Having spent a lot of time on Mastodon… There are tons of people there talking about federated and self-hosted services, software freedom, censorship, encryption, tech regulation… A very narrow range of topics directly surrounding the fediverse get a lot of attention.
But nobody talks about anything else. Nobody goes to Instagram to talk about Instagram, nobody goes to Tiktok to talk about Tiktok, nobody goes to Facebook (at all). People use social media to either talk to their friends or talk about their hobbies and interests.
And if your hobby is tech, that’s fine, enjoy. I like tech too. But please, if you have anything else to say, say it. The fediverse will never appeal to the masses if we don’t embrace a wide variety of hobbies and interests.
We need people here talking about cooking. We need people here talking about fashion. We need people here talking about immigration policy. We need people here talking about everything people enjoy!
Yes, if you go to /m/fashion right now, it’s… barely there. You’re not going to get a ton of conversation when you post there. But that’s not the point. The point is to build out the community, so that, a year from now, as more and more people attempt to post and engage, there is a conversation. There’s a reason to be on the fediverse besides the meta circlejerk over how great the fediverse could be in theory.
This is the “content” people are craving. Find or start a magazine for your city, or your town, or your country. Write a post. Share posts from your favorite blogs. Comment on something, if you have anything to say at all. Share a youtube video—yes, a youtube video, I know, youtube sucks, but at least it gives us a path to a community here.
Right now, it’s attracting a circlejerk of people who only want to talk about how good the fediverse can be. I don’t know what you mean by “the right audience,” but this is not an audience I or anybody else wants to spend time around, and it’s not an audience that can build real collective knowledge or anything like that.
My menswear friends aren’t coming anywhere near the fediverse. Not because they’re “the wrong audience” and the fediverse only appeals to cool people, but because there’s nobody talking about menswear and the fediverse doesn’t appeal to people.
Why do you follow it if you don’t want to see it?
I don’t see anything on FB or IG that I don’t avail myself of. I follow users I want to follow. I go on reddit, I join subreddits I want to join. I don’t have to run away from the content I pick.
Tiktok is dumb though, IDK why you’d want to see algorithm-selected content like that.
I mean, you’re free to downvote that nonsense. It’s certainly not a problem on Reddit, it only exists in the subreddits that are specifically about cringey recipes.
You mean people with hobbies? You exclusively want people here without hobbies?
All of your gripes sound like a lack of patience, or a need for the corporate instances of social media to be replicated in the fediverse.
DIY isn’t for everyone. It will have rough edges. It will lack things until you build them.
You want people to go somewhere? Make it worth their time. This is like burning man. Show up to a blank slate and make it fun/interesting/sustainable.
If that’s not for you… well… perhaps you should stop trying to square peg this round hole.
I’m trying to do that, but it’ll take more than one of us. I’m trying to encourage others to join me. Is that a problem?
Six years is not enough time to wait for one other person who thinks suits are cool?
See, you’re saying “corporate instances of social media,” but what you mean is “any other social media that could possibly be perceived as a success.” The fediverse is uniquely lacking in content. It doesn’t need to be corporate for people to come here and make it something.
You ever been on forums? You know what it’s like to not have upload privileges as a user and have to upload everything manually on some pix host?
The fediverse is like that and will most probably stay like that. Why? Cuz space costs money, and people host their own instances.
This fact (having to upload your content on external hosts, rather than just hitting the image upload button and the thing gets uploaded on the instance) coupled with how different the fediverse is and how harder it currently is to find communities you might like, is a no go for most normies. Deal with it 🤷.
Reddit became huge off the back of imgur, only developing its own (asstacular) image upload service in recent years. I haven’t had to upload many photos to kbin yet (it seems to work fine), but I can’t imagine imgur being a problem if I had to use it.
I highly doubt this is part of the problem.