In the end I don’t think internet users in rich powerful countries are the users most likely to benefit and invest their time into in the fediverse. They might be the ones with the most free time, money and privilege around computers which makes being on the leading edge of niche technologies far easier, but I don’t think using the fediverse vs commercial social media is thattt crucial of a difference for most (add a million qualifiers here except if you are black, queer, trans etc… I am talking in relative terms here) livimg inside the borders of colonial powers like the US, France, Germany etc..
Speaking as a hetero white dude who grew up with a decent amount of privilege the fediverse isn’t for the countless versions of me living within the borders of colonial powers…
It might have been programmers living within the borders of colonial powers that did most of the labor to create the fediverse, and most of the early users might have come from within colonial powers but I think it is important to recognize that the gift that the fediverse represents to the world is the capacity to empower people living outside the borders of colonial powers to own and run their own social networks instead of having some random Facebook employee who doesn’t have the time or basic knowledge of a country to make major decisions about what news accounts to moderate as dangerous spam and what to allow.
From a 30,000 foot view, speaking in broad terms and specific values and priorities, what do you think are the best strategies for flipping the script on the fediverse being mostly a tool used by people within the borders of colonial powers to one used by without and within?
I wonder about the capacities of fediverse software being useful as a compliment to HOT open street mapping type initiatives in the wake of disasters and just in general?
(Are server costs just generally cheaper/easier in colonial countries to run or is it purely a money and time thing? I don’t really know)
Yes I think what everyone is trying to say but can't quite put into words is that reddit is an order of magnitude larger than lemmy like a massive big box store is an order of magnitude larger than a corner mart & cafe and yet nobody would stand in the corner mart & cafe and conclude it felt less human in comparison to the big box store because so many less people passed through its doors.
The environment of a big box store is steeped in distrust and it is a space where spontaneous interaction is codified with deep suspicion.
A local mart or cafe on the otherhand is more likely to suggest trustful grounds to interact that may provide bridges over the roaring rivers of first impression.
That is a difference that is invisible if you are primarily looking through the lens of large statistical noisey trends, but no mistake that unmistakable difference between "big box store" and "cornermart & cafe" is a multiplicative factor acting on every moment and is of the type that can nullify extreme powerbalances by making the entire paradigm that carefully precipitated it irrelevant in a flash.