Last couple of months has been dramatic and there is a huge demand for ethical and safe social media. Even mainstream conservatives start to look for alternatives when US oligarchs wage hybrid warfare against their nation.

And there are so many low hanging fruits right now. Like Facebook event and marketplace replacements on the fediverse. Or just a Facebook alternative that isn't Frendica. Or maybe a commercial fork of Frendica.

I'm not involved in any development of fediverse software, so I'm asking here. Do you experience more interest from venture capital?

Also, I assume EU will pour big money into social media alternatives, starting 2025.

Note: I'm not interested in a discussion regarding if VC is good or bad for the fediverse. That's a good topic for another post though.

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[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 5 points 11 hours ago

As far as I know some German states have started tinkering with the Fediverse and invest money in independant and souvereign solutions. At the same time some funds that were previously allocated to open source project funding have been re-allocated to AI and the future of funds like NLnet is uncertain. I see both demand and people trying things. But not a good and coordinated strategy. And it's been that way for some time now. We've seen efforts to move away from Microsoft, closed solutions... Opposition, technical failures and lobbying from big tech (who got money to advertise for their solutions). It's been a mixed bag. But in some niches it's become better. And things happen. I think in the near future we'll see some payoff from already started smaller projects. I don't really see a big change witing one year, but you never know. Plus we still need to find out where the situation with Bluesky and Elon Musk leads, that certainly got things rolling within a short timeframe.

I doubt venture capital is going to take interest, though. I don't think there's money to be made with the Fediverse. I mean it kind of goes against the business model. Unless you lock in people to your website, you can't display ads to your users. And it goes without saying, that all new platforms are shiny and welcoming at first. They might even advertise with freedom and federation to attract users. Still, they're free to not follow up with their promises, or add enshittification later on. And it's a different question whether platforms like Bluesky stay like that in the long term. Usually once venture capital gets involved, they add stuff that goes against the interests of their users and switch to acommodate for the advertisers.