I'm going to copy my post from elsewhere here:

Not only did we let them monopolize niche knowledge we also let them completely supplant forums and other methods for discussion on the web while letting them slowly poison the quality of discussion overall through the wide spread use of bot manipulation. Imagine an internet with reasonable, easy to access, informative and kind discussion. That is where we will trend without highly corporatized outrage driven content algorithms and it's not just a completely different internet, but a completely different world.

I don't know about power users or whatever, but social media as we know it is literally imploding. It's kind of stunning, and I think it's the perfect opportunity for federation to take off.

I mod a 21 thousand member sub on Reddit and opened a similar one here. I put several relevant posts to get things started and let people on the sun know we are here with a tutorial on how to sign up and explanation on why it is good to have an alternate.

I now have about 20 members, a few coming each day. However no one has posted or replied at all.

Another community I created has a similar result.

I know there is a threshold of activity that stimulates more activity, but so far its not happening. I've started many active subreddits, including one in the 1% with half a million subscribers. I'm not new to community building. I'm honestly concerned.

I want to encourage everyone to post and comment in the little communities you have joined. You will be contributing to this whole project when you do.

I don't know if I'm ready to believe, but I hope decentralization is the next shape of the internet, as it was before.

For years I've watched smaller businesses give up on having websites in favor of just a Facebook page, or businesses built entirely on YouTube, Instagram or Facebook, with the very real risk of having the rug arbitrarily pulled out from under then for some dumb reason. It's totally unsustainable to rely on the whims of these platforms to house your canonical home or as a base for your income stream.

Sure it's nice to reach a wide audience by publishing to platforms with many users, but companies still need to be in control of their identity, so if some platform goes south, it's not a catastrophe.

I was skeptical of lemmy at first but it's definitely growing on me. As apps and features mature I'm sure it's going to be even better.

Was a chronic lurker on Reddit but hoping to contribute to communities here to help it grow!

Eventually the fediverse will grow. Maybe now or in 5-10 years when the rest of the internet users get fed up with the ads and subscription fees etc. on commercial sites. It seems like an inevitable evolution.

I don't think reddit will necessarily fail big time, but it has changed into something that I don't want or need to participate in, so it doesn't really matter to me. I actually don't want them to fail, because the users there who enjoy it for what it is now should be able to use it for ..that.

In the last couple of years it grew too big for my taste anyway. The "Eternal September" phenomena hit it pretty badly. I didn't enjoy the constant noise and immature arguing over semantics. It's a different demographic than Facebook, but it's about the same reason I don't use that either.

No clue about the power users, but I left reddit due to the API changes. I never posted and only lurked and am really excited to be on a place that might be up and coming compared to feeling like I got throw in the deep end.

I don't think it's the start, but I think something's happening. The internet has just been through an incredibly stable period for 10 years or so, but I that finally came to an end a year or 2 back. There have been lots of smaller social media platforms popping up for a while now, and I think the landscape is finally becoming less stable and more dynamic again.

I'm doing MY part.

I am cautiously hopeful that fedi will become significant in a while.

I don't know that this will get as huge as reddit was, but the number of comments I've seen here has doubled/tripled in the past few weeks, to the point where if Lemmy doesn't ever grow much more than this, I think this is a sustainable mass of people right now to keep a good network effect going

I feel like the fediverse might take off, but not because of Lemmy.

I was a deep lurker on Reddit and a RIF user so when shit hit the fan I heard about Lemmy.

However I never use Twitter, but before learning about the fediverse because of Lemmy I already heard casual mention about Mastodon. I feel Mastodon will be the first to reach a really wide audience and once the public is comfortable with using federated networks then Lemmy might gain mainstream appeal.

Regardless of what happens, something has to give and I'm excited to see the old titans drop to their knees for once (and Twitter doing a faceplant).

A federated internet feels like a good balance between free speech and moderation. And decentralized non-profits feel like they'll be more stable than the venture capitalist sugar daddies Silicon Valley has relied on.

You weren't around for Usenet. It was great, then social media took over.

No, this is going to be its own niche. And that's fine.

Lemmy reminds me a lot of the way the internet used to be- smaller, independent communities with more real engagement and less of a content firehose. With so many instances, if you want something, you have to seek it out or start it yourself- with the added benefit of federation keeping everyone connected.

I’m really optimistic that this will get critical mass. I think the concept of federation is great, and I like to think we’re at the forefront of a whole new phase of online community.

It'll come and go like all the rest. AOL, AIM, IRC, message boards, myspace, livejournal, digg, fark, slashdot, reddit, lemmy...???

I don't want to jinx anything but really hope this platform will continue to grow. love the atmosphere right now!

The fediverse is a return to something bigger, not something new. An influx of users will hopefully help things get to where they should be.

Email never went away, but for some reason has been the only federated protocol with real staying power so far.

I hope it is. I don't yet feel strongly about the fediverse/Lemmy specifically just yet, but everything online just feels... off, right now. So many sites all somewhat self-destructing (twitter, reddit, youtube, etc) all seemingly at the same time. I've been around for quite a lot of change as far as technology/internet goes in general, but I feel like it's felt relatively stable over the last 10 years or so. I feel like I experienced a ton of very quick change from like 2000-2010 or so, and then not much after that (just some new social media sites and whatnot, but not really big changes overall?). Now it sort of feels like it did back in the 2000s, which is giving me hope that maybe things are about to change in general!

I think lemmy has a lot of potential, we are just lacking the flood of content that Reddit has. But as this the API changes just went into effect, I feel like new users are still learning the ropes of lemmy and it will be some time until we have that endless stream of content. So it is important for us all to be as active as possible to help reach that goal faster

Lemmy adoption will help grow federation. Lemmy is fairly easy to conceptualize as an end-user, and aside from the bleeding-edge UI/backend bugs, it is easy to use. Common users are unlikely to prefer federation due to attachment to existing communities in non-federated social media, and the 1-more-step required to properly understand instances to get the most out of Lemmy. If certain Lemmy instances hold the majority of the weight of accounts and communities, it will lead to emergent centralization towards specific instances which isn't good for federation. Persuading people who are used to centralized design not to immediately register for the largest Lemmy instance will be a long-standing conundrum for spreading out federation.