Reddit 2.0
Either:
- continuing to languish in obscurity with its rough-around-the-edges UX that fails to draw in anyone except self-sufficient computer savvy types who smugly proclaim they like it that way while impatiently tapping their feet and glancing at their wristwatches waiting for mainstream socials to collapse already, or
- wildly thriving, but dominated by an oligopoly of major breakout platforms that dominate the rest of the ecosystem, subtly altering it over the course of many small, tolerable nudges to the point that it hardly resemble what anyone who is currently here liked about it in the first place.
My money is on the former.
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/
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.