Hi, I would be interested in people’s opinion on the future of social media. Would activitypub ever become mainstream among “normies” that lack technical literacy?
How would monetisation work on a decentralized platform? Would the creator be limited with merchandise and promotions without ads?
Big tech walled gardens have made the internet worse. The only way you can find something on google is by appending the term “reddit” at the end of the search query. To many AI generated SEO clickbait wordpress pages.
All of the good content is locked behind a login screen.
This is all conjecture, but:
- The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter will get forgotten. Threads will get some momentum and then people will forget about it. Mastodon will likely grow, but it’ll never grow to the same size as Twitter.
- Reddit will also go kaboom. Most users will go to Discord, a sizeable minority will come to Lemmy, old style forums will see a small comeback. As the above, Lemmy will also grow, but not to the point that it becomes as huge as Reddit.
- Depending on how the Kbin side of the fediverse plays its cards, it might go huge or it might get a small growth. It has the potential to attract users from both Twitter+Threats and Reddit.
- Facebook will get worse. To the point that not even your grandma will want to browse it. Eventually Meta will decide to cut off the losses and divert resources to other enterprises (specially WhatsApp and Instagram), making it even worse. I don’t think that it’ll last 10y. I think that this model of social network won’t get a good replacement.
- Instagram might get some losses, but nowhere as bad as FB. PixelFed will see a modest growth.
- Discord will get huge regardless of enshittification, and this is what will promote the beginning of some activitypub alternative to it.
- Some Wikia-like activitypub platform will pop up. Initially “attached” to other services (mostly Lemmy and Kbin), but eventually dwarfing them. The relationship will be mostly symbiotic though.
- YouTube will stay. As shitty as possible. Google is not dumb, YT is one of its cash cows and they’ll tweak YT to be as annoying/advertising/shitty as still bearable by its users.
So overall I think that the fediverse will get huge, but none of the underlying platforms will. The main strength will be how they connect to each other.
The kind of people who obtain information and discourse from reddit would never wish to obtain it from discord. They’re not even remotely similar in approach.
I still use both and they don’t come close to serving the same purpose
I’ve seen at least one sub (r/conlangs) partially migrating to Discord. They might not like it, and I do agree that the approach is not even remotely similar, but Discord is still able to somewhat fill - poorly - the same role as Reddit, so with Reddit going kaboom Discord will partially absorb redditfugees.
Discord is also in a position to absorb some twitterfugees.
Makes me wonder how the inevitable advertising bubble bursting will impact a lot of these platforms, too. A lot of these exist only for advertising.
I’m gonna guess that you’re on the money for Facebook, though they will break Marketplace into its own service and probably maintain Messenger as well until eventually merging it into WhatsApp.
Reddit is going to get bought up. If they go public, they’ll be undervalued and cheap to buy given all of the controversy and instability among the userbase. If they stay private, they’ll continue enshittifying until costs exceed income and they have no choice but to seek a buyer. The thing about Reddit is that they are valuable and they know it, but they don’t have the ability to capitalize on that value with their business model. They are valuable as a training model for AI, and eventually some big company (Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon maybe) will buy Reddit for cheap just to use their content as a training model. And potentially de-enshittify the site in the process when the revenue model becomes the content itself instead of the eyeballs consuming it. But I am assuming it will implode eventually once they have everything they need. The company that buys it will spin it off into some AI-driven platform that feeds you the content it knows you want to see and Reddit itself will be slowly phased out.
Agree YouTube will stay, but Google’s going to start forcing YouTube Premium more. If ad money dries up, I almost guarantee that they’ll impose restrictions or incentives (maybe a combination?) on monetizations for creators. If you make your videos publicly available, you get a miniscule cut and you’re capped at 1080p@30, 10 minutes or less or something like that. But if you make your videos YT Premium exclusive, you get a bigger piece of the pie and better quality/support. Google will up the price of Premium again but break out Music and Ad-Free into separate subscriptions that each cost marginally less than the two together cost today.
Random thoughts …
If ActivityPub makes it into being a big deal in the future, I’d suspect some new stage of growth or development would be necessary. Either something gets added to the protocol or the architecture of the fediverse develops into a more sophisticated set of interacting services or the software ecosystem actually matures into an ecosystem. Without any of that I’d predict it stays relatively niche.
Should a decentralised protocol actually make it big, it could be game changing. But my “shot from the hip” bet right now is that ActivityPub and the current fediverse ecosystem is not it.
Apart from that, I’m actually thinking nothing terribly dramatic happens. There’ll be some fracturing, but in the big picture it will remain relatively fringe with the core platforms remaining mostly in tact with large user bases.
If there’s any real tectonic shift, I’d say that the 2010s idea of social media is on its way out (which is part of the reason why I’m not betting on the fedi going mainstream, as it’s mostly stuck in the past). I think a big divide breaking now and into the short term future is that between private “true community” interactions such as in private group chats or on discord etc and public high-utility or high-entertainment content such as youtube, tiktok, wikis and maybe twitter going forward. Private chats will be where you have your network and the public domain will be where you extract value, with AI/algorithmic assistance playing an increasing role, or attempt to become a creator. Another reason why I’d bet against the fedi is that it tries to walk what I suspect is an awkward middle ground between private and public spaces without actually providing either.
How the great AI-ification affects things, I’m not sure. I’d bet it basically pushes social media into a winter of sorts, with the platforms that exist becoming more closed off (see Reddit API stuff) and the value of genuine human-only spaces going up (see private + public comments above).
Amongst all of that, I’d suspect that the platforms themselves won’t really matter as much any more. You’ll get whatever you’re looking for wherever it’s available from which ever service or creator is providing it, but it won’t be a pleasant experience getting it and you’ll feel generally bitter and frustrated by the experience. Meanwhile, you’ll have whatever app(s) you need to stay in contact with those that actually matter to you, which again will depend on who’s using what, not what you chose to use. Otherwise, everyone and everything you interact with will just be an ephemeral and confusing and increasingly detached internet blip.
Same for any content. If successful, it will attract investors. Sell the site to these investors. Use site to sell stuff to captivated audience. Monetize every inch of space.
All these websites need attention. Once they have x amount of eyeballs they get sold. The ‘we’re just cool guys building a website’ only lasts until the money starts being offered.
One thing to consider is AI is going to make getting set up and using things like activitypub much easier - especially as it’ll be making it much easier for Devs and users to customise tools to basically break out of the social media boxes, your ai will be checking your social media accounts on a range of platforms and keeping upto date with where creators you like are posting so it’ll show you interesting stuff no matter what platform it comes from.
I think by being the most open and flexible we’ll see a lot of growth and development here
Big tech companies run out of new users to exploit and they end up collapsing (since in a capitalistic model you either grow or you’re doomed). With these companies going down, all the internet infrastructure goes down, unable to fight simultaneously the power shortages due to unavailable resources and the continuous strike of workers who cannot afford a livable wage anymore and civil wars in a world where natural disasters are more and more frequent.
With the internet down the society as we know collapses.
Now social media is people telling stories around a campfire.
Those who say dumb mean shit get slapped hard in the face.
Humankind’s healing process begins.
