Do you think Lemmy and other parts of the fediverse will eventually enshittify? I think this would be an interesting discussion to have. There currently is not financial incentive like the ones that have led centralized platforms to enshittify. But there might be in the future. Does decentralization protect against that tendency in some way?

Lemmy and Mastodon do give me the hope, that when one platform turns to shit, there will be people creating a platform that - for the time being - is not.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 24 points 2 months ago (3 children)

No, it's not possible. The openness of the platform means even if one instance decides to paywall, everyone else keeps working just fine.

[–] 5dh@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Even if, for instance, Threads was widely allowed to federate with Mastodon servers?

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 12 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Ironically Mastodon.social is still federated

https://fedipact.veganism.social/

But I guess if Threads fully federates with some Mastodon instances, people would leave those instances

[–] 5dh@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 months ago

What really helps is that fediverse users are quite aware of the ideology behind federated social networks. I think, indeed, they won't all stay on a server that is federated with Threads if it threatens the fedi network.

[–] SharkAttak@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 2 months ago

Crap, I'm on masto.ai..

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Maybe, but threads userbase would swallow mastodons whole, that you wouldn't notice. Facebook has something like 58 million people. Mastodon I think has 12 million people, including the recent brazil exodus.

So if that happened, even if every mastodon user were on that one instance, you'd still have a potential growth of 46 million new users.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If the number of user is someone's top priority, wouldn't they be using Threads directly in the first place?

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I've never had facebook because I don't trust them with privacy. I've never had an account, but they still have my name, my phone number, my address, and I wouldn't be surprised if they can identify my face with AI.

I'm NOT signing up for them, and I feel like I'm not alone on that.

But as far as content goes, I'm a niche person. Most of my interests don't have communities on Lemmy. But they might......if you infused 58 million new users to the mix.

[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 2 months ago

But they might…if you infused 58 million new users to the mix.

It's far, far more likely they'll be interested in eugenicism, UN conspiranoia and the divine right of Israel, given the platform they're "branching" from.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I'm not sure that millions of Facebook users are interested in Super Famicom Wars and G-scale trains

To be fair, if you really want to post about those in dedicated communities, Reddit is probably your best choice.

[–] nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Do any of the bots that repost subreddits in Lemmy reverse and post Lemmy communities to reddit?

I’m sure Reddit would ban it if it noticed, but might be a way to attract users here for niche communities.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 1 points 2 months ago

Lemmy tolerance is up to the mods. Most of the time it's seen as self promotion and forbidden

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 5 points 2 months ago

That doesn't affect access to any of the Mastodon servers.

[–] xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 months ago

How would federation with Threads have any effect on the usability of a Mastodon instance?

[–] 5dh@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 months ago

I don’t think it’s impossible. We should be wary, enshittification might find new ways to ruin even the fediverse. I don’t know how, and I’m not pessimistic. But we should not assume we’re safe from the phenomenon.

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think it's inevitable that enshitification will happen. In fact, we haven't risen above the shit stage yet.

You're talking about going downhill, whereas I don't think it's gone uphill yet. There's so few users, that I run through content in about 30ish minutes.

Whereas for as much shit as you'll talk about reddit, they have infinately more content. I cannot remember EVER running out of content when I was on reddit.

Last night I wanted to talk to people who enjoy the advance wars series. I started playing super famicom wars. And I wanted to post about it. Until I realized this isn't reddit. There is no community for that here. It's too niche, and theres no users to support that community. Even if I created it, it would just be 1 community, with like 1 post by me, and 5 subscribers.

Until this place gains millions of users, you can't talk about enshitification, because we're already there.

Unless you come here exclusively to talk about linux. In which case, yeah. Good luck with your platform that is currently 30+ years old, and enjoying an all time high userbase of less than 5% despite windows being a dumpster fire, and macs costing more than a house in an economy where everybody lives paycheck to paycheck and will for the rest of their life. They'd rather deal with apple or microsoft than linux, simply because of what linux is.

If thats what you're here for, than sure. For everybody else, this place feels like it's continually LOSING users.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

There is no community for that here

If you open a advance wars or super Famicom wars thread on !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works and !retrogaming@lemmy.world I'm pretty sure you'll get a lot of answers.

Everytime I post on !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works I get dozens of answers

Also

There's more than Linux

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That is such a disorganized way to do things. Retrogaming is about retro gaming as a whole, not individual games. I'm sure there may be a few people who enjoy it, but a dedicated community would be where you should be wanting to post.

Besides, I didn't have questions. I just started playing Super Famicom Wars, and wanted to talk about it. See if others have played the fan translation I am. I get super excited about topics, and I want to share.....but this wouldn't be the place for that.

And this happens usually once or twice a day. I want to post about (topic) but (topic) doesn't have a community people would search to find that kind of content.

Last week it was G-Scale trains. I see a general model train community, but it's mostly dead. And certainly they wouldn't want to discuss G-Scale.

Last week I had to post in retrogaming, because the retropie community hasn't had a post in 8 months.

The fediverse needs people, and content to grow. I feel like it's even slightly shrinking.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 6 points 2 months ago

but this wouldn’t be the place for that.

Why not? I wanted to post about city builders the other day, I got 52 answers: https://lemmy.world/post/15279489

Someone else posted about Chrono Cross and got 19 answers: https://lemmy.world/post/20244935?scrollToComments=true

For the trains, !bricktrains@lemmy.world seems quite active, and I'm sure @Krafting@lemmy.world could consider enlarging the scope to other model trains

Last week I had to post in retrogaming, because the retropie community hasn’t had a post in 8 months.

Is that a bad thing? With 50k monthly active users, there is a limit on how niche your communities can be, it makes sense to got to more general communities sometimes. On the other side, your posts are more likely to be seen.