Mastodon toot:
Daniel Lakeland @dlakelan@mastodon.sdf.org
Fediverse, the social media system for 40+ year old people who built the world wide web and regret it.
Oct 01, 2026, 11:32 PM
Mastodon toot:
Daniel Lakeland @dlakelan@mastodon.sdf.org
Fediverse, the social media system for 40+ year old people who built the world wide web and regret it.
Oct 01, 2026, 11:32 PM
The internet itself was once a niche alternative to mainstream knowledge
The way I see it is, that we are all good or even experts at something. The internet is not only about programming alone. The frustration comes from people who 30 years ago spent time discussing and sharing all kinds of knowledge on websites, forums or wikis but now, large corporations charge money to present the same knowledge more conveniently, but not always in the right context
This includes programming, but also gardening, how to ferment cabbage, how to clean a smoking pipe, what to feed guinea pigs.
It is definitely doable, but will take many decades
I mean you’re technically right, it is possible in theory. However, do you actually think that will be the case? I personally don’t see it.
The WWW made vast amounts of information remotely accessible and easy to navigate. Likewise, social media made large scale remote and asynchronous social interaction possible. Even though both took decades to evolve into what they are today, they fundamentally transformed how people access information and connect with one another. That’s what makes them revolutionary.
The Fediverse isn’t exactly like that. It’s a neat piece of tech, but it doesn’t exactly solve a problem that couldn’t already be solved. You can already communicate with people remotely, build communities, publish content, and interact with people across different platforms. The main thing that the Fediverse is trying to sell people on is decentralization which comes with perks like extra privacy and control, but which is valuable hence why this place has a genuine userbase, but I don’t see it going beyond that.
As it stands now the Fediverse is just another platform competing in a sea of other platforms. The Fediverse is already around a decade old, and not much has changed during this time. It was niche a decade ago, and it’s still niche now. The spot that it carved in the ecosystem is that of social media alternative that caters to left wing politics and tech bros. Even if it becomes more mainstream, it’ll still be viewed as another form of social media rather than something entirely new and different. The Fediverse is most certainly not like the WWW.