Why do most people stay in centralized social media platforms when the Fediverse exists?

Network effect. Next question.
- If people hate fruit on pizza, why is tomato sauce okay?
  
  Olives and peppers are also fine. It’s just pineapple that’s as bad as putting a picture of the Pope in your toilet.

Because all their friends stay. So to get them to switch, you'd need everyone thay know to switch, which would need everyone they know to switch...
... soon, you need to organize a switch between millions of people, which really isn't happening.
So the only people on fedi are those ok with keeping multiple profiles, and even then just the ones that value the technical aspects over quantity of content: mostly tech nerds and people with strong feelings about politics.

Ease of access and user experience. A single platform beats that, as you don’t have to choose where to signup and everything will be available without effort.
However, Lemmy is getting better with that and hopefully the user base continues growing. It doesn’t need to have a billion users to be an awesome experience.
- Plus it's not easy to explain. Instagram is for pictures and reels Facebook is for people you know IRL Twitter* is for short sentences you spit out Lemmy... well it's a collection of lots of different instances and then you've got communities on each one and some are duplicated but you can join them anyway etc etc
  I refuse to say X cos its wanky

Have you invited people to the fediverse?
- Yep I literally didn't hear about it till last week
  
  Cool
  How is it?

Even if people know fediverse, if the content they want doesn't exist here, they won't stay.
There are Japanese Twitter refugee to fedi (especially Misskey) several times. A lot of big creator doesn't stay as they want to get the highest number of engagement to keep their (art) business afloat.

Do you know any regular people? Most people I know have never even heard the word fediverse.
- Not to mention "most people" wouldn't fit in here or feel welcome. Remember Donald Trump won the popular vote and even those who didn't vote didn't feel strongly enough about either side to pick one or the other. It's not just the US, far right candidates keep gaining popularity in parts of Europe. And I think a lot of people aren't interested in Star Trek or trans rights. The niche communities have very low levels of activity too. The fediverse just isn't for everyone.

People are giving great answers here. One I didn't notice at a glance is that the Fediverse is feckin small. Most of the world doesn't know it exists yet, and centralized social medias are probably not gonna be super big about pushing that info through their algorithms

I don't think the average user thinks much about the platform they're on, and about who controls it. I think they go to wherever most of their family/friends are.
Also, those platforms are firmly in the mainstream, the alternatives aren't really - you'd have to actively go search for them. People just aren't likely to do that, I don't think.
- Most people are like sheep and just follow the herd.
  
  All but you always get those people that swear they're different.

Is this a joke question?

Most people don't care about things. This is kind of a recurring problem. Imagine if people just cared a little bit more. All sorts of problems, like littering, would just go away.
But people are lazy and don't care. They don't care that their behavior today will be a problem for them tomorrow.
The big sites are where the content is, and that's what they want. Suffering a little bit of hardship (fewer memes) in order to bolster a stronger future? Ridiculous.

Is mastodon the app that has it? I’m still pretty new to knowing wtf it even is
- Mastodon is a FLOSS X/Twitter
  
  Ok so are there any specific apps for the fediverse?

Because of network effects.
Building a social network is hard. A typical chicken or egg problem. If you don't have a user base, nobody is willing to join, and if nobody joins, you don't have a user base.
It usually requires a bunch of money to build a social network.
The fediverse has a long time to go but I believe it will win sooner or later.
- I'd also chalk it up to convenience.
  The Fediverse requires effort.
  
  That too.

In my IT program at school, the only people who have heard of the fediverse are the ones I've told.

Inertia, convenience of what you're used to, and all of your friends are over there and have never heard of 'the fediverse'.
- also: Actively censorinv the mention of lemmy.. at least on reddit as far as I am aware. Maybe even threads.

Centralized social media is where their friends are.

The Fediverse is a confusing concept. I’m a giant nerd and even I don’t really understand how this is supposed to work. Centralized platforms provide a more straightforward user experience. And as others have said, that’s where the content is right now.
- It's no more confusing than using email, and everybody managed to figure that out. You don't need to know how the nitty gritty of it works. The network effects is a far bigger issue, as you point out, centralized platforms simply have far more content on them.
  
  It's far more complicated than email, at least I can send an email to any valid address from any other address by default ( mostly ) - Lemmy / Fediverse is like needing multiple email addresses that each one can only email some of the others, and you might not even get the response someone sent you unless the content is literally carried back to you.
  I have multiple accounts on multiple instances, and sometimes I come across posts I read with one account, but my comments or the responses to those comments just aren't there, so you only get a portion of what is out there.
  It's kinda a terrible experience in that way.

Because most people haven't gone far enough to even understand this question. The choices come prepackaged, that's what in front of their eyes, so they assume that's how it suppose to be, and take the easy ride

Ease of use
The combination of having to choose an instance and then start with an algorithm free blank slate is a tough ask. It literally takes time to sit down and setup your initial “feed”, which is probably a good thing, but not at all what attracts users whimsical curiosities nor what they’ve experienced over their entire existence with social media.
- I just browse All. Zero setup beyond picking my instance.

People follow the crowd and centralized media had considerably bigger crowds
- Several of these platforms used bots and/or multiple staff accounts to inflate user count/engagement to draw more people in and trigger the network effect.

I don’t think federation vs centralization is the primary differentiator. I think corporate vs non-profit/ad-free/donation-only/volunteerism is. Our marketing budget is goose egg. It’s all word-of-mouth.
- Yeah I keep pushing for join-lemmy.org to buy ads on Google and Bing.
  
  I can also see some people being opposed to them spending the donation money on ads, since they'd be giving money to companies that may be in opposition to what we're doing here (or ideological reasons around the advertising industry in general).
  Maybe if there was a separate pool of donations specifically for advertising, then people who want to support that can donate to it? Those who don't can still donate to the projects themselves

Because I have no clue what the Fediverse is.
- Yeah and I wasn’t sure what it mean on account creation to commit to a server fully. I ended up getting a lot of supportive comments when I did ask.

There are going to be layers to this.
There are lots of people who are just downright too stupid. They wouldn't be on the internet at all if Tim Apple didn't put it in a baby baba for them to suck it out of. They use Facebook because their iPhone came with the Facebook app pre-installed.
There are lots of people for whom popularity is the only thing that exists. Their brain cannot function beyond "Everyone uses Twitter." They'll adopt this platform only after everyone else in the world does.
There are lots of people who have bought the propaganda. The dark web is for drug traffickers and hitmen, torrenting is for pirates, end-to-end encryption is for traitors, and Mastodon is for Linux neckbeards. You shouldn't associate with those people.
There's this weird trend where the commercial platforms are becoming hives for conservatives, so they're probably going to stay put in their echo chambers. I have observed little to no presence of actual conservatives on this platform; beyond the horseshoe effect with the tankie crowd.
The culture of content consumption is not supported by the Fediverse. We don't do algorithmic slop troughs here, and the amount of content on Peertube and Loops rounds down to zero, so it doesn't fulfill the role of mesmerizing colors and sounds for staring at and drooling like Tiktok does or linear television did.
Open source software is usually a bit shit. Be it lack of budget, opinionated developers, redundant projects...we can never have one of something. Why does Lemmy, Mbin and Piefed exist simultaneously? We always end up with software that mostly works, has a lot less graphical polish, a shitty project name, a few missing key features and a couple workarounds you just have to know about. Or an intentionally godawful UI. That'll put people off.
A few people who show up are going to be put off by the weirdest decision they'll be asked to make this month: "Choose an instance, your choice doesn't matter, just pick one." If it doesn't matter, why make me pick? I bet if you watched 100 people try to sign up for a Fediverse platform, at least 30 of them will balk at that stage. I've sat and stared at that for awhile myself and I'm one of the ones who made it through.
They just haven't heard of us. Ask ten people you know in real life if they've heard of Lemmy, or Mastodon, or Pixelfed. I bet they haven't, or if they have they let it pass in one ear and out the other out of apathy.
A few people have looked at the Fediverse, didn't see what they wanted here, and left. If you play Satisfactory, for example, you'll find an active subreddit where the majority of the player base and the developers of the game interact, on Lemmy you'll find one community where exactly one person posts "daily screenshots until I get bored." It's easy to wander off, especially if you don't like left wing politics, Linux and the Fediverse itself.
- I have observed little to no presence of actual conservatives on this platform; beyond the horseshoe effect with the tankie crowd.
  Not a real thing. “Tankies” are in no way “conservative.” They want socialism, while fascists want to kill socialists and maintain the capitalist order.
  Horseshoe Theory » Academic studies and criticism
  First they came for the communists…
  ‘Horseshoe theory’ is nonsense – the far right and far left have little in common
  Are the far-left and far-right merging together? That’s what the ‘horseshoe theory’ of politics says, but it’s wrong
- #6 is the weakest. Software diversity drives innovation.
  
  No, it drives duplicated effort on the basics, asterisks in compatibility and confusion among new adopters. We're not innovating here; we're talking about three parallel Reddit clones.
  There's a #10 for you: A lot of the commercial sites were new and exciting because they let you interact in ways you couldn't before. Facebook facilitated interactions with people you knew in person, Twitter let you briefly shout at everyone in the world, Youtube became your own personal television show, Tiktok destroyed attention spans...every single Fediverse platform is a clone of one of those (plus Pixelfed is Instagram, whatever Instagram is for). To my knowledge there is no ActivityPub-based project that has a unique or innovative concept behind it, just store brand copies of pre-existing ones.
- “Choose an instance, your choice doesn’t matter, just pick one.” If it doesn’t matter, why make me pick?
  Email requires you to pick a provider, but it doesn't matter.
  
  "To use your new iPhone, create an iCloud account."
  Gmail advertised superior features before also becoming required for using an Android device.
  sure, any service gets you sneding and receiving email, but most people these days end up with an email address as a consequence of some other decision they've made.
  
  I feel like this issue will solve itself with scale. You'll end up signing up with the one hosting the community you came over for first and moving if you don't like it
- I think when people falk about #7, it needs to be revised to "your choice of instance doesn't matter when you're a noob. By the time it does matter, you'll understand what you want from an instance and can simply make another account"
  Agree on all other points though. I hope Lemmy keeps growing and getting more active. A lot of the communities I've joined only have a few posts in the past year.
  
  I keep saying that the choice should be meaningful; like I had no trouble picking the Peertube instance I should join because my content would fit their theme.
- Gotta say, the biggest reason I'm not on Pixedfed is because I was told that I could migrate my instagram content, but the two instances I signed up for had that option disabled. I can't seem to find an instance that tells you upfront if it's allowed or not, and I've already wasted enough time on it.
  
  I've picked on Pixelfed's join page in detail before at length. I think you'd be on board with my suggestions.
- As always, there's multiple reasons for things. You did a great job breaking down as much as possible :) the other comments are all right, but you are comprehensive :)

The more people using a social media platform, the more content there is to consume and people to interact with. It's really hard to move to a new platform when there just isn't as much stuff to consume as the centralized platforms like Reddit. I'm using Lemmy for ideological reasons, but if you just want to vibe and scroll online, Reddit has way more to offer. That said, the user experience of Reddit is continually degrading. Potentially at some point it will create enough refugees that sites like Lemmy hit an inflection point of users.
- To add, e.g. reddit took years to become a great platform and it also degradation takes years, as the alternatives will also take years to build. Although some of the issues will probably follow too unless addressed some way. I don’t think the federation is a silver bullet but I’m hopefull that it’s a big step forward.
- 100%. Lemmy just happens to have the communities I’m interested in.
  I remember trying to move to Mastodon years ago. But the main topics in my feed were furries, transgenders and activists.
  Not hating on any of those, but it just wasn’t what I was interested in at the time, so I quit the whole microblogging thing altogether and spent more time on Reddit.

network effects

Same reason why people stick with wells Fargo even if they can move to a credit union. It takes effort, changes to habit, and risk just to gain... what you already have.

I asked someone on bluesky i follow what is mastodon lacking that they ultimately chose bluesky, and they said something along the lines "basic ease of use. The way it works is probably perfectly sensible to fediverse people, but I had an awful time there"
They do indeed have (abandoned) mastodon account with posts, so they did try. I don't know what they meant by it lacking basic ease of use, and I didn't feel entitled to ask stranger for more explanation. But it wasn't picking instance, since they already had an account on one of them.
The only thing I personally noticed is off is following people on other instances if you're not looking at them via your instance website Identity not being perfectly transferrable on mastodon. You can post a special "follow me there instead" post, but what if your instance went tyrant and wouldn't let you post it? Or just went offline? I think cryptographic identity would be more robust for that, but it would also mean user having to store private key somewhere, which would be even less user-friendly

I like to follow a couple reporters directly as opposed to subscribing to the local paper and wading through the fluff pieces, so that means using Bluesky.
Back when I was still an artist for my super niche internet garbage, that meant using Tumblr, then after the Tumblr purge, Twitter. Then after Musk, cohost, then after cohost... I mean, I was done with art but I'd probably be on Bluesky for that too.

Is there a TikTok replacement in the Fediverse? The main reason my wife uses it is because the recommendations are the best. Feel like you have to do more self searching here.
- Yes, it’s called Loops, though it’s still in development.
- Honestly when switching from Reddit to here that is the thing I missed the most. It was a lot better at serving you things you liked compared to here where you can only really sort by either what's active or popular or what you're subscribed to. I get some people really like that but a lot of people want it to be more personalized to them without having to go search for the things they want. It's also great for discovering new things because sure I can setup my subscriptions to show what I like but then it won't make connections and show me new things I might like. Combine that with there being less content and therefore certain areas of interest not being represented here at all makes mainstream social media better for most people.
- The apps absolutely own your phone data and any browser instance the user is logged in to. The issue is not the content, it's the device data permission data...GPS, SMS, WA, FB, real location, browser searches, etc....all go to tiktok, meta, et al.

Sounds like a question for them.

Because they actually have content and friends there
- friends on reddit?

Because they want to feel involved. They want to be with the in-crowd. If they come to the Fediverse, then they'll think it's weird and might scare them because it's a new concept they can't grasp. When really, I see the Fediverse as just a social media reset. But because it doesn't have all of the enshittification that centralized social media has, they don't dare bother.

Part of it is just the network effect. If the people they want to follow are on twitter then they do not really have a choice. Also part of it is the algorithms. For some needing to manually select communities or individuals is an inconvenience. Finally I feel like fedi communities have a very distinct atmosphere simply because very few people use it. This can all change in the future but the majority of the issues stem from just not having enough creators and users as well as the additional effort required to use these platforms.

Evolution of human behaviour is slow. Right now we are all enmeshed in the dawning discovery that the current way we run society is falling apart at the seams. Just enter the core of almost any city in North America and you'll see what I mean (and not just N. America). It'll take a while to set itself right, or it may all just burn in a raging nuclear fire launched by a pissed off oligarch who does not get his way.
Definitely not forward progress towards a better day.

convenience, marketing

Because all their contacts and photos are already there.

Lazy. Most people don't want to learn how shit works. They just want it to work. They'll get what they pay for in the end.
edit: downvote all you want. it's a correct assertion to the question. just because you don't like it doesn't make it not correct.
- Hardcore facebookers don't care even if zuck fed babies to pet lion every morning. TikTokers are even worse. Clout is what they are and that's all they care about. Switching to an another system is a no go and if you bring it up they get really pissy.
  
  Exactly
- When did you begin using the fediverse? I didn't stop being lazy until I joined diaspora in 2011.
  
  When Spez went full cunt. To be fair, I was an IRC nerd to start off though.
- The fediverse needs to be plug and play. Blaming non techy users is a cop out.
  
  Default instances with little to no defederation
  
  But it is...

Do you want them here? I don’t. I don’t tell a soul about lemmy, because this is place for me to get away from them. A place for mostly rational discussion, populated by people free thinking enough to seek an alternative. If the masses descended on Lemmy, they’d ruin it like they ruin everything else. They’d draw the attention that would lead to it being litigated, regulated, purchased, corporatized etc. Let them stay on Facebook and Reddit.
Edit: ITT: A bunch of people who haven’t paid attention to how mind bendingly stupid content has become on mainstream social media, or worse yet, actually enjoy the chum pumped out by Facebook and TikTok and want it to come to lemmy as well. I’ll wear my downvotes with pride.
- This sounds like a very gatekeeper and elitist mentality. Also, Lemmy is FLOSS, they can't buy it up or destroy it.
  
  The current US administration and its demagogues and lackeys have been doing all sorts of things they shouldn’t be able to do in a normal society. You’d be amazed at how quickly they’d be able to shut down a form of mass media they can’t control.
  It’s fine if you don’t like my mentality. I’m highly selective about who I let into to my day to day life in meatspace. I like small gatherings, and keep a high bar for who I want to associate with. I don’t see why I shouldn’t apply the same principle to my internet life.