means that everything can be interconnected, but most sites will only do a very minimal form of interconnectivity. And that’s mainly due to personal choice. You wouldn’t want to have Instagram posts on your Reddit feed, and you wouldn’t want Tumblr posts on YouTube. You can do that, but why would you?

So most sites will only interconnect with other sites that they deem to be similar enough in content style. Lemmy interconnects with Kbin because both are Reddit clones. Kbin interconnects with Lemmy, but it also interconnects with Mastodon. Apparently the developer of Kbin thought that Mastodon is similar enough in content style that people would appreciate having Mastodon posts appear on Kbin. And this happens for all the other sites. The Fediverse is less like a tightly connected network, and more like a loose connection of sites that could operate together, if they ever chose to do so. Like a federation, if you will

Basically, if you’re on Lemmy (which you are), you’re only going to see Reddit-like content

I think that’s a fun concept. I love dealing with the mechanism of realistic hypotheticals.

If I were to answer, I think it’s straight impossible for all of social media to not be funded through advertisements. There must be, to some degree, some site that clings on. But we can modify the prompt to say “the majority of social media will not be funded by advertisements.” In this case, I feel like there are a couple potential mechanisms, of varying likeliness:

• people collectively become more aware of their browsing habits and start using non-advertised sites (highly unlikely)
• the government steps in and collectivizes major social media sites (highly unlikely)
• the Fediverse, or some other alternative, becomes so popular that it becomes the primary social media site (not likely, but not impossible)
• social media sites shift their business structure so that users have to pay for social media usage, but in return they get no ads (actually possible with a not-insignificant chance of this actually occurring)
• social media sites find some other way of exploiting users that is currently considered either implausible (not likely, but I wouldn’t put this one out of the realm of possibility)

Because Threads didn’t federate. It turns out when they said that they’ll federate, they actually meant “some time in the undisclosed future.” And then Threads lost a lot of that initial marketing hype so everyone forgot about it.

Apparently Meta is currently testing federation for Threads, though? The problem about Threads federating isn’t resolved, to be entirely clear. It was merely that everyone, Meta included, just decided to kick the can down the road and think about the issue later.

Definitely not. The same reason back then as it is now. Namely: I don’t trust Meta to not try to destroy the fediverse

Wow, I bet he would be able to dive underwater to see the Titanic with a suit that strong!

More active niche communities popping up here and there! The strength and number of niche communities still don’t match those of niche communities on Reddit, but I take it as a good sign of healthy growth.

It’s just slightly annoying to have to check in every once in a while for niche communities that sprung up since the last time I checked

When looking at graphs, it’s extremely important to consider all possible aspects that the data isn’t capturing. A lot of the time, it’s easy to take the “easy” interpretation of the data and get the wrong conclusion (for instance, think about survivor bias and how it almost led the British military to the wrong conclusion about where to reinforce their warplanes)

Here, it’s important to remember several things: what exactly is the data counting? And what happened that might change our interpretation of the data?

For the first, it’s unclear what the statistic is, but I think the general interpretation is that “active users” only counts people who have posted or made comments. For the second, ofc the Reddit Migration just happened a month ago. The fact that it happened almost exactly a month ago likely isn’t a coincidence.

Here’s my interpretation: people from Reddit jumped on board to Lemmy during the Reddit Migration. They posted or commented a lot to test out the waters on Lemmy. Then, once they settled in, they started lurking (after all, the vast majority of people lurk). As the month continued, these new users are no longer considered active users, since they’re only lurking. So the “active last month” count is dipping almost exactly 1 month after the Reddit Migration. Of course, part of the dip can be explained by people moving back to Reddit. But based on my understanding of how “active users” is counted, I think this is the leading explanation, especially since Lemmy feels more active now than during the Migration.

Now, what can we conclude about the dip? Honestly, if my interpretation is correct, this seems pretty normal. I wouldn’t think too deeply about it. As Reddit enshittification continues, we might expect more waves of migrants, and I generally expect that we’ll see this pattern every time (a sudden increase in userbase, followed by a shallow dip after 1 month, and then the number starts to stabilize)

Because people form attachments to their accounts, and allowing them to keep their info can promote federation (encourage people to use other instances, especially since most people start off on one of the big instances).

I get what you’re saying, but I think there is a practical purpose for allowing migration. That being said, I think working on the UI before thinking about how migration would work in practice might be putting the cart before the horse

What are your views on moderation? I see that you seem to have a lot more blocked instances than lemmy.world - can you give a quick rundown of what you consider to be acceptable or unacceptable content?

Risk/reward. What are the chances that a user of Threads would know or care about how Fediverse works? What are the chances that Meta obscures any knowledge on the Fediverse, so that it’s difficult to learn how the Fediverse works?

Meta is not some sort of saint that’s offering us a bone. They will try their absolute hardest to ensure it’s difficult to switch one away from Threads, and it will most likely be successful.

And on the risk side, how many users would you lose from an EEE maneuver? Even if the Fediverse remains standing, how much of its reputation has been damaged, and how will that affect its future growth?

To be clear: Fediverse is resilient toward corporate takeover. But EEE is not a corporate takeover maneuver. It’s a maneuver designed to attack the reputation of a platform, to stop it from growing. Nobody wants to use a platform with a bad reputation, and EEE is the platform equivalent of a bully becoming your friend just so they can gossip behind your back. You don’t need to be bought out or taken over to suffer reputation loss. The Fediverse is completely vulnerable to EEE. Even in the post by the Mastodon developer about Threads, he points out that he’s not worried about Meta stealing your data. But he said nothing about Mastodon’s ability to survive an EEE. Which I think is pretty telling.

And if we view it from the lens of my analogy (bully trying to befriend you to gain gossip material), I think the answer for what to do is plenty clear: don’t accept the friendship. That is what we are deciding to do. Accepting the friendship anyways because “maybe we can teach the bully to become a good friend” is both naive and missing the entire point. You’re missing the forest for single particular tree that most likely isn’t even there.

Probably meant to be a way to estimate where you are if you have GPS turned off

I’m not sure I totally agree with that assessment. If we compare the sheer amount of resources and talent behind Meta vs. behind the Fediverse, it’s clear that there’s no way the Fediverse can ever compete in terms on innovation and features. Not to say that there aren’t talented devs on the Fediverse - they’re all pretty talented if you ask me - but Meta can just hire hundreds of similarly talented devs without even feeling the cost.

Really, the only way to prevent getting washed away by Meta (in development, in users, in culture, in basically just about everything) is to not associate with Meta at all. Co-existence doesn’t mean we have to cooperate, after all. If the Fediverse shows that it has the userbase and staying power to withstand a full EEE “assualt” and remain standing, then I would be more inclined to take the “wait and see” approach. But I think as it stands now, Meta is very clearly trying to overwhelm the Fediverse before it has a chance to get going on its own merits