this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
50 points (100.0% liked)

Chat

7499 readers
19 users here now

Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
remington
alyaza
50
Could the 2020s be the decade of decentralized social media? (self.chat)
submitted 1 year ago by Cowbob45 to c/chat
16 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

So last decade was filled with corporate social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, etc. And I mean it still is but perhaps if we play our cards right we can make 2020 the age of decentralized social media? Maybe we won’t end up being the top 5 pages on the internet but we just have to grab a good portion of people to compete more directly with the big corpos. Descripción

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Thugosaurus_Rex 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There’s also currently too many steps for users beyond “install app, turn off brain, and start scrolling”. As sad as it is, that’s all many people want: an app that lets them mindlessly scroll.

I agree with your overall post, but I think this part is an especially major limiting factor--the selling points of a decentralized system are also disadvantages for mass appeal for a lot of general users. Most people just want something they can open and have everything already set to go and with everything in one place. And honestly I see the appeal of that. It comes with its own disadvantages, but sheer ease of use is hard to beat, and decentralized systems that have a higher barrier of entry to access content have a leg behind on competing with an immediate one stop shop. I think the overall competition is going to be in quality of community rather than population capture. I don't see decentralized systems outcompeting in the latter category.

[–] K_REY_C 3 points 1 year ago

Insightful. I believe that some of these issues are resolvable with better onboarding, but not all of them.

What I really wonder about is how people will interpret the damage, degradation, and collapses of important web communities. Some of this will really come down to the stories we tell ourselves about what happened, and how we respond to that story to prevent it from happening again.