We have a lot of options for all social media and other apps, but it is hard to catch people’s attention. How can we make more people use these platforms rather than a platform that p.dophiles run
In addition to the points the other posts have made, I think we’ve been conditioned to believe that cost = quality, “you get what you pay for.”
Edited to add: I thought the question was about FOSS/Open Source in general. I guess it was more specific than I realized.
People don’t pay for the mainstream stuff currently
So the Fediverse options are better because they ask for and rely upon donations - whereas all the large social network platforms are “free”?
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A lot of people don’t care and are just looking for their instant gratification.
They also don’t want to entertain the idea that they may have been doing things wrong all this time.
Getting individuals to switch to something not commercial isn’t that hard, in my experience or opinion except in the case of instant messenger or other communication apps. The main point of contention with chat, or SM, is they are not there for the service. They are there because the people they know are there.
Unless you can get the majority of people switching at once, it’s gonna be really hard to get an individual, or even a handful to move.
Open source does not have billions of dollars to spend on marketing.
We can work together to polish apps/software and use word of mouth. This will help to grow these other options.
Explosive growth is driven by large dollar amounts. Think LinkedIn being included as a shortcut in Windows, or every phone coming with Facefuck pre installed.
Until we can get people away from platforms owned by major corporations we will not be able to shrug off the programs they push on people.
I’m going with “it’s not actually harder to promote decentralized options”. But they tend not to have marketing teams.
If one were to assemble an active professional marketing team for a decentralized tool, the team would be similarly effective as they would be for a centralized tool.
I agree, we need to promoting marketing decentralized/federated tools)
People have been made used to closed gardens. Some people can’t comprehend that open gardens and free choice exists.
Literally this. I usually hear some variation of “they are all evil so whatever” or “if its free, you are the product”
Like homie please dont fall for their lies
if its free, you are the product
I always know I’m talking to a dipshit when they bust out this line.
One answer: People love their defaults. Computers come pre installed with Windows, MacOS, (Bad) Android. Creative professionals are trained on Adobe Suite. Business professionals are trained and certified for MS Office and SaaS ERP Software. They don’t look beyond the defaults because their goal is not to determine which software/tool gives the most value or teaches them the most but which software/tool is the default that will give them a job and unfortunately FOSS is not the default for 90% of those people.
There are a few reasons, but I think this is the the most common. People accept almost anything if it means they can click one less button.
I’ve spent many hours reducing extremely complex things down to a couple simple steps, only to have people say it’s “too hard” because they need to copy-paste a single URL.
Its not as convinient, and you can’t blame anyone but yourself when it breaks.
I’d say that last part is more important than people realize.
Normies are used to the idea of whining whenever something doesn’t work. If they don’t have someone to whine to, they genuinely have no concept of what to do instead.
Interacting with the open source ecosystem is a very humanizing endeavor. Modern consumers are pretty much anything but human at this point.
People who value things like open source are more likely to be curious people who enjoy understanding something
often such projects require active engagement and self education they also reward people look deeply into something
Look at things like Facebook everything is designed to lead you to an endpoint you are not ever allowed to understand how the machine works they reward people who shallowly engage often at a base less
It’s not mere complacency these platforms are designed for different people the people who enjoy one platform don’t typically enjoy the other because it’s not one specific thing about the product they enjoy or don’t enjoy it’s all the systems that form the big machine that they enjoy
Familiarity.
It was a pain in the ass for me to even try to get people I knew to even try Discord, if they weren’t already on it. They just love their Facebook too much to even take a moment to poke their head out and see the alternatives.
Because marketing department haven’t been open sourced yet
Microsoft, Apple, etc spend billions on marketing, whereas open source spends about 0. It relies wholly on word of mouth advertisements, and just showing people that it’s actually better and free
Believe you me, if tomorrow we get world wide advertising for a free operating system that works better than Window crap or apple crap, that won’t spy, and is free, a LOT more people will jump in.
I’m guessing that “open source” either is completely u known or still is a bit of a dirty word for people, associated with “alternative software” so it must be worse than the “real” software, right?
Even though in many MANY ways its superior to corporate software. And its free. And its almost always free as well.
I’m guessing that the cloud services has also been a response from tech companies to open source because on the one hand they get to use open source software for free without giving back anything and on the other hand they get to sell subscription services for stuff that should be free anyways.
Again, most SaaS software providers put there float on open source software, yet they’ll charge you through the nose for the little layer they built on top of that. There are other such layers available for free in the open source community,but you’ll have to set it up yourself. That is the basic difference.
For me, o host everything myself.
That means we can open source marketing. We can make people work for marketing open source apps, while they are unemployed. With the rise of unemployment, I think that makes sense
but why would they? and marketing is not cheap, you know. who will paid for them?
And you think the same questions don’t apply to developers?
Same thing there, buddy, yet here we are giving for free
They are already unemployed. They may get experience this way
Zero chance I’d ever do this. I wouldn’t even do it for payment.
Was it ever easy?
For social media: Aside from the reason that everyone they know is on the popular ones, it’s also because of the algorithms. People are too lazy to curate their feed, and algorithms tickle the part of our brains that light up and keep us engaged.
Bringing more people would ruin these platforms just as they ruined the other platforms.
As much as it would be nice to see more activity on the Fediverse as a whole. It would all turn upside down very quick the more people jumped on and it would devolve things into a similar environment that readily accessible social media platforms have long devolved into.
Change is hard for most people. When much of the world runs on Android/Google and Mac/iPhone its hard to convince people to switch. Hell, it’s hard to switch when you actually do want to leave because the infrastructure is so proprietary and locked in. I’m in the process of de-googling my phone but i use Google applications for work, so its been difficult. Not impossible, but very difficult.
