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   Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Saturday, 18-Jan-2025 11:20:27 JST Chris Trottier

   To be blunt, I’m thrilled that Pixelfed is what’s growing the Fediverse right now. That app finally pushed accounts over the 11M mark after hovering around 10M for more than a year.

   The reality is, Mastodon is no longer going to cut it.

   Most people who are looking for a Twitter alternative are migrating to Threads or Bluesky. And while Threads has some Fediverse integration, I have little confidence that they’ll integrate with the Fediverse entirely – because Meta will be Meta.

   Now for Mastodon to actually grow, there needs to be other ActivityPub-enabled apps that are not Twitter-like. And that means other uses cases for the Fediverse not only need to be developed but have thriving communities that coalesce around them.

   But how does this actually help Mastodon? You see, those other apps build Mastodon’s network effect. And a network effect is what makes any social media app more useful. If you want to talk to a more diverse array of people, you need a wider and wider network effect.

   Which then extends Mastodon’s reach even further. In fact, beyond Mastodon. Which makes Mastodon more useful.

   So if you want Mastodon to not just survive, but also thrive – perhaps even grow and leap frog Bluesky and (perhaps) Threads, then apps like Pixelfed are critical.
   
   RE: https://atomicpoet.org/objects/2dcad543-239e-4664-9e38-4ba4a86cc09b

   • HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴 repeated this.
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     𝚝𝚓𝚠 (thomasjwebb@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 18-Jan-2025 11:24:43 JST 𝚝𝚓𝚠

     in reply to

     @atomicpoet maybe part of the issue is even Twitter was always a niche anyway, compared to Facebook and Instagram. And Mastodon reminds people a lot of Twitter.

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     𝓐𝓷𝓭𝔂𝓣𝓲𝓮𝓭𝔂𝓮 𓀤 (andytiedye@sfba.social)'s status on Saturday, 18-Jan-2025 11:24:50 JST 𝓐𝓷𝓭𝔂𝓣𝓲𝓮𝓭𝔂𝓮 𓀤

     in reply to

     @atomicpoet We need events if we are ever to replace Facebook. I know it is being worked on, and there is a test server somewhere, but it needs to be more widely deployed.

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     Chris Trottier (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Saturday, 18-Jan-2025 11:29:17 JST Chris Trottier

     in reply to

     Here’s the other thing: as much folks on Mastodon say they don’t like Bluesky, and they’ll never join it – the fact is that Bluesky’s higher network effect has resulted in a a lot of folks who used to thumb their noses at Bluesky joining Bluesky.

     Hell, I post more often on Bluesky now – even though I don’t like it. And for those longer posts that won’t fit on Bluesky, I even provide a “READ MORE” link so people on Bluesky can read the rest of my post. (see attached image).

     So now I’m on Bluesky, talking about the Fediverse, because people who used to be on Mastodon are like, “Hey Chris, I still want to hear from you, can you post here please?”

     And I’m like, “Okay, it’s more work – but whatever.”

     At some point, I want this Bridgyfed thing to be more common – and please, for the love of god, work with my Akkoma server – because I’d rather just bridge it.

     Now some of you might think, “Hey, Meta will eventually enable ActivityPub entirely, right?” – which would finally kill this silly protocol war. But again, I’m skeptical that it will be done. And even if it is done, so what? Will Threads allow posts from there to be bridged to Bluesky?

     sigh

     Damn it, we’re going to need to go beyond microblogging and Twitter-like services to grow this network, and that means building the stuff that Meta and Bluesky won’t.