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Cake day: January 26th, 2025

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  • I don’t think the fediverse as it currently exists will draw a significant amount of people away from the larger social media communities, but who knows? My partner isn’t particularly tech-savvy and she was on Mastodon without me ever having mentioned it to her. She was also the first person between us to use PixelFed.

    I feel like the fediverse in its current incarnation is much like the early internet. It has a lot of promise, but most people on it are those who are enthusiasts and/or idealists. If the fediverse becomes easier to engage with over time, I can see it growing in appeal. If the fediverse equivalent of a killer app or high-profile voice gets established, we could see some huge growth.

    I think that one of the hurdles it will face is that hosting these instances isn’t free. With the centralized apps, they have VC funding they can burn through while they try to figure out how to monetize their service and to build it to be robust enough to be stable while handling growth.

    What happens when a large instance has to pull the plug due to lack of funding, or they fail because they get hacked and/or don’t have working backups, or the person/people who run it turn out to have an agenda? How things move on from those disruptions will be very telling for the future of the fediverse. They’re all things that could happen, and I’m sure at least one of them will happen at some point.