The fact that the fediverse is young and evolving is what excites me about it. There is tremendous potential, we just have to realize it.

Also, I will mention that part of why Facebook took off like it did, initially, was the ability to import friends from Myspace. This is much more complex and nearly impossible to do today, but I really think we need to look at social graph imports for the fediverse, to allow people a life raft from closed wall platforms. The failures of the past were not an accident, they were carefully planned out by other entities who did things better.

The Google trends I have seen are far more than 0.1% of people out there. I know many people personally who would love to leave Facebook, but there is no good alternative, and the issues I mentioned above are contributing factors. We can keep sticking our head in the sand and saying that it is what it is, and the fediverse will never grow because no one wants it, or we can try to understand why users are not being retained and seek to address those issues. It’s less about validation and more about providing real alternatives for people. I kind of thought that was what this whole thing was about.