It’s an unfortunate dilemma. To sustain an active niche you need a huge user base like Reddit. But if you have a huge user base costs start piling up and the temptation to lessen the experience to pay the bills (or appease shareholders) grows.
The issue with the fediverse is that its members are highly self-selecting. If you’re an average Joe looking to join an online community, it’s going to be Reddit, not Lemmy, Twitter, not Mastodon, or Facebook, not whatever the fedi equivalent is. So the likelihood of amassing enough average Joes who just want to look at funny pictures of orangutans or talk about video games with anyone regardless where they fall on the political spectrum is small.
And I always thought that was the point of these little niches. Alice the gun nut likes vintage 80s computers, and Bob who wants to seize the means of production also likes vintage 80s computers, so Alice and B have fun together talking about vintage 80s computers despite their differences. The problems arise when Alice goes into the vintage 80s computers community and tries to make everything about guns.
early_riser@lemmy.world 1 week ago
It’s an unfortunate dilemma. To sustain an active niche you need a huge user base like Reddit. But if you have a huge user base costs start piling up and the temptation to lessen the experience to pay the bills (or appease shareholders) grows.
The issue with the fediverse is that its members are highly self-selecting. If you’re an average Joe looking to join an online community, it’s going to be Reddit, not Lemmy, Twitter, not Mastodon, or Facebook, not whatever the fedi equivalent is. So the likelihood of amassing enough average Joes who just want to look at funny pictures of orangutans or talk about video games with anyone regardless where they fall on the political spectrum is small.
And I always thought that was the point of these little niches. Alice the gun nut likes vintage 80s computers, and Bob who wants to seize the means of production also likes vintage 80s computers, so Alice and B have fun together talking about vintage 80s computers despite their differences. The problems arise when Alice goes into the vintage 80s computers community and tries to make everything about guns.