It’s still very early on, but a theme discussed in the video is worth repeating here: if the Fediverse is so great (ethical, devoid of advertising or toxic, addictive algorithms, with the goal of genuinely connecting people) why is it that the general public has not heard of it?

The futurology.today instance I'm an admin/mod of has the added benefit of being a direct sibling of r/futurology on Reddit which has 21 million users (I, and the other Mods also mod it).

Despite over a year promoting it on the subreddit, 3/4 of the instances users are from the fediverse, not Reddit.

Maybe the fediverse needs some breakthrough with usability, discovery and appeal?

Its bizarre that finding and subscribing to other instances is still so painful and backwards.

Why can't we have new account types already subscribed to a 'top 100 instances' ? Instant improvement.

[–] imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

We've kinda been hibernating since July 2023, with the userbase rapidly declining from that peak and then remaining nearly constant for the entirety of 2024. Honestly it's quite impressive that we held such a steady monthly user count for the past year.

But now with all the publicity around the fediverse, we are beginning to pick up some organic momentum again. We've grown by about 2k active users in January (~5% growth). Keep that up for a few more months and it will start to become noticeable with more activity, which should hopefully start a positive feedback loop.

Regarding finding and subscribing to communities on other instances, I'm pretty sure this tool addresses that problem fairly effectively.

https://lemmy-federate.com/

You may want to add your instance to that.

[–] Die4Ever@programming.dev 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Keep that up for a few more months

I'm not confident that the internet's attention span is that long, unfortunately

[–] imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

That's fair, but also reddit will continue to make unpopular decisions, and we are already the default alternative. Just have to wait and see

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