I'm not sure it failed.
I joined Mastodon in Apr 03, 2017 - but was never really very active because - well, there wasn't really much to be active with. It was ghost town. But it grew slowly and organically. Which was OK.

Then the big Twitter meltdown happened in Nov 22 and all of a sudden we got couple of million new users. There was a lot of adjustment, from new people and the old inhabitants. It wasn't very pretty (the whole CW debacle).

Many of those millions left and (presumably) went back to Twitter. But many stayed. The twitter InfoSec community is (mostly) on Mastodon now. Quite a lot of science-twitter is as well. We're far bigger place now than we were before 22.

Twitter didn't crash and burn (yet). People went back. But I don't think the migration failed. Some stayed and we're richer place for it.

But I agree with lot of the things in the post. Dealing with federation, quirky UI's, prototype services (hi kbin!) and other linuxesque peculiarities isn't what mainstream is looking for. The whole "just spin up your own fedi-server" might not be very sustainable/environmentally friendly compared to centralized well maintained datacenter. There are lot of problems to solve before fediverse is "mainstream ready".

But to be quite honest. I'm not sure it needs to be. Yes, I get that it's hard to "build following" without mainstream, but to be honest, I actually prefer more signal and less noise. And lot of the "mainstream" is just noise who follow popular accounts because they're popular.

I can understand these arguments, and yet...

I invested lots of time into Google+ and built up a following of 26,000 there. Then it closed down days before I started my Patreon campaign. Yes, I am still bitter about that.

Then I shifted my attention to Twitter. And then, last year, Elon Musk took it over.

I am done investing effort in corporate-owned social media sites that must inevitably follow the #Enshittification principle. No, Mastodon (and the Fediverse in general) did not absorb as many Twitter users as we hoped. Still, I think in the long run the Fediverse will grow, as corporate social media proves again and again that they cannot be trusted.

Being someone who is on Mastodon and also have to still be on Twitter for professional reasons, I consistently get way more engagement to my posts on Mastodon.

Plus, I have been able to build a larger following in Mastodon within a year than I was able to in Twitter in the eight years or so I have had an account there.

Anybody who expected Mastodon to simply become Twitter minus Elon Musk, was being naive and that didn't exactly happen. But as a platform on its own, Mastodon is a success. As a user, I consistently see more interesting content on Mastodon than Twitter or pretty much any other social media platform (except maybe Reddit till they decided to screw up).

Honestly, I would recommend everyone here who hasn't already to sign up to a Mastodon server in addition to Kbin.

I didn’t stick with Mastodon because it didn’t feel like you could interact with others; there was no quote “tweeting” and I’m not sure you could even like a post. Felt like everything posted just went into an empty abyss

Great article. I skimmed some parts and close-read others and didn’t find anything to disagree with. “People are quite adept at making compromises on their beliefs for the sake of utility or pleasure” especially hit home. This is why my middle of the road and even progressive-minded friends continue to use Twitter: they can create a permission structure that allows it.

UX, UX, UX. When a massive group of people wants to leave a platform, there must be an intuitive, thoughtfully designed, reasonably available alternative available that moment. Platforms like Mastodon make users feel full of questions. They feel lost. They go back where they came from because at least things made sense there, even if the guy running it is a proudly heartless lunatic.

The Digg migration — no hashtag back then — succeeded because there was such an alternative: Reddit. I agree with you that the closed source nature of the software didn’t factor and won’t factor for 99% of users. We just want a place where the product decisions are made differently.

So far I think Kbin is okay. I came here, I joined, and I never think about other servers or instances. It looks and feels a lot like Reddit. I don’t care about followers, so there isn’t some count to give me anxiety about having something mid-configured.

Really good article. I agree with most of your points. I am one of the few apparently that actually believes in not supporting fascist billionaires. Not sure what all those other “resisters” are doing on that site still. Drives me crazy.

Just wanted to note that the mastodon app now defaults to mastodon.social so people don’t have to pick a server. Picking a server was/is absolutely a barrier to entry, I don’t care how many people on Mastodon say it isn’t. So that will help going forward. They are also working on quote posts and search functionality. Hopefully these things are in place for the next potential wave when Meta/Instagram spin up their alternative. I think Tumblr is also planning on forking to the Fediverse so that will help. I don’t think it’s totally lost that Mastodon can overtake Twitter but agree they screwed up their big chance in November 2022 by being too insular for too long.

You didn’t call it out explicitly but I also wanted to mention that CW nonsense. That shit is whack but has really died down with more people joining. No one gives a shit about that crap.

IMO having a good search function that searches across the ENTIRE fediverse would go a long way. Not having this good search function makes it hard to find content.

IMO, on Mastodon for example, most people don't understand federation and don't care about it. It sounds scary and complicated to them. And also in Mastodon's case at least, it's still extremely difficult IMO, to find people/sites/etc. to follow about topics you care about. You still, AFAIK, can't search by posts which is just dumb, IMO (at least on the instance/server) I'm on.

The whole pick an instance/server thing also confuses people. Most people don't care about that and don't even need to know TBH. Just auto-assign them to the most popular one and those who care about such things can manually pick their own.

I think the #1 problem is UI/UX. I think a Activity Pub based platform that gets its interface right allowing it to feel like one single coherent platform rather than a bunch of separate servers will win. So far I haven't found a single platform that lets me browse to any other platform or user & feel integrated.

People don't care about decentralisation, but one of selling points of the Fediverse may be pretty similar to that: interoperability.
IMHO, some separate but federated servers make sense for a newcomer more, than other. They are:

• Flagship Mastodon server (for the "official blessing"),

• Several very large Mastodon servers for niches - Infosec, FOSS and Gamedev communities already have got these (for best discovery of that niche communities and still good discovery of out-niche content - thanks to size),

• At least one national Mastodon server in your language - of course open to registration - Japanese, British, German, Italian, French, Dutch, Canadian, Australian, Chinese are the largest, but any language-specific will satisfy the user (for best discovery of content in their languages or from regions - helped by language barreer),

• Some largeish Mastodon instances with specific political leanings - anarchist, far-right and libertarian ones are the largest (for better-tailored moderation, and also for discovery),

• Flagship/largest instances of other Fediverse software, such as Akkoma, Lemmy, /kbin, Bookwyrm, Misskey, Calckey, Pixelfed (for features of their software, being their advantages over Mastodon)

• Some national instances of Lemmy, /kbin, Bookwyrm, Misskey, Calckey, Pixelfed in your language (combined language and feature reasons),

• Few Lemmy instances with specific political leanings - communist and far-right ones (combined moderation and feature reasons).

We do not have to talk about "decentralised" insert app name here network, but we can rather promote "Large Infosec-oriented microblog which interoperates with entire of rest of Mastodon", "German Reddit-alternative aggregator which interoperates with fedi", "A combined aggregator and microblog instance, compatible both with Lemmy and Mastodon", "Anarchist social network with access to much of fedi", "Mastodon-compatible microblog with fancy formatting", or "Instagram-equivalent with access to Mastodon but larger photo limits per post, and filtres", etc.

This interoperability means, that any new and sufficiently promoted (or simply receiving another Great Migration) server can claim over 1 million Mastodon&co users as the potential audience.

If you were already present on both Reddit and e.g. Facebook, and recent events forced you to switch from Reddit to /kbin or Lemmy, then you started to be on the Fediverse. And any your friend from Facebook started to be able to contact with you on the Fediverse, should they switch.
If you were present previously only on Facebook and Twitter, and you friend was only on Facebook and Reddit, then, after Twitter and Reddit Migrations, both of you began to be able to talk to each other, without the need of Facebook!
Every great migration to the Fediverse sows the seed. Sooner or earlier, all your friends will be present on fedi, and the network effects will begin to work to the advantage of fedi, not against it.

So how is Kbin going to cover its operating costs? If a fediverse server must survive on donations, it seems like donating should be built into the user experience. For example, there could be a Kbin Gold similar to Reddit Gold.

I remember years ago when Reddit Gold first became a thing there was a progress bar on the site indicating how much of their daily server costs had been covered by Reddit Gold. Something like that might be useful.

I don't think there was a failure, there's like 10 million users more than there used to be in just a few months. The more these social media companies fuck over their users, we'll keep seeing the waves come crashing in.

Mastadon is not a good Twitter replacement. It lacks discoverability and ease of use. I think Bluesky has potential to succeed where it failed.

I'm not sure kbin or Lemmy can truly replace Reddit overnight either. They aren't as easy to use. More importantly, they have no good mobile apps, which is the whole reason people are looking for a Reddit alternative to begin with.

I've checked out mastodon and other federated twitter clones quite a few times, and never felt the need to migrate. Twitter has always been more active, and felt more polished and solid. In comparison the federated sites felt small and restricted. Since musk took over, twitter has been even better than it was before, so again no pressure felt to move. I still use twitter.

In comparison, reddit has been my home for like 12 years and this blackout has really fucked up my usage of reddit. Kbin feels nearly identical to reddit, even if it's a bit smaller. I still find myself clicking onto reddit, only to realize that my subs are missing, so then I move back over here to kbin.

Kbin is cozy. I like how I can see other federated sites' content easily, I like how kbin magazines and fediverse microblog are both clearly distinguished. It feels like I'm on a new reddit, but with the ability to see the fediverse as well. it's cozy. Provided there's still content, there's a solid chance I'll stick around.

The only thing I'd like to see is if I could do twitter/mastodon style self-posts for microblog. Right now it seems I have to select a specific magazine? But it feels weird selecting a magazine/community for just my own rambles/musings? I ended up making a magazine matching my kbin name for this purpose, but idk what the proper way to do things is...