Conversely, see Paradox of Intolerance. By NOT separating toxic instances from the rest by default, the Threadiverse has probably passed by its best chances to grow, as Reddit fell but people refused to come here. Tbf, that was mostly due to the lack of content / network effect, as mentioned in the blog, but also the part that we could have done more to stop was to allow toxic people to bully others without doing anything to stop it. At which point the main choice left is to simply not stay here and put up with it.
Things are better now than they were, and will get better still when Lemmy updates to v1.0 and thereby finally allows moderator reports to federate, plus as Piefed continues to grow (and ofc Mbin + 3rd party apps for all 3 platforms, plus other new ones like nodeBB as they add ActivityPub Protocol support). But the BEST chances were behind us.
People love toxic and ragebaiting shit. Facebook, Reddit, Xitter all push it to the forefront and their users eat that right up. It may annoy them and destroy their mental health but arguing over the internet with strangers have always been addictive.
It was 100% due to to the lack of content and communities, but more importantly because people in general don’t care about the concept of federation and don’t want to learn about it, and will actively resist any attempts to “educate” them about it. Threadiverse is for geeks and will never be as popular as traditional corporate social media. Just like GNU/Linux will never be a dominant OS, no matter how good it is.
Yeah but I think the fact that it’s for geeks is literally its strongest selling point.
Not 100%, if people’s own self reports are to be believed (on Reddit, Bluesky, X, etc.). For example this post made a couple years after the Rexodus: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1jqvq6k/looking_for_reddit_alts_that_are_not_lemmy/.
Also, I found this older post and its comments quite interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/170ie8t/regarding_the_recent_complaints_about_lemmy_being/.
