Asklemmy

People follow the crowd and centralized media had considerably bigger crowds

I don’t think federation vs centralization is the primary differentiator. I think corporate vs non-profit/ad-free/donation-only/volunteerism is. Our marketing budget is goose egg. It’s all word-of-mouth.

I like to follow a couple reporters directly as opposed to subscribing to the local paper and wading through the fluff pieces, so that means using Bluesky.

Back when I was still an artist for my super niche internet garbage, that meant using Tumblr, then after the Tumblr purge, Twitter. Then after Musk, cohost, then after cohost... I mean, I was done with art but I'd probably be on Bluesky for that too.

The more people using a social media platform, the more content there is to consume and people to interact with. It's really hard to move to a new platform when there just isn't as much stuff to consume as the centralized platforms like Reddit. I'm using Lemmy for ideological reasons, but if you just want to vibe and scroll online, Reddit has way more to offer. That said, the user experience of Reddit is continually degrading. Potentially at some point it will create enough refugees that sites like Lemmy hit an inflection point of users.

Because they want to feel involved. They want to be with the in-crowd. If they come to the Fediverse, then they'll think it's weird and might scare them because it's a new concept they can't grasp. When really, I see the Fediverse as just a social media reset. But because it doesn't have all of the enshittification that centralized social media has, they don't dare bother.

Evolution of human behaviour is slow. Right now we are all enmeshed in the dawning discovery that the current way we run society is falling apart at the seams. Just enter the core of almost any city in North America and you'll see what I mean (and not just N. America). It'll take a while to set itself right, or it may all just burn in a raging nuclear fire launched by a pissed off oligarch who does not get his way.

Definitely not forward progress towards a better day.

Because they actually have content and friends there

Sounds like a question for them.

Part of it is just the network effect. If the people they want to follow are on twitter then they do not really have a choice. Also part of it is the algorithms. For some needing to manually select communities or individuals is an inconvenience. Finally I feel like fedi communities have a very distinct atmosphere simply because very few people use it. This can all change in the future but the majority of the issues stem from just not having enough creators and users as well as the additional effort required to use these platforms.

Because all their contacts and photos are already there.

convenience, marketing

Do you want them here? I don’t. I don’t tell a soul about lemmy, because this is place for me to get away from them. A place for mostly rational discussion, populated by people free thinking enough to seek an alternative. If the masses descended on Lemmy, they’d ruin it like they ruin everything else. They’d draw the attention that would lead to it being litigated, regulated, purchased, corporatized etc. Let them stay on Facebook and Reddit.

Edit: ITT: A bunch of people who haven’t paid attention to how mind bendingly stupid content has become on mainstream social media, or worse yet, actually enjoy the chum pumped out by Facebook and TikTok and want it to come to lemmy as well. I’ll wear my downvotes with pride.