I am talking about the ethos of open source and decentralized systems, not the general ethics or the values of particular people or instances that are here.

mass numbers of people means success

It's not so much about "attracting mass numbers of people", but becoming more than just a point for fringe groups. IOW, can we make it minimally interesting for normies? Can we go beyond the "techie/anime-manga/pretentious college student/socially awkward/neurodivergent" demographic? Could we perhaps make the Fediverse a place that can be attractive for, e.g, photographers? Car Enthusiasts? Fashionistas? Wood workers? Amateur triathletes?

IMO, reddit's value was never in the large communities. Aside from /r/soccer, none of the subreddits I joined had more than 500k subscribers. But the thing is: the reason that Reddit managed to have so many interesting communities in the long tail was because they managed to attract such a large number of people that even those in far tail end could still find like-minded people.

[–] prole@sh.itjust.works 0 points 7 months ago

I think some of us here might just have a different definition of "success" when it comes to content on the internet. Personally, I don't agree that,

mass numbers of people means success