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No. And that’s fine. I don’t expect underground music to replace top 40. And there’s a place for both.

Would be cool and technically possible, but I doubt it will happen.

Big Tech throwing millions into marketing and vendor lock-ins vs OpenSource projects that are decentralised and often running on donations and goodwill. That’s a very touch battle to win, especially when most people care more about ease of use and amount of possible followers than about privacy and decentralisation.

Mastodon grew, but only took a tiny slice of Twitter and half of Mastodon are bots or people who crosspost to both. I expect the same to happen to Lemmy/Reddit, and any other SNS that goes this direction.

I’m content with a stable and active niche group of SNSs. Hopefully the open source and decentralisation aspects can prevent it from dying and going to the next SNS as the big ones tend to do. Which cóúld be as people can make newer applications that work with the old ones as long as it all runs on ActivityPup. I feel it’s the most realistic way of thinking.

But maybe I’m just too pessimistic. Even the biggest people in tech stuggle to predict the future of it. So who knows.

probably not; Popular Social Media is a massive force

Best we can do is continue trucking along while popular social media goes through the Enshittening Cycle, and swoop in and be like “hey, have you heard of Lemmy?”

like I think the growth will be over a long timespan than exponential, unless Social Media really shits the bed

No, marketing rules the world. In tech, it seems to me that the average person does not give much thought to their software at all. They will use defaults or the products they know about the most (Chrome).

I do not think replacing centralized social media should be our goal though. I believe the Fediverse needs more diversity of content. Right now, I see a lot of people from the FOSS community. People should be able to see a good variety of subjects being discussed or shared. FOSS is great but it should not be the only thing we see.

@Bicyclejohn I hope fediverse helps us return to small blogs and forums that we had before facebook and twitter took over. no more monopolies

Probably not replace, but certainly it could be a viable and thriving part of the picture. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having options.

No. Fediverse is great by design, but is too complicated at the moment (maybe it’s just how platforms are set up at the moment).

The design is not too intuitive in looking at other posts from different instances/servers.

For example going to this post:

• Clicking !freemediaheckyeah@lemmy.fmhy.ml
  in the sidebar directs me to
  lemmy.fmhy.ml/c/freemediaheckyeah
  (different instance)
• Clicking FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH@lemmy.fmhy.ml
  at the top of the post directs me to
  lemmy.ml/c/freemediaheckyeah@lemmy.fmhy.ml
  (same instance)

Absolutely yes, better than the others.

It’s more closely related to the initial intentions of the internet than most other social platforms. Ideally it could get things going back in the right direction again iif nothing else!

since there isn’t any strong way to collect data or advertise it will always be an underdog compared to big business.

that being said, the fediverse could outlast a few mainstream networks and build lasting strength with that. I’m an ideal setting it could become a defacto network over time.

can we get young people coming here though? that’s how we get the tides to turn

No it turns the problem from your account being owned by a company looking to turn a profit to random people on the internet. If we had a way of downloading our accounts and transferring instances then maybe.