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Comment by bheadmaster | Hacker News Reader

I'm just hoping that if enough of these "incidents" happen, people will eventually stop using proprietary social media applications and use something free (as in freedom) and decentralized like Mastodon.

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> people will eventually stop using proprietary social media applications

I have ~280 followers on the Instagram with reasonable engagement on my photos[1] and -maybe- 10 on the Fediverse with basically zero engagement.

People won't stop using the proprietary apps until there's a decent amount of the people they know on the alternatives (which, to be fair, is definitely burgeoning this week.)

[1] A fair few from a hashtag which, correct me if I'm wrong, don't really work the same way on the Fediverse - you can't just follow #donkeys and get an aggregation of posts with that hashtag; only the ones from a particular server.

Here is how almost every conversation I've had with non-tech people about using any alternative web platform.

me: have you ever tried X? it's an alternative for Y

them: isn't that for racists or drug dealers or something?

If they've ever heard of it.

Sometimes though, it's true. I remember experimenting with Freenet a long time ago and discovering it was being heavily used for CSAM. I've never uninstalled something so fast.

If something lets you do things you can't do on the mainstream social network, that will be the dominant kind of thing done on the alternative.

if only they weren't right 95% of the time. Anyone they know that uses alternative web platforms uses them for those exact reasons, and they're generally pretty correct in that assumption, who else would be motivated to use them to any discernible degree?

I don't think social media being down for a couple hours is a big enough inconvenience for most people to care.

Yeah no average person cares about the difference between proprietary and free (as in freedom). If it does a thing, they'll use it. If it does a thing extremely poorly, but it's marketed well, they'll use it. If it does a thing, and they get censored continually, they'll use it. If it does a thing, but only via one method (you can't do it your way), they'll use it. If it does a thing while spying on their data, they'll use it. If it does a thing while showing them ads every 5 minutes, they'll use it.

Normal people take such a beating, and just keep on trucking. It's truly fascinating.

So... people will use _anything_ as long as it works. Are you saying that the "free (as in freedom)" alternatives to proprietary solutions don't work?

Not OP but I'm saying yes. I don't see people paying for hosting. Mastodon instances already have to beg for donations to keep up. There are no ads, no sponsored posts etc. so users have to donate. Most people won't pay for a services like this just like how most people don't pay for Discord, Reddit, or Instagram.

As soon as you have to either pay for it or host it yourself, the extreme majority of the public will reject it.

They generally require more time and effort investment, and they don't ultimately offer what most people want from social media. #1 of which is to be where everyone else is; there's a very strong "winner takes all" effect. The only reason different networks exist is different enough policies and culture, despite their desire to turn into one another by copying each other's features.

If accounts are permanently deleted, I could see there being fallout

But they're not. The linked post from instagram support on twitter says they're fixing things. Much ado about nothing.

That will never ever happen.

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