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Fediverse @lemmy.world
supersquirrel @sopuli.xyz

The countries with the most Fediverse servers are rich and former/current colonial powers. One of the best true barometers of the success of the Fediverse is how quickly we can turn that on its head.

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)

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  • It's just a population map

    • 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.

    • 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.

        • Brazillian here. Out biggest Mastodon instance (ursal.zone) is locally hosted, but is behind Cloudflare and appears as US in this list. Most of Brazilian instances are foreign hosted because of cost. This table means nothing in terms of fediverse penetration on Brazil. We have a huge population, and even as most of Brazilian are monolingual, the minority of bilinguals are millions that can read English. Even monolinguals are doing just fine using Brazilian instances, even if foreign hosted.

          • Out [Brazilian] biggest Mastodon instance (ursal.zone) is locally hosted, but is behind Cloudflare and appears as US in this list. Most of Brazilian instances are foreign hosted because of cost. This table [the one in the OP] means nothing in terms of fediverse penetration on Brazil.

            That's why I'm not using OP's data on first place.

            With that in mind, look at your own example, ursalzona. Acc. to you, it's "our biggest Mastodon instance"; it has 500 MAU. For comparison, the biggest Japanese instance has 23k, even if serving a smaller population (126M vs. 215M).

            The data might be inaccurate, but OP is correctly highlighting an actual issue - the Fediverse has barely any impact outside a few highly developed countries.

            We have a huge population, and even as most of Brazilian are monolingual, the minority of bilinguals are millions that can read English.

            More specifically 5%/215M = ~11M. And my point still stands; for 95% of the population, it's pragmatically the same as if most content in the Fediverse was in Klingon. Here network effect kick us (Fediverse users) on the balls, Merda Meta is so pervasive that people don't see the point - "I can see caramel dogs being arseholes in Fezesbook, but in Mastodon it's just a handful of Portuguese speakers, why bother?"

        • 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

          https://joinpeertube.org/pt_BR/instances

          • 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.

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