this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2025
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Asklemmy
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I think you overestimate the normie mindset. Most people want a heavily curated, walled garden and silos which high-end corps provide, if sold under convenience. Most are not going to go around looking at say Lemmy or Mastodon instances and pick and decide. Most people who use WhatsApp can barely switch to something that does not utterly spy on them despite the fact they know that Meta spies on their Meta data. FB is wretched but it has billions of user, alone. Doubt it will be the fediverse.
If this is to be believed, all Lemmy users do not even break 433,300 users total. Unless I am reading it wrong.
https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy
"In the long run" does a lot of the heavy lifting there. We've gone from indiscriminately giving our data away 25 years ago, to having a sizable chunk of people like you and me who are aware of the data siphoning and take steps to curb the flow today. In another 25 years, I think users' mindsets will have changed enough for my prediction to have a chance in hell of becoming true. I hope to see the day.
Hey, I think you are replying to me? But Iwas not the one who said, "in the long run," that was the poster above me.
I did not make that claim. But nevertheless, if I may, 25 years from now, is a long time. I agree that many things can change. But right not, when it comes to privacy, the next 5-10 years do not look good.
I use Linux on all my machines due to privacy, and tech background, I like Linux, and because I support FOSS. If you do too, we are less than 5% of all users, likely closer to 4%.
I use Firefox based browsers, and if you do too, we are less than 4% of all internet users. Closer to 3%.
If you use the Fediverse. The entire Fediverse cannot be more than 100 million. I posted elsewhere that all Lemmy users are less than 433,000, total. We are likely under 20 million or maybe a tad more? FB has like 3 billion. Twitter has hundreds of millions, I believe. Even Bluesky is like 32 million. Feel free to fact check me on that, it has been a while since I last checked.
Everything is turning into subscriptions services and at least in my circle of friends, when I mentioned the fact that people have bought corporate microphones that listen to everything that they say, with clips of those going to corporate, they all accept it as fact, but there follows this weird uncomfortable cognitive dissonance where people accept it but do not want to really think about it because they like asking Alexa for weather alerts and to play music, etc. And they are all fine with it. When I deal with normie people, they are 100% on board with giving away all privacy if it saves them a click or two. Maybe in 25 years it may be different, but this is not changing in 5 years. That is for sure. Maybe not even 10 or more. The majority is likely to not really change in that time. Since tech trends are heading into even less privacy, in the aggregate.