we’re on lemmy, yet over the past few days there has been probably 100+ posts and so many more pro-bluesky comments written. so i’d say most of us here apparently do not understand it.
the worst part about all this isn’t that bluesky is getting traction, i really couldn’t care less about it since i’m happy with Mastodon as it is. the worst part is that a critical mass is moving somewhere else than the fediverse which indirectly let’s facebook groups maintain their dominance over the hobby space. it may sound contrived, but i firmly believe that if the fediverse gains critical mass. regardless of service. then the hobby space could actually, finally, move off that shitty platform, but for the third time, Mastodon devs didn’t care to cease the moment, so it’s never going to happen, and probably not even when the flagship (Mastodon) finally launches groups (which was promised a 2020 release, 4 years behind schedule and absolutely no updates, feels like vapor ware at this point and facebook will always be king because of it). but, maybe bluesky will offer a good groups feature, and then the hobby space will happily move from one dumpster fire to another, yay. i guess, the devil you know, and all that, has never been more appropriate.
Mastodon devs didn’t care to cease the moment
And they never will. That’s not their focus or goal. They don’t care about “gaining momentum” and explosive growth, and I wouldn’t want them to.
That’s up to us. Convincing people to join the Fediverse and showing them better alternatives to their favorite platforms (and teaching them how to use them) is our collective job, not some group of hobbyist devs.
Plus I think explosive growth would change the vibe of the Fediverse in a negative way, since most people expect it to be free (i.e. “I am the product”) and shitty (so always taking offense). I’m fine peeling people away over time.
For groups, I don’t know if Mastodon will ever get that or not. Friendica exists, it’s more analogous to Facebook than Mastodon, and it already has groups and public/private forums. I’m not really sure if that would be a great addition to the microblog format of Mastodon, anyway, so I don’t really care if it never comes.
And they never will. That’s not their focus or goal. They don’t care about “gaining momentum” and explosive growth, and I wouldn’t want them to. While it’s not their goal, it should be. Social media is all about momentum, without momentum you disappear. There are hundreds of exhibits for how there can “only be one” in the social media space. The reason for that is simple; people want a means to access all their communities at one access point, it’s why facebook groups had killed 99% of the hobby forums out there by 2020, starting in 2015. This is why the fediverse would in theory actually work, but it can’t because of certain limitations in the fediverse space, and the lack of group management. Yes, friendica is sort-of like facebook, but people don’t actually want facebook. likewise, facebook groups is a terrible replacement for traditional forums, it’s like trying to hammer a nail with a screwdriver, because it’s designed for absorbing algorithm pushed junk information, not for having a healthy discussion, which basically means people just see the same questions asked every single day and there is rarely ever any discussions and when there are, the facebook search index doesn’t work well enough for people to find the information nor is the information possible to index, which is all by design, to maximize engagement at the cost of literally everything else. the problem with people is that they want both a junk information stream, and a means to enjoy rich engagement with their community. in every club i’m in, people are screaming at how they hate facebook because meta takes liberties to update their policies which directly harms the clubs activities and it just makes it impossible to manage information and the same questions are being asked every single day. the lack of active focus engagement is also causing the clubs to bleed paid membership and thus budget for national events etc. it’s really a downward spiral and it will kill a lot of hobbies before long. i’m not saying that friendica couldn’t be a good replacement, because literally ANY federated space with a means to organize club activities would do just fine (mobilizion would probably be the best), if only it had enough critical mass to let the users engage with all their communities at one single platform (spread comes after the fact), and because of the stability, ui, and condensed information stream with high activity already existing on mastodon, it is the hands down best place on the web for an exodus of all the clubs currently locked in on facebook - IF they finish their groups feature.
groups With the gup.pe concept, social groups can be formed on Mastodon today!
afaik there are several of those offers and they are all now defunct. and as they are shabby work-arounds they do not offer anything in terms of technical group management, administration or data indexing, so it’s essentially worse than the already crappy state of facebook groups. not to mention, it’s i.e. not something your average 50+ year old dove fancier will use in place of facebook groups for their club activities. it’s unreasonable to try convince users to go from a bad solution to a worse solution. it would be better to just setup a traditional forum in that case; but everyone left those for facebook for a reason.
