Perhaps a better question...do we want it to?

After seeing several places get mainstream, the last of which being Reddit: I wouldn't want it to. That's when everything starts to suck. Stay niche. Stay cool.

Lemmy? Maybe. Mastodon? Not a chance.

Lemmy functions perfectly as a Reddit replacement and only adds a mild amount of complexity on top of using Reddit. Mastodon is only similar to Twitter’s use case if you’ve had a few beers and are squinting.

No. As long as people keep using it I think it can grow enough that people can use Lemmy as their primary app. But it'll never become mainstream enough.

We underestimate how technically ignorant the majority of people are, as soon as it hits the point of no official app and which instance to join people give up.

The only way I can see it working is it they prioritised their own official instance, made it default on an 'official' app so it's just as easy as Reddit or Twitter, but in small text allow people to change instance.

Lemmy, yes. Mastodon, no. I could make no sense of mastodon and found nothing of interest.

I don't think it's really helpful to think about lemmy and mastodon as "replacements".

They're alternatives, with their own quirks and cultures.

They're undoubtedly a significant step on the way to whatever social media will evolve into. Whether they become "mainstream" or more active than their predecessors is kind of irrelevant IMO.

"hope"? Yes. "believe"? No. But I think it will pave the way for the next step.

It depends what you mean by "mainstream". If by that you imply that the Fediverse will become a true public forum an a place to exchange ideas and form opinions, then yes, I would like for it to be a counterweight to legacy media and corporate content silos. However, if the fediverse becomes yet another astroturfed propaganda outlet, then no, I do not want it to become mainstream. Fortunately, the loose Fediverse network makes it hard to take over and control, provided that the ActivityPub protocol remains untainted by actions of nas actors.

No, and they never have to.

Tbh, Lemmy is big enough for me. I've always been more into the comments than the posts, I just like posts to set up context. Lemmy has plenty of comment discussion going around in the communities I like that I'm satisfied. More content would not be a bad thing of course, I'm just wary of the implications of the Fediverse being mainstream.

The average user does not care enough about the reasons that drive people off the mainstream social media - in short, they're idiots. So, no, these won't replace the shitty mainstream solutions, because most people just have no clue that they really should.

Lemmy/kbin and other reddit alternatives, I think they have a higher chance than mastodon, diaspora and other alternatives more focused on "web presence".

Reddit and Lemmy are about threads and posts, stuff that you're supposed to interact with hours, perhaps days, after the initial post, stuff that you're supposed to look for and find later on. Evergreen content

Twitter and Mastodon are about the "right now". Stuff from 3 days ago is a lot less likely to be interacted with, or stay relevant. It needs new content to be consumed on a daily basis, just like Pixelfed (fed insta) or Tiktok. I think that makes Mastodon less likely to remain relevant long term, but what do I know?

First post on Lemmy. I hope that Lemmy and Mastodon can replace Reddit and Twitter. It feels hard to imagine right now, because finding communities and signing up is really confusing. I already gave up on Mastodon because it was too much of a hassle.

No. It's just way to complicated to become mainstream. Maybe some instance can become popular enough if they do their marketing right and create a really simple sign up process and just handwave away the entire federalisation that goes on in the background.

Personally, not in the near future. If the process to sign up gets more streamlined along with people not worrying too much about the federation part, then yeah it has a chance. I saw some reddit threads on a post that explains how federation works, and there was a lot of push back because they felt they had needed to understand everything to even use the website.

Belief is the acceptance of a claim without evidence. There is evidence that Lemmy and Mastodon can, with time, replace their centralized counterparts.

So do I believe it? No. I know it can happen though. Will it happen? Definite maybe. First, all the users that are bunched up on three big servers need to learn the painful lesson of how a federated architecture works. It’s in their best interests to find small instances of lemmy and have accounts there. Why, because all the huge instances of lemmy are having trouble staying functional. Lemmy.world has 87,000 users and an uptime of 97%. That means it experiences 11 days of downtime a year. Almost a day per month. Sh.itjust.works has around 10,000 users and a 99% uptime by comparison (still 3 to 4 days a year of downtime). Many smaller instances have 100% uptime. Look for yourself.

Another thing future users (not users yet) need to stop using as an argument (excuse) is, “but if I have an account on a site and it disappears, I lose my account.” Well, first, that’s true of the centralized service you’re using. And don’t talk to me about “too big to fail…” arguments. If there’s one thing Twitter, Reddit, and YoutTube have proven, it’s that you are irrelevant and disposable. They may not vanish, but the long lasting stupid they do for the sake of… I don’t even know what… has led to multiple migrations to distributed environments.

Are distributed environments perfect? No. They ARE improving though. And the fact is, in a distributed environment when one instance enacts something that you don’t feel is in your best interest… You go to another instance. No drama, no fanfare… just move.

What are the "complexities" people are talking about when they say that lemmy won't catch on? Yes there were some stability issues and bugs in the last couple of days but that's just a bit of growing pains. I don't see how lemmy is harder to use than reddit. Like you google "lemmy", first link is https://join-lemmy.org/, you click Join a Server and then you see "You can access all content in the lemmyverse from any server/instance." so then you just pick one of the instances and create an account.

By the time it’s gained adoption with a more flexible and strongly principled user base, I’m sure there will be a next thing to dethrone fediverse apps.

Software development principles and modern conventions are surprisingly cyclical, I’d argue that in 5-10 years’ time, if the fediverse picks up, some startup is going to say “are you tired of the same old fractured, fragmented ecosystem? Meet consolishare, a revolutionary idea of taking all the features you know and love from the fediverse and consolidating them into one sharing platform.”

Who knows though.

Tooling/apps will help dramatically. At the moment, it’s nowhere near as rich as the ecosystem that once was around platforms like Reddit.

I hope not.

Places like Reddit or Twitter become progressively worse as they get more popular.

Besides, Mastodon is not a replacement of Twitter. It has the same UI and look&feel but it's very different. Twitter is basically a place where internet celebrities post and other people comment and share. Mastodon is more like regular chaps hanging out and exchanging opinions.

I think we can... If we think about Disneyland.

Disneyland is a very complicated place with endless things to do and different directions to choose, but you walk in through one simple front door after buying one simple ticket, so it's not as scary to make first approach. Once you're in, you can craft your own adventure, but you have to get in to have the chance.

I know it's somewhat in conflict with a federated future, but for the "mass migration" portion at least, there are just a LOT of choices to make before you've experienced a single benefit out felt delighted by the familiar features of these communities. For that reason, many will be too intimidated to even start.

In the short term it will keep us small and keep certain low effort people out (maybe why energy is fairly ideal here, for now at least). In the long term though, may mean we never gain the mass to threaten the reddits of the world.

Having more users does not (always) mean a good thing... so I hope not. It's good enough as is, thank you very much.

I have both a Lemmy and Mastodon account besides my Twitter and Reddit account. Every person and channel I follow on both Twitter and Reddit, I immediately follow on Lemmy and Mastodon once they have an account and channel over there. But it's all about content and interaction. Keeping track of the Ukraine war, for instance, was difficult on Mastodon. But posting on Mastodon was a much nicer experience in regard to interaction with members over there.

Amateur radio never became mainstream. It's doing fine.