This whole model of social media in today's internet is unsustainable.
We will undoubtedly move towards a future internet with two main camps. The corporate social media where users have to either pay to play, or be locked into walled gardens without their consent, or sometimes even knowledge.
The other camp will be various decentralized platforms such as the fediverse and others.
We had a relatively quick (in historical terms) break from the user-driven internet after the early 2000s, but it's coming back in force. If you want freedom then it has to be user-driven, it can't be profit-driven.
Very gloomy title though. And the content is very niched.
I believe a majority of internet users will still use large corporate social media, simply because it's easier. We as developers have to understand that most users are not like us, they only want an accessible and simple experience when staying in touch with people and sharing their lives.
But the power users, the ones who made up the majority of internet users back in the 90s and early 2000s, they will perhaps stay on those platforms and have one foot in the decentralized camp, or be fully in the decentralized camp. Hopefully with time the number of power users increases with decentralized media becoming more accessible and people becoming more educated on how to use it.
But there will without a doubt always be a majority of users in the more accessible and better marketed alternatives.
IMHO, if 1-9-90 rule is true, then it depends on what this 1% of creators will do. If they'll stay on Reddit/any other centralized social media, then nothing will really change. But if creators will move to a different place, then lurkers might see that there are alternatives and maybe eventually they'll even move to them, if the content will be _better_ in their opinion.
"Creators" are not a single entity. There are tons of very creative people in the fediverse already.
There will be pockets of creativity all over the internet, maybe more in the centralized social media but the decentralized social media might be more attractive to creators who value and understand digital freedom.
I know that there are already on Fediverse, I'm there and I love this idea.
What I tried to say (but came out poorly), that Fediverse, even with big growth in last months, is still kinda small and most of those "creators" are still on centralized social media, so regular people are also mostly there.
it was clearly visible when Musk took over Twitter and mass migrations to Mastodon started. Some journalists and different public people moved there, so regular people also moved. But with time, some of the creators got bored and got back on Twitter, and outflow of ordinary people also was visible.
I can't imagine the decentralized camp ever growing significantly.
On r/RedditAlternatives people are discussing what sites to migrate to. The federated kbin and lemmy are getting significantly less attention than the centralized squabbles. [1]
Many redditors complain that sites being federated is actually a downside, as they don't understand it and even if they do they rather not explain it to their friends.
Oh I agree, if you read my other comment in this thread I already said that the vast majority of internet users will use centralized corporate social media.
But I'm hoping that with accessibility improvements the decentralized camp will grow, and it will forever remain a factor. Or as long as the internet as a backbone is free enough.
We will undoubtedly move towards a future internet with two main camps. The corporate social media where users have to either pay to play, or be locked into walled gardens without their consent, or sometimes even knowledge.
The other camp will be various decentralized platforms such as the fediverse and others.
We had a relatively quick (in historical terms) break from the user-driven internet after the early 2000s, but it's coming back in force. If you want freedom then it has to be user-driven, it can't be profit-driven.