this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2025
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I wish, but I doubt it will be.
It will die when there is an alternative app that competes with marketplace. That + messenger keep most people there. Signal (or whatsapp which while meta, isn't tied to fb account)'already can replace messenger.
That is simply the truth. Here is Belgium we have an app called 2dehands which is very prolific and have a way better interface and experience than marketplace (even though it is nowhere near perfect or great).
Marketplace is definitely completely secondary to 2dehands in the Flemish part. Brussels still uses marketplace a lot, but literally all marketplace needs in order to slowly die off is competition but the 2nd hand market is not a lucrative app space with no real funding opportunities outside of data sale so nobody does it.
Something eventually will be. Meta will not last forever.
This one? Nah, probably not. Meta is undoubtedly going to censor, suppress, hide, and deprioritize posts about this. But someday it will.
Yahoo just gradually died as people started slowly abandoning it.
The same can happen to Facebook, but it won’t die with a bang.
This.
What eventually kills these platforms is "death by thousand cuts". Enshitification, controversies, legal problems will alienate users bit by bit. Competing services will then make some people visit less and less until they stop coming at all.
These platforms are competing for peoples attention/time which is finite resource.
But in addition to what happened to Yahoo, Meta’s platforms also use the network effect to keep users. Once the tide turns and the network effect is stronger elsewhere the userbase may quickly evaporate, like what happened to MySpace.
That's already happening. Posts from my friends are seldom, and progressively less meaningful. Most are just shares of some dumbass sponsored content. Conversation is dead. But this is a big one, Facebook has AI users now that can keep up the appearance of a thriving site indefinitely, duping advertisers out of billions.
I'm dubious about that last one.
Advertisers have ways of measuring which ads are effective. I'm most familiar with how it works on Youtube, click on a link in a bio or use offer code AGGRAVATED to get 10% off your first purchase, and they can identify which creator they're sponsoring generated that sale. Part of the point of targeted advertising is avoid spending money to advertise to incompatible audiences.
"Hey look, Facebook has 4 billion users!" "Great. Here, we represent McDonald's, users who click this link will get coupons for combo meals. Run it in the United States." soon "The McDonald's ad was clicked on 94 billion times, yet the coupons from this campaign were redeemed in restaurants a total of 164 times nationwide. Can you explain to me how you achieved complete and total failure to sell cheap cheeseburgers to Americans?" "Yes I can, see, practically none of our active user accounts are owned or operated by organisms."
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I genuinely don't understand the business model they're going for here. Which means one of three things: 1. Meta knows something I don't know and this is going to work spectacularly, 2. It's one of those engineering decisions made by MBAs moments and it's going to come crashing down, or 3. it's an Enron moment and within 18 months the name of the crime they're committing is going to suddenly become a household phrase.
Honestly, with the power these companies have now, it could realistically be all 3 of your options, and they would still profit immensely and face no accountability.
Unless you're myspace. Myspace was great, until facebook just suddenly existed, and took over. Felt like it went from never hearing of facebook in 2006, to 2007 myspace is basically dead.
MySpace was sold to News Corp for $580 million dollars. Then they purged everyone's accounts, all their blogs, posts, pictures, everything. Talk about not knowing what they bought. Serious WTF. Users could submit a form and get some but not all of their profile back. One year later MySpace was worth an estimated $35 million. It was the worst tech acquisition until Twitter. This all coincided with Facebook opening up to the public and becoming more popular. So it's not exactly that MySpace just collapsed, Rupert Murdoch killed it.
To be fair to the fucking muskrat, he paid 44 billion dollars to have the loudest voice in the world. By chance, he also got a lot of power in US politics. Sure, he's killing twitter in the process, but he can probably recoup the money through other means.
What makes you believe Friendica won’t surpass Facebook?
I do not think decentralized social media will ever grab the masses. It can be confusing, which server do I join? Why that one vs this one?
Good grief, this argument seriously makes me want to pull my hair out...
"Which [email] server do I join? Why that one vs this one?"
Man, people got used to having the whole internet in their pocket from barely knowing it existed in like 15 years. There are already cultural metaphors for federation. People will grok that shit in no time when they need to. But it will take the network effect forcing them to learn it that will get people over the hill.
Sounds more like we would go back to forums.
I think "forums" is what Lemmy kinda shoulda been. I've had people argue against me at this point, but...
lemmy.nsfw and the other couple of porn instances are the only ones that are focused by topic. Everybody else tries to be a general purpose instance, which results in that "Which instance do I pick? Will it matter being on sh.itjust.works or lemmy.world?" issue and the "there are currently 94 communities with the name Linux, 20 with more than 250 subscribers and 12 that have seen some kind of activity in the last month" issues.
Lemmy could be used like a good old forum engine. Create an instance around a particular branch of discussion, but now they're federated.
I am down. I miss forums (as long as it is not tapatalk.)
Initially no real reason. Eventually you discover ones with administrators you vibe with and communities and users you like. But till then, maybe server capacity?
I get that, you get that, but the masses will not understand that.
Do they need to? How did people decide on MSN vs AIM vs ICQ? Google vs Yahoo? Ventrillo or Team speak? Skype vs Zoom vs Discord. They will go where their friends are primarily. And what suits their needs generally. Federation isn't anything truly new. The massive centralized servers were. The fediverse is a return to form. Only better. Be on the service and server that suit you. No missing out.
I liked yahooIM and AIM, but I also had MSN Messanger.
I liked YIMs buzz feature. Imagine no matter what you're doing, the audio mutes for a brief second, you hear a loud doorbell, and your whole screen, not just yahooIM, YOU COULD EVEN HAVE THE WINDOW MINIMIZED!!!! Your whole screen would shake.
It was very intrusive. I loved it.
Oh definitely. But those of us that multi-messenger were definitely the exception not the rule.
At first, the internet was for nerds only and not "for the masses". Then corporations realized there was a lot of money to be made, and they forced user-friendliness on it. And then the masses came.
Don't worry, in two decades we'll have Fediverse 3.0 which will just be a balkanized assortment of sites that don't communicate with each other and are worth trillions, all owned by people who bafflingly support President Kid Rock.
Because I have never even heard of friendica
I haven’t heard of Lemmy until the api changes.
And Reddit is still in no danger of being overtaken by Lemmy.
I beg to differ as the amount of registered users is steadily increasing, the instance servers are much more stable and the third-party apps have added tons of features.
You must be looking at different numbers than me because Lemmy has nowhere near the number of members as Reddit and it’s not even close.
Lemmy has 468k users while Reddit has 1.22b users. It’s catching up.
Reddit has 2,500x more users and Lemmy is "catching up"? Optimistic.
Glass Joe vs Mahamad Ali.
People will start to notice. Build it and they will come.
I’d also wager the proportion of human users is much higher on Lemmy.
Are you being sarcastic right now or do you think 468k users is anywhere near comparable to 1.22 billion users?
Also even that number of Lemmy users is an artifact of people leaving instances and creating new accounts across the Fediverse. I have 3 accounts myself that I check usually once a month, bc messages sent to my old one(s) won't follow me so it's the only way to make sure that someone trying to reach me can do so. And I had one on Kbin.social as well so there are now 4 OpenStars (3 looking to be active on a monthly basis) - and all of them are me!:-)
The better stat to use then is not Total Accounts but rather Monthly Active Users. In this, Lemmy has been steadily declining. We are now at <41.9k, after we held steady for awhile earlier this year at 45k. The peak after the Rexodus was ~52k - see https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy/, the number of instances has gone way down, the number of accounts per instance gone up, it looks like people are abandoning single-user instances in favor of the larger multi-user ones. But Lemmy.World used to hold ~80% of all Lemmy users while now it is closer to like 37% iirc, so overall we are becoming more centralized on average, but also stabilizing into a few established instances, and decentralization at the peak is also happening as well - especially after yesterday's announcement that will drive even more people, and entire communities, away from Lemmy.World further.
Overall engagement is up though - so more posts and comments from fewer people, those of us who remain here have become more active.
3 different accounts.....all the same guy......
GUYS!!! I FOUND MICK FOLEY!!!
HOW DID YOU... ah, uh, I mean nuh-uh! 🤥
These things take time. Reddit wasn’t popular at first.
Ok but there’s no indication currently that Lemmy is ever going to overtake Reddit. Im fine with that though.
They all say that before it happens.
I'm not answering that question. I'm answering whether this is the movement that dethrones it.
Probably not.