Yep! There are so also many niche applications people never heard.
I regularly checking it for any FOSS alternative to any closed-source software. For example: Inochi2D, AB Download Manager, Miria, OpenUTAU, Our Paint, and Wick Editor.
Upload them to YouTube or Bilibili. Japanese music fandom tends to archive everything that not available anymore on YouTube and rarely get taken down.
That way, newer generation can discover them. Just like city pop.
One common problem for fediverse is that most of them are Western-oriented, hard to find people with similar interest and common topics.
Lemmy so far is replicating Reddit, which is tend to one-size-fit-all community. Gaming community? c/gaming is de-facto. Linux community? c/Linux is de-facto. And so on. Sure there are other server, but the one with most active community wins.
I usually use Facebook Groups with hundreds of thousands of people. It’s nice to see groups of really small niche, like “local fried chicken seller,” “temple research South East Asia,” or “Singapore-only comic collector”, etc.
There are plenty groups with similar topic, but entirely different culture. For example general gaming group:
Another example, healthy food groups.
All these communities might be same, but the entire vibe are different. One might more welcoming, other are full or rough jokes, some are okay with multilanguge post (not English only community).
Unless fediverse is able to replicate this, I don’t think it will reach full mainstream, especailly for people in Africa, Middle East, or Asia.
Edit: I also want to see Misskey Channel interoperability, as it has the closest vibe so far with Facebook Groups.
Most of actively maintained extension are from Keiyoushi, which is open source and community maintained.
It has 1300+ extension from various sites and platform across diverse languages.
As much as I love Linux for mobile idea, it doesn’t have a lot of apps that people rely, like banking or government related stuff.
Misskey, which is Japanese-made ActivityPub-enabled social media software, has option to enable ads natively for instance admin.
In most cases, the ads are just non-tracking community ads, like promoting YouTube channel, indie animation, pop-up cafe event, or server hosting service. Usually the ads are matched to instance theme.
People realize that running instances needs money and letting the instance admin to make living from it is acceptable. Having monthly patron oftentimes not enough.
This is different case and country. There are plenty of dead fedi instance from Southeast Asia because the donation itself is not enough as the culture of donation is not the same as Western countries. Most people will just simply use free social media and thinking ads are good tradeoff.
It’s just your average cultural clash.
Most people on internet are accustomed with English naming culture. Meanwhile when people from non-Western (mostly US) making name that seems cool in their culture, it often lead to cultural clash. This also applies to symbol, gesture, etc.
You would be surprised that numbers of FOSS project from East Asia not having updated information/license/documentation in English.
Especially Japanese one, it’s one of the hardest language that even if people had a middle level certification like JLPT N3, they might still not be able to translate formal document properly.
On other hand, FOSS project from Southeast Asia or South Asia always keeps their English documentation/license/info up to date.
That’s Western fediverse.
Fediverse instance in Asia often run ads or other kind of monetisation. Like the second biggest instance.
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I mean for digital content. I live in Indonesia, and majority of people cannot afford to pay digital service, but an ads of foods or essential stuff works.
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Instead of car, people of my country usually able to drive motorcycle.
But not me. I’d rather take my bicycle. I don’t want to deal with cost of maintaining motorcycle.
Japan has so many unique store that operated in their country with region-locked apps/games.
As far as I remember, even DMM and DLsite already has their own game store on Android.
This is truly a win for Japanese customer and company.
Integration with DeepL API like Misskey would be cool!
They don’t need to get big like Meta or any Western social media.
They simply need to serve their targeted demography well to be able to survive. A lot of East Asian platform doing basically that, still alive even after a 15+ years.
Local social media is different from bigger social media platform.
Those big social media generally are American/Western-centric. Sure, you can find local community on them, but their moderation system are often still Western-centric.
You’ll surprised on how often other language being moderated (deleted/removed) because it mistaken as hate speech. For example, word that in certain language has neutral meaning, but mistaken as offensive in English.
Also, local social media often designed to local culture. Xiaohongshu and Plurk are the primary example. Entirely unique UI and user experience.
Even fediverse also this cultural-focused software. Take a look on Misskey (a Japanese-made fediverse software), it primarily designed for Japanese internet culture, which entirely different from Mastodon or Pleroma.
ActivityPub is not designed for real time chat and communication, I believe.
There’s Matrix and XMPP protocol, but upcoming MLS protocol (which backed Mozilla, The Matrix.org Foundation, even Meta) looks more complete, feature-wise.
Instead of yet another globally massive social media, I want to see regional social media that’s not massive globally, but popular in their country of origin. Or niche social media.
List so far:
Art general:
Design:
Hobby specific:
AlternativeTo is crowdsource, so one individual might find software A as suitable alternative, while others are not.
The same way that some people find GIMP enough to replace Photoshop, while others prefer Affinity Photo, Paint.NET, or Photopea.
I personally find so many cool underrated FOSS software, such as Inochi2D, AB Download Manager, Miria, OpenUTAU, Our Paint, Mihon, and Wick Editor.