So how do you get them to care? Or how do you offer enough value that they migrate to new systems and protocols?
Regular people don't care about operating systems, yet many of us are able to have a superior desktop experience by using Linux.
Regular people don't care about fine music, but we're still able to listen to Mussorgsky and are not forced to listen to Ariane Grande.
Regular people don't care enough about technology to sit around discussing it in their spare time, and yet here we are.
There's a lot of things that regular people don't care about. Let's concentrate on making something good, that enough people will use, rather than winning a popularity contest.
What I’m trying to say to say is that I find the whole model just not very compelling anymore, maybe even harmful. There are some subreddits that are more like forums (like this one) but the general experience is just not something I think is worth striving for, whether it is decentralized or not.
What I do care about very much is communicating with interesting people and to read or watch interesting content. The signal to noise ratio is typically disappointing on these platforms.
We need more people to be innovators and early adopters, to guide and consciously participate in the technology adoption life cycle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle
Fast forward 95% of the internet is made up of AOL users who primary use their phone and a few walled garden apps.
Why would we want them to be part of the systems we are building that serve our needs?
Not everyone needs to be part of a techie enclave on the internet. The barrier of walled garden can help us create an identity outside. Those ready to make the jump should be welcomed and onboarded.
The difference from before and now is money. Everyone wants everyone together because it means more money. If you can live without the money a lot of cool projects and unique communities are possible.
Perhaps thinking of the situation as an Overton window, a range of "normal" stances to tech, is more what this about than enclaves. I have another reply to parent despising a similar "do for ourselves" attitude, and I think that's capital, but there is a "follow the alpha geeks" aspect to tech too, for the good stuff hopefully does come down, does propogate, does spread. the Overton window of tech shifts, slowly, if new good self replicating practicing communities of tech are visibly doing better.
right now I don't think anyone cares because there's so little apparent difference. but there's low visibility because it's so early, we're so new with our different social approaches, and few alternate approaches are radically compelling, few offer radically better features or better experience. I continue to think protocol based systems, as we stay getting good at them, will offer radical creativity& empowerment that classic big social can't it won't. and that's when we start changing hearts and minds, stay being highly visible, when we are empowered& leveraging it, when we are making our self determinism count. we are not there but we are getting better.
what I want to underscore is, right now tech is a secret. there's all sorts of amazing people who would do amazing things of they were involved here. unlike Eternal September where Usenet got swamped with low nettiquette text, this is a chance to involve people: our designs are fast more egalitarian than fairly top-down Usenet. this is an onroad to upgrading yourself, a repersonalization of computing, to make it real & in front of you, rather than floating around on Zuck's servers.
for sure a lot of people will go about, unchanged. and would bring semi questionable value to these alternative ecosystems. they one should still be served. two, we will have failed entirely if we don't lift some people up, open their eyes & excited their hearts, by properly prove them in touch with the communications engines of their lives.
It is a really serious concern, even if a majority does not directly think about it. Just like water pollution or fertilizer runoff. Essential stuff, that affects everybody, but there's no real need for everybody to care about it. I don't understand why you paint this as a an elephant in the room to address. Not all battles are won by swinging public opinion.
To your point, arguably not enough people have cared about climate issues for too long… It is only now that pressure is piling up on governments and corporations to change, and arguably it’s late and much remains to be done.
Similarly, the trends towards a gated web described in the article continue to grow.
I want more people to care because my rights and those of my loved ones are better protected if enough people care.
I also want people to care because I prefer to develop open web products and services, and the more demand there is for them, the easier designers and developers in the space can make a living.
Why would anyone not want more people to care?
I think privacy on the web is already heading in a good direction.
You mean Firefox?
That's another problem, the lack of any real browser diversity.
there's a lot of neat little networks that are active, that have a community. even if you are just connecting with other p2p, decentralized, whatever folk, & the whole world hasn't adopted your platform, so what?
open source doesn't have to scale. start with what beautiful ideas you have.
You don’t need to reach a billion people to be useful. Wikipedia didn’t have a billion users when it was first useful, nor did OSM, or slashdot, or alt.Wesley.crusher.die.die.die