Stop addressing them as “normies” would be a great start.

Can’t speak for rest of the Fediverse as I’m not super active on microblogging anymore, but at least here on Lemmy, there is such a strong “in” culture and quirky skewed perception of the world, and often times come off as actively hostile against those that do not share the same quirky skewed world view. The anti-AI, anti-corporate, would rather shoot myself in the foot if it’s not FOSS, etc kind of views, with their own strong vocal proponents, comes off as unwelcoming. People are addicted to socials because of the positivity they can get, not the negative sentiments that’s often echo’ed.

Amongst those that doesn’t share the kind of view, you’d already be looking at an extreme small minority that might be willing to give the platform a try, but as long as the skewed perception of the world dominates the discussions, you can expect them to go back to main stream centralized platforms where they can get more main stream view points based discussions.

Since most people are talking about the sign-up barriers, I’ll mention culture and reputation.

I love Lemmy and Mastodon, but whenever I’ve seen the fediverse brought up elsewhere, someone inevitably shuts down any curiosity by suggesting that it’s a political echo-chamber. I don’t think that’s accurate for all of it, but if that reputation is out there, we probably need to make an effort to show that there’s a broader appeal. If the average person is expecting the fediverse to be the left-wing equivalent of something like “Truth Social”, I could understand the reluctance to adopt it.

I’m a developer, and it was a pain picking an instance. You start reading about them, and it turns out one’s censored, the other one’s communist, third one doesn’t cooperate with the other ones so you can’t see anything…

As long as it is like this, I don’t believe mass adoption is feasible. I would’ve given up because it takes a lot of time compared to just registering and off you go, but I was interested to see what’s all the ruckus after reddit started with censorship. Maybe interesting to mention that I was never an active reddit member (not one post there).

@dch82 first, “normies” have to not get harassed when they come here.

Unfortunately the biggest Fedi software refuses to add automated reporting of offensive posts so if it’s not reported, the admins won’t even see it.

People coming from corporate social media are used to ignoring the report button because in their experience, it either doesn’t work, or gets ignored by admins anyway.

We need automated reporting.

@fediverse

By permitting advertising.

“Normies” are not “microbloggers”. Most people just want to follow what their friends and family and news organizations and “influencers” are posting.

My biggest gripe with the fediverse (indirectly) is that all the information I would get on Twitter about my city is not available to me - concert announcements, restaurant specials, road closures, major news, hobby meetups, etc. They’re posting on Facebook and Instagram (which is IMO the worst of all social platforms) and slowly adopting Threads. My issue with these platforms is mostly regarding the algorithm deciding what it thinks you want. This is driven by advertising.

Twitter didn’t really pick up steam until celebrities and news outlets were posting and engaging on the platform. Then they pushed hard for ads to increase revenue and expand features and stability (for better or worse). Then they just got greedy. Then they were sold for the dumbest amount of money in the history of sales.

Getting normies here means getting influencers here. Influencers want to make money for being assholes. If you don’t want influencers and ads here, don’t ask for the normies to come. Accept the beauty of this micro micro blogging platform. If you want to share outside the open fediverse, embrace cross posting to the closed platforms. That’s kind of the whole point of it. You can post in your tiny little corner while still engaging with the more popular platforms.

TL;DR: be careful what you wish for.

I have to say, as something if a social media virgin, I am puzzled by #4. I have never been a Facebook, Instagram or Twitter user. Previous to getting into the Fediverse, the only platform I engaged with that could be considered social media was Reddit, and I left that behind because of the whole brewhaha over third-party clients.

Since finding my way here, I have become an enthusiastic user of Mastodon, Pixelfed and Lemmy. I could not have imagined that it would be easier to acclimate myself and i have not encountered any barriers to entry, or at least I have not recognized any.

Is my experience atypical?

I said since I got here that the actual sign up process IS the hardest part. For exactly the reasons you said.

Each instance has it’s own personality. As much as EVERY user here will hate to hear this, you need to centralize the decentralized. Have a single point of entry. Signup at Lemmy.com

Now you’re [email protected]. and you’re told that you have 6 months to pick an instance. And here’s a guide to all known instances, with a wiki style explaination of what each instance’s personality is. With an expandable list of each federated and defederated instance.

Now once they switch to their new “home” all their comments stay in their comment history. Everything in their profile comes with them. EVERY instance in the fediverse needs to adhere to a set of protocols. So that when they move instances, the only thing that changes is if you look at a post they made last week, it no longer shows [email protected] it now shows [email protected]. and if in 2 years you move again now it says [email protected] even for posts you made 2 years prior. It always lists your current account. Even if you move to Mbin. Now it says [email protected]

It’s a learn, and grow as you go situation.

Oh, and if an instance ever shuts down, those profiles aren’t lost. They revert back to Lemmy.com, and the 6 month rule is back in effect.

But you have to anticipate the user. Not control the user. And right now the user understands centralized. So centralize the decentralized, and THEN teach them slowly how it works. I understand today leaps and bounds more than I did 4 months ago. I’m still not sure Lemmy.World is my final home. I’m trying out piefed. I’m probably going to try out Mbin. And I’m sure I’ll discover new things. But on day 1, I was like “…do what now? What’s an instance? What’s decentralized?”

And NOW I can see that the Nintendo account I follow on Mastodon for the past year isn’t really Nintendo. It’s [email protected] and EVERY post gets auto “boosted”. A year ago I thought that was literally Nintendo. I was surprised they were not only OBSESSIVELY active, but that they had a Mastodon account at all.

You gotta remember, this is how most people will walk into the fediverse on day 1. Not knowing how shit works, and if it doesn’t work for them, they’re out. You can teach them later. But also right now the fediverse as a whole is fragmented as shit. There’s decentralized, and then theres disjointed.

You’ll notice that I post regularly to THIS community. With constant questions. I’M taking the active approach to learning. The average user won’t know that they’re stupid. They’ll think the fediverse is stupid because it doesn’t work the way they’re used to. Most people don’t have the self reflection I have, nor the constant curiousity. If I don’t know a thing, it bothers me. If most people don’t know how a smoke alarm works, they fon’t give a shit. Whereas I watch a youtube video for almost an hour. Did you know there’s actually several different types of smoke detection? And that one type is very much more prone to false positives, and worse, lack of positive positives due to light? See, most people will find that boring, not give a shit, and move on. So YOU gotta teach them with annoying popups. “Hey, the fediverse is actually self hosted, and right now you’re on the instance of Lemmy.com! Whats that mean? Well…” blah blah blah, you guys already know this part, but that’s the message they should get on day 1. Teach them they need to understand what an instance is, and how to pick an instance that works for them. Then they can migrate there. If that instance is ever no longer good enough, they can migrate elsewhere. Even to Mbin, even to piefed, wherever! One account, all the fediverse.

And here’s the best part. They can go to fediverse.com and log in regardless of which instance they’re on. Just type user is [email protected] password is ********* and login.

And now all the decentralized is centralized. Without losing the benefits of being decentralized. Because it IS still decentralized. But most drivers aren’t mechanics. They use the service, but they don’t need to know the ins and outs. They just need to be able to use it, without it being confusing for THEM.

The hardest thing I’ve noticed is that linux user types don’t grasp is that just because THEY understand something as easy, doesn’t mean EVERYONE finds it easy. And there are a LOT of linux mindset people here. You may “get it”, but that doesn’t make it naturally intuitive. The fediverse is confusing as shit. Each part works differently. Has a different layout. Has a different interface. Operates differently. Which is a stark contrast to facebook users who just say “DO THE THING!” and suddenly 70 boomers are giving them thumbs up and emojis for a quilt they sewed and sharing the patchwork on.

Everyone here is saying to defederate from Threads, because it’s facebook, and I get why. But are you seriously going to cut off the biggest by far userbase to federate with you, simply because you don’t want corporate integration? Facebook still wouldn’t own the fediverse, but now something like 80 million users will start asking questions about the fediverse. Yes, it’s all old people, and people we would rather not interact with, but guess what. They don’t want to interact with you in [email protected] either. They don’t want to be in [email protected] either. They’re going to create their own communities, which have no interest to you, but boost the fediverse’s numbers. By the millions. And now maybe facebook as a whole integrates. Maybe reddit sees the momentum and they integrate. Maybe hoogle sees the momentum.

And pretty soon the fediverse becomes the default layout of how the internet works. And the decentralized nature means that no corporate entity CAN own it. They can put ads on individual instances that they own…but they can’t control all the instances. And people who don’t care about those ads will stay there. People who don’t will go to other duplicate instances.

But to defederate from threads before ANY of this takes place is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, while daily seeing those same people ask “How do we grow the fediverse?”

THATS HOW!!! Ok, I’ve ranted enough…

So I have been on Mastodon and Threads for quite awhile. I’m on BlueSky now too. Threads is the most enjoyable of the three by far. I don’t see how marketing has to do with it in any way, but after spending some time on each, I prefer Threads. It’s the only one that I’ve found content I wanted to engage with.

With Mastodon, I feel like I still can’t get started. I’m not sure what to do.

How do we get “normies” to adopt the Fediverse?

We don’t. Normies take one look at anything that isn’t mainstream and pinch their noses. A significant portion of them can barely make a search on the internet, they get lost at the idea of “websites” and are likely heavily biased against people who aren’t using what “everyone is using”

Anedoctal experience: back when I was using dating apps, I’ve had a fair share of girls that stopped talking to me once I said I didn’t have instagram, because it meant I was “hiding something”.

Make it look like a centralised system initially. Provide a portal to a pre vetted/chosen instance that is accepting new members in their locale/country, that is the same for everyone.

Update: This (above) is badly written. I’m trying to say every potential new member gets presented with the same (pretend centralised) portal that is in fact an (valid long-lived) instance local to the individual potential for them to sign up with. So two local users in Oz get given a proxy to the instance local to them, and a user in Blighty an instance local to that person. The decentralised Lemmy looks centralised, but isn’t. The proxy front end should explain that they’re joining their local instance and it’s like a network of little affiliated clubs that can see each others posts globally. they log in for the first time it will become clear.

It’s late, I’m tired, sorry everyone. Is that any better?

I think it’s confusing (the reverse of what they’re used to) for a newbie who have been bought up in a centralised internet with single front ends of all the big players to be presented with little instances to join to access the whole.

Lemmy (or at least lemmy.world) was bonkers levels of buggy last summer during the reddit blackout. Like, literally unusable levels of buggy. Getting the word out that it’s (mostly) bug-free now would probably be good, because I’m sure there were many redditors who tried it and quickly swore it off as a pile of shit.

Otherwise I’m in agreement that the instance-selection part of sign-up is a huge barrier, because what instance you choose is actually really important but it’s overwhelming when you’re just getting started. Plus not being able to migrate your account/communities/posts to another instance if yours goes to shit/shuts down/turns out to not fit your needs makes the fediverse feel really unstable.

Porn?