Fediverse Trend?

A Fediverse user on Mastodon (gyptasy) asked an interesting question:

The Great Fediverse Exodus: What’s Really Happening?
Yes, you read that right. While the overall numbers might suggest growth, a deeper look reveals a worrying trend: the monthly active users on the Fediverse have plummeted to half of what they once were. Even the big profiles are feeling the pinch with dwindling interactions. Could it be that the Fediverse honeymoon is over?

Meanwhile, Twitter/X is seeing a resurgence. More and more users are flocking back, reigniting the platform with a surge of interactions. Is this the beginning of the end for the Fediverse, or just a bump in the road?

Let’s hear your thoughts!

I suggest three things that may help explain what this “tweeter” thinks may be a trend:

Perhaps people don’t participate as they once did, checking in a couple of times a day as we did when this was all new and exciting to us. One of the things that makes “the Fediverse” wonderful for me is that you build your own experience. Diaspora doesn’t suggest “people you may know” and “stuff you might like.” I found friendships and stuff I like without the algorithms and spyware on the commercial sites. I love my diaspora!

Here’s what I think may be happening. The different platforms all offer a very different experience. I have tried a few others and found that they are either

• full of features I would rarely or never care to use, just making the interface a jumble of confusion, or

• built to serve only particular interests or communities. They become echo chambers for whatever group of people so it’s FRACTURED like crazy.

Friendica and especially Hubzilla are examples of the first point. Feature-rich, which is wonderful for many users, but bewildering for those of us who are just looking to read and comment and post like we did on Fakebook or Google Groups before we made our way here. Simplicity is the reason I abandoned my Friendica and Hubzilla accounts and just stick with diaspora*. I didn’t leave the Fediverse, I simply experimented with other platforms, didn’t like them, and abandoned my accounts there (after trying to delete them) to settle on the one platform I really like.

Another reason: Not many of the younger generation even own a desktop or laptop computer anymore, which most of these platforms are made for. We’re all on phones or iPads these days. While mobile apps are available for all of the Fediverse platforms, most don’t offer all the cool features available to desktop users. This kinda makes all the cool gadgets and gizmos irrelevant to mobile users. Most of the mobile apps are just “wraps” for whatever browser a mobile user has on his or her phone anyway, and mobile browsers don’t have all the cool gadgets and gizmos you find on a computer with a full web browser.

Are people “leaving” the Fediverse and running back to the big proprietary platforms? I don’t see it that way at all. But to a long-time desktop user like “Gyptazy,” it must appear so.