Let me just start by acknowledging that this is a bit counter-intuitive, and I think that Fediverse communities with open registration are also really important. But today I’m writing to advocate for the creation of more “closed-off” Fediverse communities that make use of invite-only registration (as well as the tools needed to allow for that).
Alright but… why?
You might be thinking, “we want people to join the Fediverse, don’t we? How does having more closed-off servers where people need to be invited to join help us do that?”
While there are some remaining technical and convenience issues, most of us who want the Fediverse to thrive and grow will be the first to admit that one of the biggest hurdles is onboarding–getting people to simply pick a server, register and subscribe to communities.
Personally I think that picking a server really shouldn’t be any harder than picking a pair of socks to wear, but ultimately I think a big part of the problem is that we are offering new users a big list of options that they don’t yet understand or care about, then asking them to arbitrarily pick one.
How is a new user supposed to know which server to join (or which ones to avoid) if they don’t know anything about how the fediverse works?
Sure they could put in the time and effort to do some research, register for a bunch of different servers to get a feel for them, or maybe pick one arbitrarily. But many potential newcomers aren’t going to do that. Instead, they’re more likely going to just decide that the Fediverse is “too complicated” and return to their safe, centralized, familiar and established platforms, run by corporations and oligarchs.
Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket
Having thought about this (a little bit too much, probably), I think one roundabout way to address this problem is somewhat counter-intuitive: the creation of more closed-off servers, in which users are occasionally given sharable invite codes to bring other new users into the fold.
Let me break it down…
By giving someone an invite code to a closed-registration fediverse community you are:
- Instantly solving the server choice paralysis problem, by simply making the choice for them.
- Giving people something that they are more likely to perceive as being valuable, like Willy Wonka’s “golden ticket”, they now feel that they are part of an exclusive club.
- Creating the possibility of exponential viral growth, as every existing user has the means to invite a number of other users. This also means that the average community member may take a more active role in growing their community, since if they want more people on their server the best way to do that is by giving out codes.
Throwing invite codes around drives a lot of hype, and it gets people’s foot in the door without asking them to make an arbitrary decision about technologies and communities that they don’t understand. Keep in mind, this is no small part of how Bluesky became popular, by having an extended invite-only beta period during which people could be found begging for invite codes else on the internet.
Basically, I think closed-off servers with viral invitation systems are potentially a powerful tool to help grow the Fediverse, and so it’s something that Fediverse software should support.
What do you all think?
Herein lies a problem I’ve had for a while, actually. It’s hard to tell people about Lemmy, because “Lemmy” isn’t really a website, or an app, or even a platform, really. It’s a protocol that anybody can use. For instance, we’re not really posting comments here on Lemmy, as much as we are posting comments via Lemmy. Right now, I’m posting a comment on Lemmy World via Lemmy, from Fedia. The average new user is very quickly gonna get lost in the sauce with that.
So even the main recruitment page, “Join Lemmy”, is kinda misleading because how do you join a protocol? It’s kinda like saying “enlist with TCP/IP” or “create an account on HTTPS”. Like… what does that even mean to a user? It leads most people into thinking that “Lemmy” is some centralized community with a hub of some sort, which is ironically antithetical to everything Lemmy stands for in the first place.
I think one solution to this would be to stop referring to things as being “on Lemmy”, and instead use terms like “a Lemmy site” or “a Lemmy instance”, which I think would help articulate the fact that “Lemmy” is a piece of software and not the community, itself. So when trying to refer friends to join a Lemmy instance, we should use the instance’s name, instead of “Lemmy”. But this brings about another problem; how does an instance form an identity to begin with?
Take Lemmy World here, for example: What is LW’s “identity”? What kind of site is this? What’s it about? What is the community here for? It’s called Lemmy World, so is it about the Lemmy software? To the outsider, it just looks like an off-brand Reddit; which may be what some are looking for, but there’s no real identity to be found in that.
You do have some instances that are a bit more focused, however, and have a distinct “identity” about them. Unfortunately, a lot of those are defederated from the major instances because of those identities (Lemmy.ML, Hexbear, etc). But there are also a lot of really good ones like the solarpunk or literature instances, and interestingly enough, LemmyNSFW, which all have their own focused subject matters but are still part of the Fediverse at large. When you sign up to one of those instances, you know what kind of community you’re getting involved with. You’re there for a reason, just like everybody else.
I think Beehaw does a good job in this, specifically; even though they’re a “general purpose” instance much like Lemmy World, they have very clear guidelines and expectations for how users behave and what they post, which helps solidify its identity. If I tell you “think of a Beehaw user”, you can probably concoct an idea in your head about what that person is like. If I tell you “think of a Lemmy World user”… can you even narrow it down enough to create a caricature at all?
I don’t have any real point to all this, just rambling about some frustrations I’ve had for a while with the terminology of things around here. I dunno what the solution should really be.
maybe you could say “powered by Lemmy”? “part of the Lemmy network”?
as far as identity, I think for lemmy.world it’s the same answer as Reddit’s identity? which is a good thing, there’s a bunch of instances that are slight variations on that identity and that’s cool
Yeah… I agree.
One problem is that the names of software projects like “Mastodon” and “Lemmy” get mixed in with the names of servers like “mastodon.social”, “mastodon.art”, “lemmy.world”, “lemmy.ml”, etc.
That creates a lot of unnecessary confusion for potential new users, because they end up conflating the software with the server, thus missing the big idea of the fediverse completely: that a bunch of servers, even those running different software, can talk with each other to form one big social network.
But it’s kind of a moot point because there probably isn’t much that can be done about that now.
I just hope that in the future people will avoid using software names in their server branding, because it only confuses people.