European Union regulation will probably threaten the very principles that the Fediverse functions on, potentially making Lemmy illegal anywhere in the EU because it’s not auditable enough, or doesn’t meet data retention or some kind of consumer privacy law.
The EU is a threat to the Fediverse unfortunately.
The EU literally uses the Fediverse themselves. https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/
Dead
There will be several fediverses. The ability to maintain one unified fediverse won’t hold.
I hope more governments and institutions start self hosting their own AP publishing, at least for microblogging.
I also hope we get more multiparidgm app platforms like friendica and mbin.
Loops and Peertube are super promising, especially with peered hosting to manage bandwidth hits. It’d be smart for major creators to have a delayed archive in self or group hosted instances to help with discoverability and fight risk of content loss. Canadian Civil is paving the way.
I predict there will be more integration with tipping / patreoning platforms.
I predict there will be some ATpro features like federated identity and moderation extended into AP, or a blessed version of ATpro from the W3C’s Social Web group (Bluesky is already working on transferring ownership of the protocol to IETF). Either way apps will simply migrate or find bridges and the wider fediverse will grow.