It looks like in the future, we’re gonna verify our identities. Social media for the masses will be done with Identity verification. That’ll be the way to tell bots and people apart, stripping anonymity in the process.
Word that Mastodon is talking of age verification, we will definitely see instances adopt it. All is pointless if federating with an instance without age verification, and that makes me wonder if the Fediverse might split apart under that pressure.
It’s pure speculation, but we might see a verification tag, for those who did verify their identity, and those without are left without any tag, same as bot accounts. If the majority of people do eventually verify, that’ll cast doubt onto accounts who lack the tag. Instances could also go full whitelist mode, and all of those instances force you to verify to join. If that is to be the case, we either verify to talk to people, or we don’t and face the overwhelming bots.
But what do you think, how will the Fediverse navigate a dying internet?
I mean, the Fediverse is distributed rather than centralized, but being distributed doesn't make something not social media.
No need to nitpick. We are two humans communicating so obviously this is a social activity. A community theater is social media by the loosest definition, but the term "social media" now commonly means the big centralized commercial product platforms of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
There are worlds of difference between the manipulative ads and algorithms of social media and the activity feeds on Lemmy. It's the difference between a shopping mall and a community yard sale.