Depending on how you count the fediverse / activitystream/pub concepts are now more than a decade old. There have been indeed many AP services around, but practically none - except Mastodon - has seen any significant adoption. That exception is almost certainly because of the Twitter "situation" (incidentally currently boosting also the traction of the unrelated Bluesky/ATProto project) which has created a small window of opportunity. No such window exists for the other centralized social media / adtech platforms and adoption of all other services (video, audio, pictures, forums, events, professional profiles etc.) is therefore minimal.
> Couldn't that be considered a success?
It is actually enormous success given the resources. But when you consider the vast and rapidly growing number of people trapped in the handful of adtech platforms then you must either concede that the status-quo is unchangeable or change strategy.
I've used mastodon for years before the twitter thing and there was always a lot of content and engagement. It may have been more niche groups/servers talking about niche things which was great.
With the twitter exodus, I was afraid that it would lose that, due to the sheer amount of ex twitter people joining and posting about nothing of interest.
But it didn't happen. It's still as great as it always was. Imo it's actually much more like hacker news than like twitter. Though maybe it depends on who you interact with.
The status quo before fediverse-type services was the lack of existence of fediverse-type services. Therefore, the continued existence of fediverse-type services proves that the status quo is changeable.
People want to carve out a space on the web that isn’t controlled by surveillance capitalism, fuck let them. They don’t have to dismantle the entire infrastructure to deserve that.
> Couldn't that be considered a success?
It is actually enormous success given the resources. But when you consider the vast and rapidly growing number of people trapped in the handful of adtech platforms then you must either concede that the status-quo is unchangeable or change strategy.