This has always been true of course but we used to have much faster turnover in social media sites. The current players have been around so long they seem like they can’t fail. But it’s not a coincidence that we’ve been riding a wave of cheap capital since about the time the current players started to dominate. Now that the free money tap is shut off, everyone’s scrambling to be profitable. The grow as fast as possible and never care about making money paradigm is over.

We’re basically in the ??? phase of “steal underpants, ???, profit” underpants gnome economic model.

I think we’re also seeing the ad model start to break down. It was always a Ponzi scheme. Everyone hates ads and goes out of their way to avoid them. If less and less people engage with ads, no one is going to pay as much because it’s not worth it. This forces companies to be more and more invasive in their data collection and ad targeting which erodes trust in the companies and degraded the user experience.

We’re seeing both these things converge and it’s shaking up the entire internet order.

In my mind Lemmy had succeeded when it has communities for everything that I care about that are large enough to approximate the level of the activity I had on Reddit. Given how niche some of those communities are, that would require it to be one of the more prominent social medias.

So yeah, there’s no need for it to become the next Facebook, but I would like it to become mainstream.

Interesting perspective that I feel catches and summarizes my thoughts on the fediverse as a recent convert. Initially I wanted Lemmy to be a replacement for Reddit. Now that I have been here for a week, I’m ok as long as the content is good and the discussion is fresh.

Folks go to the local watering hole for socializing, but they are there first and foremost for the drink