If you write about something that's in the Fediverse but not Mastodon, most Fediverse users won't know that it's in the Fediverse.

SK

@Jupiter Rowland Even some popular accounts such as fedi.tips focus mostly on mastodon and this only perpetuates this belief. Not much we can do about it. Ignorance is bliss for most people.

Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

@sk @jupiter_rowland While @FediTips is on Mastodon and mostly posts about Mastodon topics, I would not say that they contribute to the belief that the Fediverse is only Mastodon:

What is Mastodon? What is the Fediverse? | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse

An unofficial guide to using Mastodon and the Fediverse

(fedi.tips)

There's even a section called "The Fediverse beyond Mastodon" which describes various platforms.

But as @jupiter_rowland said, only those willing to look for information can find it, and most people won't.

Jupiter Rowland

@Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic Especially because they make it look like the Fediverse is a) Mastodon and b) all kinds of other stuff that actually doesn't really matter. As you've said, most of the time, they post about Mastodon and only Mastodon as if there's nothing else out there. Lumping everything that isn't Mastodon together, keeping it separate from Mastodon and only marginally touching it, if at all, makes it seem like the non-Mastodon Fediverse isn't worth bothering.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon

Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

@jupiter_rowland Sure, you're absolutely right. Their main focus is definitely Mastodon and they cover things beyond Mastodon on the side. I would put this down to supply and demand, as many (inexperienced/non-tech) people join Mastodon.

But I don't understand why Mastodon is so popular. Is it just because of the Twitter crash? Sure, I also joined the Fediverse when I was looking for a micro-blogging platform, but that's not for everyone.

Jupiter Rowland

@Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

But I don't understand why Mastodon is so popular.

In order to understand it, you have to go back to Mastodon's origins in 2016.

Mastodon was brand-new. It was somehow discovered by German press that a German lad almost fresh out of school had developed a "Twitter killer". Searing hot story in Germany which quickly spread beyond Germany.

There was also Pleroma, also from Germany, but Pleroma got nothing because it had made the mistake to position itself as an alternative Web UI for GNU social rather than direct stand-alone competition against Twitter.

There was also diaspora*, a Facebook alternative, but it was nothing but a distant memory of a crowdfunding campaign in summer 2010, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica story, which raised $320,000 when $12,000 were the goal. But diaspora* itself wasn't released with a bang. Some six years later, it was still a public alpha, it was fairly lack-lustre, and the entire development team had to be replaced on the way. Most people had entirely forgotten about it, even tech journalists.

There were also GNU social (formerly StatusNet), Friendica and Hubzilla, but like Pleroma, the general public had never heard of them.

And so it seemed like this boy from Jena had made something that had never been done before, also because he had a ready-to-run software product and not a plan and a crowdfunding campaign.

Fast-forward to 2017. Certain fringe groups were chased off of Twitter: furries, otaku, LGBTQIA+. The only halfway Twitter-like place that at least some of them had heard of was Mastodon. So that was where they invited each other. Within no time, #awoo was one of the hottest hashtags on Mastodon.

It was especially then that Mastodon grew faster than anything else in the Fediverse.

Fast-forward to early 2022. Elon Musk had announced that he might buy Twitter. The first big Twitter migration wave was kicked off. And everyone who fled from Twitter into the Fediverse landed on Mastodon. Why? Here are some reasons.

There were many more Mastodon users who'd invite people to Mastodon than there were Pleroma users who'd invite people to Pleroma, and especially in the western world, there were far more than there were Misskey users who'd invite people to Misskey. Not to mention their respective forks or stuff that wasn't made to be a Twitter alternative.
For simplicity reasons, Twitter escapees were never given the choice between Fediverse projects. Instead, they weren't even guided to the project websites but to certain instances, mostly mastodon.social. Not only because more choice would have overwhelmed the Twitter escapees more, but also because you can only tweet so much in 280 characters.
Precious few Mastodon users even knew back then that there was more to the Fediverse than Mastodon, much less what there was. Thus, nobody on Mastodon invited anyone from Twitter to Calckey or so.
It actually seemed like Pleroma, Akkoma and the westernised Forkeys slept through the migration wave because there weren't actually masses of people guided from Twitter to one of these.
Neither of them really had that one big official lighthouse instance that could withstand a massive migration wave of hundreds of thousands or even millions of users. I guess their users were rather cautious. All this in spite of especially Pleroma and Akkoma requiring much fewer server resources than Mastodon. Only Misskey had and still has a lighthouse instance that a) can hold loads of users and b) with a domain that makes it look like this lighthouse instance is Misskey.

And so the Fediverse ended up with millions upon millions of people who initially thought that Mastodon, or even the Fediverse itself, was only mastodon.social. Or mstdn.social or mas.to if their inviters were too lazy to type on their phone screens. But most of the time, it was mastodon.social.

A typical Fediverse invite tweet looked like this back then:

join mastodon its twitter without musk https://mastodon.social

No link to joinmastodon.org. No mention of instances, much less other instances. And no mention of the rest of the Fediverse.

Well, and now that Mastodon makes for 70% of the Fediverse, and at least every other Mastodon user still doesn't know about the existence of a Fediverse outside of Mastodon, there are still more people trying to invite 𝕏 users to Mastodon than people trying to invite 𝕏 users to anything else in the Fediverse combined.

Tech media and mass media don't help either. Mastodon had a huge boom, but everything else in the Fediverse didn't. Thus, Mastodon was noticed by tech media and mass media, and everything else in the Fediverse wasn't. Thus, tech media and mass media only wrote about Mastodon, but hardly about the Fediverse itself and never at all about Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Calckey/Firefish, Sharkey, Iceshrimp etc. because they never even noticed that any of these exist. Thus, the general public read about Mastodon, but hardly about the Fediverse and not at all about anything else in the Fediverse. Thus, people only know Mastodon.

And now you have next to nobody on Pleroma trying to invite people from 𝕏 to Pleroma.

You have next to nobody on Akkoma trying to invite people from 𝕏 to Akkoma.

You have next to nobody on Iceshrimp trying to invite people from 𝕏 to Iceshrimp.

You have next to nobody on Sharkey trying to invite people from 𝕏 to Sharkey.

But you have loads of people on Mastodon trying to invite people from 𝕏 to Mastodon.

You have loads of people on Mastodon trying to invite people from Facebook to Mastodon because they've never even heard about the existence of Friendica, much less Hubzilla, (streams) or Socialhome.

You have loads of people on Mastodon trying to invite people from all kinds of commercial silos to Mastodon because Mastodon is all they've ever heard of, and besides, they try to race Bluesky in terms of user numbers.

When it comes to microblogging, we now have:

Bluesky: the next Twitter. Also with easy onboarding because it's centralised. (Bluesky nerds: "Ackchually..." @Christine Lemmer-Webber: "ACKCHUALLY...")
Threads: Meta Platforms = Facebook = Zuckerberg = evil!1!!
Nostr: Either you've never heard of it, or it's a playground for cryptobros by cryptobros.
Mastodon: The only non-commercial alternative to the Birdcage known to mankind, but WAYYYYYY too complicated because you have to choose an instance! (Not like both joinmastodon.org and the official app railroad you to mastodon.social. Not like the official Bluesky app doesn't let you pick a PDS to join.)
Pleroma: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that.
Akkoma: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that.
Misskey: only known in Japan.
Firefish: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that.
Iceshrimp: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that.
Sharkey: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that. Apparently, not even the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.
Catodon: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that.
Mitra: :person_shrugging: Never heard of that.
And so forth...

In short: Mastodon is only so popular because nobody knows anything else. Its only advantage over the rest of the Fediverse is that many more people know it.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon

Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

@jupiter_rowland Interesting dynamic, thanks for the summary!

I still wonder how people coming from Facebook are not able to find out about Friendica, Hubzilla and co, as their experience with Mastodon must be very unsatisfactory. But then again, most people have no media competence whatsoever.

Apart from Mitra, I have actually heard of all these projects. But well, I'm interested in this stuff. As always, your posts are a great source of knowledge about the Fediverse!

Jupiter Rowland

@Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

I still wonder how people coming from Facebook are not able to find out about Friendica, Hubzilla and co, as their experience with Mastodon must be very unsatisfactory. But then again, most people have no media competence whatsoever.

Well, for one, Friendica and its descendants have never gone viral. It doesn't help that everything in the family prior to (streams) was made under the assumption of "if you build it, they will come". And especially Friendica was made in an era when phone apps were gimmicks rather than absolute necessities.

Hubzilla lived on Friendica converts most of the time because Friendica was just about the only place where Hubzilla was known at all. I guess most people who jumped ships from Friendica to Hubzilla did it for even more features they might need. This is also why nothing post-Hubzilla really took off: It was mostly known on Hubzilla, but just about all that Hubzilla users knew about it was that it had fewer features than Hubzilla. And people either didn't know or didn't care what was improved in comparison with Hubzilla.

Besides, nobody on Facebook expects there to be a free, decentralised Facebook alternative. And if they don't expect it, they don't Google for it, and they don't stumble upon it. If someone invites them to Mastodon, it's usually either a huge surprise that a free, decentralised alternative to anything exists, or they don't notice that Mastodon is free and/or decentralised.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Friendica #Hubzilla

Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

@jupiter_rowland It's a shame. The concepts behind Hubzilla are amazing. But marketing and presentation are big factors. And the UI/UX design in Hubzilla is very outdated in my opinion. Neuhub seems to be able to provide a more modern interface and make Hubzilla more appealing and accessible when it's finished.

The people who are still on Facebook are probably not the type of people looking for a free/decentralized alternative. And even if you Google it, all you get is Diaspora and Mastodon...

Jupiter Rowland

@Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic Come to think of it, way back in the olden days, Friendica had themes that tried to mimic diaspora*, Facebook and both.

In the meantime, as the name indicates, Redbasic is stuck in 2012. Although I love how customisable it has become with Hubzilla 9. The colour scheme on my channel is set up to match the background image in both day and night mode.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Friendica #Hubzilla

Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

@jupiter_rowland Oh, I never noticed the color changing in your channel. I guess I always looked at it during the day (light blue). I will have to look into this, but many features and functions of Hubzilla are somewhat hidden, at least to a newbie like me.

I'm not surprised that Friendica had a Facebook theme. Diaspora also makes sense. Mastodon also has a Twitter-like theme (Bird UI by @rolle). I think this helps when people are migrating. Hubzilla, on the other hand, is too unique for that

Jupiter Rowland

@Dr. Daniel Dizdarevic

Oh, I never noticed the color changing in your channel.

It doesn't switch automatically, although that'd be a nice feature.

At least I can switch it manually in the burger menu, and I can specify whether day or night mode is the default.