In the end I don’t think internet users in rich powerful countries are the users most likely to benefit and invest their time into in the fediverse. They might be the ones with the most free time, money and privilege around computers which makes being on the leading edge of niche technologies far easier, but I don’t think using the fediverse vs commercial social media is thattt crucial of a difference for most (add a million qualifiers here except if you are black, queer, trans etc… I am talking in relative terms here) livimg inside the borders of colonial powers like the US, France, Germany etc…
Speaking as a hetero white dude who grew up with a decent amount of privilege the fediverse isn’t for the countless versions of me living within the borders of colonial powers…
It might have been programmers living within the borders of colonial powers that did most of the labor to create the fediverse, and most of the early users might have come from within colonial powers but I think it is important to recognize that the gift that the fediverse represents to the world is the capacity to empower people living outside the borders of colonial powers to own and run their own social networks instead of having some random Facebook employee who doesn’t have the time or basic knowledge of a country to make major decisions about what news accounts to moderate as dangerous spam and what to allow.
From a 30,000 foot view, speaking in broad terms and specific values and priorities, what do you think are the best strategies for flipping the script on the fediverse being mostly a tool used by people within the borders of colonial powers to one used by without and within?
I wonder about the capacities of fediverse software being useful as a compliment to HOT open street mapping type initiatives in the wake of disasters and just in general?
(Are server costs just generally cheaper/easier in colonial countries to run or is it purely a money and time thing? I don’t really know)
I think GDP in this case, but yeah, same idea. It makes sense that wealthy countries with good infrastructure are going to be high on the list.
Country (nominal GDP rank)
USA (1)
France (7)
Germany (4)
Japan (3)
Finland (47)
Canada (9)
Netherlands (18)
Russia (8)
UK (6)High-GDP countries that are notably missing are China (2, users are limited by the Great Firewall) and India (5, still building their infrastructure).
I wonder why Finland is so high on the list? Good for them, regardless.
Things you can do in finland: tango, fight with knives, computer stuff.
Nice mix of mental stimulation and high risk hijinks
China entered the chat
ok fair state probs won’t allow it idk?
India entered the chat
Hell fucking just Mexico City and the surrounding metro/megalopolis not even including the rest of Mexico entered the chat
just a casual 32mil
Sao Paulo is here representing the rest of Brazil but the rest of Brazil couldn’t fit into the chat
Regarding specifically Brazil, I can answer that.
The most used pieces of Fediverse software are for microblogging (Mastodon, Misskey) and forum discussion (Lemmy). But when you look at the statistics for usage of social media platforms in Brazil, here’s what it shows:
YouTube (89%), Instagram (85%), Facebook (84%), TikTok (49%), Pinterest (37%), Twitter (36%), Linkedin (35%), Snapchat (15%), Twitch (9%), Reddit (6%), Tumblr (5%), Hello (3%), Flickr (2%), Quora (2%), WeChat (2%), MeWe (1%), others (7%).
Neither microblogging nor forum discussion are popular in Brazil; the top contenders are video services (YT, TT), and the Meta cancer tendrils (IG, FB) behaving as Orkut replacement goldfish. So the main Fediverse services are alternatives for things that, locally, are not overly common to begin with, when people have their “motherfucking caramel” doing funny shit they beeline for TT or FB.
Another factor that I think that reduces Fediverse usage in Brazil is Anglocentrism. Brazilians are mostly monolingual; the exceptions are typically 1) from a colonial background, or 2) highly educated, and only (2) applies here. For most people in Brazil, English content is the same as nothing, or as “the skwerlficashun! throovy! afdsjkfdsa!”.
That backtracks into your OP. I believe that Fediverse success requires
- diversification of the platforms widely used and available in the Fediverse
- better ways to handle language that reduce the “I don’t speak it so it’s noise” issue
Even with that in mind my city has a Mastodon server. I often lurk there because I’m a verbose fuck, not suited for microblogging; but it’s comfy.
YouTube (89%), Instagram (85%), Facebook (84%), TikTok (49%), Pinterest (37%), Twitter (36%), Linkedin (35%), Snapchat (15%), Twitch (9%), Reddit (6%), Tumblr (5%), Hello (3%), Flickr (2%), Quora (2%), WeChat (2%), MeWe (1%), others (7%).
Yeah interesting, so a big question for Brazil is how good youtube and instagram fediverse alternatives are. I Imagine the numbers aren’t tooo different from the US but I don’t think youtube is the the most widely used social network is it? Facebook use is crazy high too unless the numbers are deceiving (I still technically have a facebook account, I haven’t used it in years though).
A big actionable item here is “Does Peertube have documentation in Portuguese?”. Is it any good or is it just thrown through a translator and spit out?
I DO NOT ask these questions from an energy of “hey yall, why is no one bothering to do this??”. I know this kind of thing takes an immense amount of work and most of us are so exhausted by our day job that yeah we would love to do more but…
I am just posing these questions because I think it is good to identify the low hanging fruit in terms of creating potential for fediverse growth. I am not ordering people to lead a horse to water, I also don’t believe in trying to lead a horse to water, but speaking as a horse, if you make it easier for me to drink water I will probably be more likely to drink water… if that makes sense.
Edit: it looks like Peertube has Portuguese language support but idk if the documentation is actually translated into Portuguese or whether it just means that Peertube can run spellcheck on Portugeuse etc…
Double Edit: Hell yeah Peertube looks like it is pretty friendly to a Portugeuse speaking person interested in finding an instance
The source is a bit vague in this regard, but I interpreted those numbers as being the proportion of users of that platform among the 159M daily users in 2021. (For reference the total population was 214M.) So it refers to active usage, but not of the whole population.
I don’t have data for USA, but based on Orkut times I predict that they’ll vary quite a bit. (Orkut was insanely popular in Brazil, but IIRC not in USA.) And overall what I see here for Brazilians is a heavier tendency to consume [audio]visual content, in detriment of text; and yet the later is where the Fediverse is its strongest.
Regarding YT and IG Fediverse alternatives, those would be Peertube (3.4%) and PixelFed (2.4%); globally they’re a bit less used than Lemmy (3.8%), but the bulk of the Fediverse is still microblogging (Mastodon at 72%, Misskey at 8%). So if my reasoning is correct those would need to grow quite a bit, before attracting Latin American users. Or the development of local alternatives that are then “plugged” into the Fediverse, but they would need to have some killer feature.
Regarding YT and IG Fediverse alternatives, those would be Peertube (3.4%) and PixelFed (2.4%); globally they’re a bit less used than Lemmy (3.8%), but the bulk of the Fediverse is still microblogging (Mastodon at 72%, Misskey at 8%). So if my reasoning is correct those would need to grow quite a bit, before attracting Latin American users. Or the development of local alternatives that are then “plugged” into the Fediverse, but they would need to have some killer feature.
Yeah and this is a really good thing to talk about publicly like this. It isn’t my place as a USian to try to force my silly favorite social media network on Brazilians like some kind of unpaid advertisement salesman, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth thinking about world population centers and what kinds of media and communication they value. It changes the context of why development of a tool like peertube is so vital even if it’s usage is still small along any particular metric.
If we focus on making sure the Portuguese translation of documentation for Peertube is at least decent, it sets the stage for something potentially happening organically down the line in Brazilian culture that might lead to Brazilians abruptly valuing and embracing a tool like Peertube.
(I am not using Brazilians as an example for any particular reason here, they are just a useful example of an incredibly sophisticated and populous society that USians tend to pretend doesn’t exist or is a wayward backward place, like São Paulo and Rio are MASSIVE and yet in US culture they are barely blips on the radar).
Documentation available in multiple languages is a good start, but by no means enough. As I replied to another user, what’s hurting the Fediverse penetration in LatAm and other places of the world the most is network effect. Couple that with development being geared towards consumption patterns common in Europe and the northern half of NA and, well, users have even less of an incentive to join in.
Another complicating factor is that video hosting is considerably more expensive than text hosting, so I expect the cost of entry for a PeerTube instance to be considerably higher than the one for a Mastodon instance.
The leaders of countries such as the PRC, Modi’s India, Putin’s Russia, ans Iran might not like the idea of decentralization.
Indeed, they might not like the internet itself.
looks out my windows the corporate fascist hellscape of the US
Ommm yeah I genuinely not saying this to detract from the seriousness of oppression within the countries you are speaking of but…. nobody with real power in the US likes the internet either?
Did you see what Elon Musk did to Twitter? It wasn’t less a business acquisition than a public execution of an entity that subverted the ability of state sponsored propaganda to be effective all over the world (including specifically… Saudi Arabia and the countries it has business interests in). I mean I don’t know if Elon knows this or not, I really don’t care. The people that gave him the money to pay for the execution on the other hand I am more convinced knew exactly what the general impact of their “investment” was going to be.
What I find quite annoying is how people created these monopolies.
50 years ago, there were 3 (arguably 4) American car companies—still a de facto oligopoly, but 3 is better than 1. The Japanese and VW added to it.
Today we essentially have one search portal, Google; one social network site, Facebook; one video-hosting site, YouTube; and one micro-blogging site, Twitter/X.
If people spent perhaps 1/10th of their micro-blogging time on other sites, Twitter might not have been as attractive to Musk and his backers, but they chose ease over choice, and now they’re wailing over what he’s doing with it.
I’m off-topic.
I mostly agree with your statement. Maybe Amazon likes the internet, but probably most others in big business in the US don’t: it might account a bit for the shitty websites of many of them.
There are obviously a million reasons for this, greed and corruption being obvious touchstones but I also think culturally we weren’t raised to think this state of affairs was grotesque.
A lot just comes down to how people perceive the fediverse, is it just an alternative, another tool you can use that works just as well as corporate social media (lots of handwaving here) or is it a niche community for specific subsections of tech-ish nerds that becomes successfully codified as a tertiary, unimportant place by pop culture?
I think you’re overthinking this, and extrapolating limited data way too far.
For one, of course historically rich countries are going to be hosting more technology. Tech is expensive, and less developed countries are called that because they’re less developed, which includes electricity grids, internet, economic power, and so on.
Another issue is that just because a Mastodon server is hosted in a particular country, doesn’t mean only people in or from that country can make an account there. Sure, there are some servers that want to keep their communities specific to their local area, but the vast majority have no restrictions. Anyone from anywhere can sign up.
If you’re trying to figure out how to make it so historically poor countries have the most servers instead, you’re going to have to figure out how to fund and manage infrastructure expansion.
It feels like you’re coming at this with the assumption of “every country has the resources to spin up hundreds of social media servers, but they’re just not interested”, which is kind of a weird conclusion to come to after recognizing the historical impact of colonialism and the privilege differences it’s led to.
It feels like you’re coming at this with the assumption of “every country has the resources to spin up hundreds of social media servers, but they’re just not interested”, which is kind of a weird conclusion to come to after recognizing the historical impact of colonialism and the privilege differences it’s led to.
Do you realize how your rhetoric is boxing my opposing viewpoint into being an oversimplification? Nowhere in my language did I imply this was a simple question with a simple answer nor did I request a precise answer of any type.
I acknowledge all of your criticisms, this is a difficult question and I would welcome your input and knowledge if it is along a positive axis not a condescending one that attempts to frame my question as naive and thus fundamentally unserious (independent of whether the details are right or wrong).
Yeah… those leeches from underdeveloped countries should be hosting fediverse servers with all that expendable income they have.
What a shit take.
Please point to where I insinuated this? If people living outside the borders of colonial powers want to host their own servers great, if they want to join US, French, Japanese etc… servers then… also awesome! How on earth are you taking from my read that the point of this line of questioning is to criticize underdeveloped countries or the people that live within their borders?
the whole point of this post is to ask about what ways we can best practically help those people without perpetuating the same structural power imbalances that got us into the present day problems and suffering we face
If you had interacted with my post in a genuine way you would have realized an essential part of my question is how best to help propagate the fediverse outside of its narrow niches, do you build fediverse servers in your own country and make them friendly to foreign users? Do you try to create resources and gather money to help people in those countries just host their own fediverse server?
What are the practical real world advantages and pitfalls of both strategies with respect to the fediverse in particular?
I think I responded to the tone and then you see premise that insinuated that colonial oppressors are just using their advantage to once again oppress the poor indigenous people of wherever in yet another way. Which I don’t agree with.
The concept of the fediverse seems to be that admins host instances and are pretty welcoming to new communities… So if someone from I dunno Togo would setup a lomé or togo-politics community it would be supported. Meaning anyone from anywhere can use the infra provided to setup and moderate their communities.
If anything the system allows people more advantaged with resources (time, money, know how) to provide an open space that can be used by everyone (within reason). Without being beholden to big tech and her hidden profit driven agenda.
I would be more concerned about accessibility and usability from the perspective of a lot of people. As many countries that are still developing have limited time and access. And I don’t know if the current state of the fediverse in it’s development is of much help.
I’llIncreasing the usability of the whole ecosystem with improved clients, moderation tools etc (the stuff that fediverse users are requesting, and those devs are working on) will help.
Once it is mature, more will come. And like with tech, financed by early adopters this seems similar.
In the mean time I see people from all over the globe post stuff about many things, including national interest stuff that would otherwise have passed me by.
And I don’t see stuff posted in languages I don’t comprehend because my profile filteres them out. I don’t know if there are any Swahili/Papiamento/Mandarin/Indonesian posts on lemmy, but Lemmy supports many languages so that might be a thing.
Lastly the whole us vs them (colonial powers, oppressors etc etc) might be applicable to a lot of the world, however, garnering support for a cause by making accusations against the fediverse and the current generation of hosts and users does not help. I would advise a more constructive stance in general. If you see people actually being as you describe call them out and tell it like it is by all means, but this was not the way to get the ball rolling.
I’d probably gone with something like: the fediverse is growing, how can we help it develop in a direction better serving people in developing countries. To get them out from under the power hold and monopolies of the big tech conglomerates. … or something.
In that case I would have stuck with an answer like above… we need to foster and nurture it’s growth so it becomes a good alternative and the people will come. Plus… you know… ask people from these countries or maybe even get devs from there involved using stuff like patreon. Getting feedback from people not using your product… and finding out why they don’t is hard.
But Lemmy for example already did a solid by making sure the platform supports a looooot or languages “out of the box”.
Hope that’s better :).
For the record, I did not downvotes your reply as it deserves an actual response.
Lastly the whole us vs them (colonial powers, oppressors etc etc) might be applicable to a lot of the world, however, garnering support for a cause by making accusations against the fediverse and the current generation of hosts and users does not help. I would advise a more constructive stance in general. If you see people actually being as you describe call them out and tell it like it is by all means, but this was not the way to get the ball rolling.
I am a random fool with an internet connection, I have no power to define anything, and on the contrary I think the only way to get us on the same page is to just came out and say it how it is.
I m happy that France is just behind the USA knowing that we are way less massive in number of people. I think that s cool , let democratize the fediverse nom Mather where you are ;)
I think it is definitely something to be proud of! It really speaks to France’s long (of course complicated) history with leftism.
You don’t have to use a local server though.
True!
My intention was to make it clear that my reference to these numbers was back of the envelope, I know there is a huge amount of complexity to this question.
Do you begin solving physics problem by making sure you start from answering the most complicated version of a problem including simulations of every single little expression of friction and wind resistance etc…. No you say the cow can be abstracted as a sphere and start from there. The question isn’t whether to abstract the cow or not, it is over the quality and consequences of the abstraction.
With that in mind, yes I do think it is worth asking the question of whether the best path forward is for fediverse servers within colonial borders to build open communities that users from without colonial borders can join and use or whether the better path forward is to instead directly help build local fediverse instances hosted outside of colonial borders. I don’t know, it is a massively difficult question to answer, I guess I should keep repeating that so people don’t keep assuming I am naively thinking this is a simple question and I have absolutist all or nothing views of things.
Dude.
It would be cool to have some Lemmy servers from some more obscure countries, like, I don’t know, Mali, or something. Do they have any interesting top level domain names?
Oh true you could probably get some sick domains for smaller countries not well represented on the internet (not me I mean someone from that country).
Honestly I think cities are cooler though they feel more local and human than country names to me.
Pretty sure that’s a joke, Mali’s TLD is .ml
And as far as I know, lemmy.ml has no affiliation with Mali whatsoever.
the US
France
So, not sure what you mean by this
So, not sure what you mean by this
Nothing, do you honestly think I am watching what is happening right now in the US (where I live) and NOT thinking it is utterly terrifying?
Yeah the manufactured hysteria around TikTok doing the same shit western social media companies do is pathetic and absurd (and like, if republicans are up in arms about manipulation of kids, what about tobacco companies???).
What about the usage demographics within each country?
In underdeveloped/exploited countries, internet usage is more likely to be concentrated among the economic elites who formerly benefited from colonialism—so if increasing adoption in those countries just follows the pattern of other internet use, it could have the opposite effect from the one intended.
Yeah that is what makes this shit so exhausting, at every step where you solve the immediate expression of a systematic problem you have to step back, evaluate your solution and shake your head at how clearly your biases tried to recreate the same problem in your solution.
I agree that we should always be asking questions like you are because this could easily be a future timeline the fediverse goes down.
How do you think we can reduce the chance of this happening?
Also, the interface between the oppressors and the oppressed is always multidimensional and unbelievably manifold. The daughters of ultra powerful oppressors funnel money to the oppressed in shades of moral complexities that are difficult to pin down as righteous or not. This is the way history has always been, what matters is the results, and how much members of the ruling class are willing to betray their class for the greater good of humanity shrugs.
Braindead
You can’t drop a mean comment like that and not expand on what you specifically mean by it.
What makes my post brain dead then specifically ?
A good strategy is for you, and you specifically, to donate a lot of what sounds like your likely massive white-privledge trust fund to a tech charity of the country of your choosing.
This fails to solve system error.
Maybe…? As many have reminded me on this thread, be wary of your kneejerk assumptions.
Yeah your original post came off as pompous and offensive. Even though your intent was to be hopeful, optimistic and productive, you come off as arrogant and ignorant in your writing. Please do not take this as a non-sequitur, I’m simply calling it as we see it here.
I think that is a fair criticism, I appreciate your honesty and straightforwardness!
Apologies that we all came at you with swords. Keep at it, we can work together and find a solution.
Keep at it, we can work together and find a solution
I would say with -30 votes and 50 comments that I am clearly not part of this “we”
I think I am done participating here
Ok bye.
Yes Lemmy is a form of wealth. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect to see in a wealthy country
Then how do we most effectively fight wealth inequality along the axis of software, fediverse software in particular?
