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this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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Ask Lemmy
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The reason it matters what's happening with reddit is the network effect. Social media is a natural monopoly, and it seems to me that in general there is only one major platform for each type of content at any given time. Recently sites like reddit for link aggregation, facebook for I guess interpersonal groups, and twitter for microblogging have been those major platforms.
They are taking huge hits lately, and if users migrate to the fediverse in enough volume, then they can be displaced permanently. Prople shifted from digg to reddit in a similar scandal years ago.
Now, whether the fediverse will reach that critical mass remains to be seen, but I hope it does because it represents a more open and stable alternative that fundamentally can't be toppled by a single bad actor, unlike literally every centralised corporate platform out there. It has the potential to become an actual public town square like the internet seemed to promise decades ago. It might actually be in a position to topple the corporate monopolisation of our information ecosystem, and that's a huge deal.
And the capacity for federation between the different types of social media offers the possibility that once the fediverse gets big enough it can extend that network effect across the different types and displace all corporate social media. Like at the moment peertube isn't huge partly because the server costs to grow to rival youtube are enormous. But if the fediverse becomes big enough, who knows? Maybe it will be in a position to take over as the main video sharing platform on the internet. We could say goodbye to all the youtube drama that impacts video creators today.
So that's why it matters. Reddit isn't just a bad boss or an ex, they are a mafia controlling a large piece of territory, and whether we can push them out impacts our network and a lot more besides.
The unwinding of network effects in Reddit or starting of a networking effects positive feedback cycle in Lemmy is only important if you believe that having a massive number of user (not just tens or hundreds of thousands of people, rather tens of millions or more) like Reddit is a good thing.
I'm not so sure of that.
Was it really so great when your voice was drowned in an ocean on voices, you would never see the vast majority of stuff written by others because there was just so much stuff there and you spent most of your time wading through mud to find a few gems here and there?
Personally, I'm fine with the size the Fediverse has and it having a more natural growth rate.
Lemmy feels a lot like the old days in places like Usenet rather than the cacophony of modern for-profit social media (except perhaps the politics forums here, which are often tribalist rage-wars) and personally I like it.
I didnt even move over because of the Reddit API changes per-se (which didn't affect me at all) - I just tried Lemmy out when the demonstration took of in Reddit, tought "this is nice" and simply stayed and didn't went back to Reddit (it was a surprisingly clean cut, so I suspect I didn't feel satisfied there).
The whole point of federation is that networks can grow and not be stuck in small isolated forums. If you don't want that then you're in the wrong place. Also, one of the huge problems with the fediverse right now is its small size. There's a lot of stuff you can't find, niche communities that thrived on reddit but either don't exist here or only have one or two posts.
A lot of the time when you google for answers, reddit has been the first thing to pop up.
These are examples of the network effect.
You may personally like a smaller forum, but this is why reddit was so relevant for so long. It's not about believing size is good or not, it's about whether it functionally occurs. It grew to a critical size at which point it became the dominant link aggregator, and alternatives always remained tiny because they couldn't compete with reddit's size. You don't get two large link aggregators holding their own on the internet at the same time.
Like honestly look at FB, twitter, reddit and youtube and tell me you can't see how they have been dominant due to their size.
At least until recently, you would go to fb where all your family and friends are. You go to twitter where all the news, celebrities, etc are. You go to reddit where all the content is. You go to youtube because that's where all the videos are. I didn't think this would even be a controversial point. It's just so plainly obvious.
I don't think you can presume that the whole point of federation is for networks to grow: this system design is actually well suited for reducing the control of States (if they takeover or close one down, the rest of the network is just fine) as well as allowing lots of small entities and individuals to run servers, all adding up the level of capability that would take a lot of money for one single entity to maintain - in other words it makes it possible for lots of independent entities and individuals to run social media outside the control of nation states.
Resilience in the face of state interference is an explanation that makes sense as the protocols were apparently designed by lefties with anarchist tendencies.
Maybe size was also the intention, maybe not, but that's not something somebody can firmly use as a foundation for an entire argument about how the Fediverse should match what ultimatelly are your personal preferences about and pattern of use of social media.
That said, it seems to me we just have a difference of opinion on what we would like to have here, so neither of us can claim to be right on this.
Let's agree to disagree ?! ;)
Let's start with where we seem to agree: I agree that having small niches within the fediverse is a good thing, and because of how it works it's likely that that will be much easier to maintain here than it would in a centralised network where everyone is forced into the same large group by default. If you want an instance where you and your friends or niche community can connect privately, and still import posts from around the fediverse, you're free to do that. The power of this system lies in its ability to accommodate any size of subnetwork without them becoming totally isolated.
Personally I've got a bunch of creative projects, and if I get to the point where I'm making major public releases, I've wondered how I plan to make a forum. I don't really want it to be siloed away, and I don't want it to be on someone else's service where they could shut it down. The obvious solution is to start my own fediverse instance. That's actually only just occurred to me. This is why I like debating these things - it helps me learn and clarify my thoughts. If we just agreed to disagree then that wouldn't have happened. ;) Well, maybe eventually, but this conversation sparked that thought.
I imagine the growth of the fediverse is going to be slower than a comparable capitalist enterprise, because it doesn't have the same insatiable need for growth. That's an important consideration, and it's why the sudden implosion of so many centralised corporate networks happening right now is important to the fediverse, because as that happens it will absorb more and more of the critical parts of those networks. It will grow, and because of its relative stability the more share it is likely to retain, until the mainstream is so fed up of riding the merry-go-round of imploding centralised options they will migrate here en masse.
Here's where we still seem to disagree:
What is that "level of capability" referring to? Because it sounds like you're using the phrase "level of capability" to avoid saying the much simpler phrase, "size". If it means something else, I'm curious to understand what you mean.
And I'm not arguing for my "personal preferences". You're the one that appealled to "Personally, I’m fine with the size the Fediverse has", not me.
I'm talking about how social networks grow and how they influence each other. I'm talking about material reasons why the failure of reddit and other networks affects the fediverse on a fundamental level and giving you a clear A to B on how those effects occur. It's fair to say, "but I like it smaller" and it's similarly fair to say, "that's irrelevant to my point".