< The 2020 Explosion in Niche Spaces
Yes, user numbers shot way past a baseline - due to various events - which I imagine is roughly what we see normalized today. I'm quite pessimistic about this sort of thing, but to me a lot of this always seemed very reactionary. A whole new set of demographics were disturbed, rightly so, by the centralization of social media and the power that a few could have to shape the experience (and therefore opinions) of the many. But this wasn't a principled stance, generally, simply distaste for whatever was going on with such and such platform. It's not sustainable. We have to value decentralization and democratization of communication on a cultural level. Even today I think users tend to re-enact the very same things they have fled from. But that's human nature.
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Yes, 100%. Even discussion about the Fediverse seemed like people thought it was some new monolithic platform simply called "Mastodon."
Also, it was hilarious seeing all these spaces of Twitter refugees basically enforcing the same rules and centralization as Twitter had (through things like the Mastodon Server Covenant etc. which homogenized many instances.)