There are great competitors in the "day to day internet usage" world, without even looking back again at major players. For instance, I've switched from Google to DuckDuckGo, -progressively- from GMail to ProtonMail, GChrome to Firefox, etc. Selfhosting carries it's own share of responsability, but ownCloud is a fantastic open source service in the same vein as GDrive.
Playing the revolutionary game and ditching big soul-sucking capitalist companies is, for now, a lone game. As you mentioned, almost no one uses Mastodon and those who do are likely to be ridiculously foreign for oneself (everytime I visit Mastodon.social it's all asian postings which I understand absolutely none of). Changing one's habits, when these are simply "single-player" tools is not that hard, but asking people to change their virtual social circle is tough.
Of course competition in this field is necessary too. I'll be damned the day I stop kicking people in the shin trying to convince them to switch from WhatsApp to Telegram. But switching from Facebook to Diaspora is all kinds of a different undertaking. The bigger the participants' sphere of influence (?), the tougher to migrate them; and the problem is that, for some, their social network of choice, is their whole sphere.
There are great competitors in the "day to day internet usage" world, without even looking back again at major players. For instance, I've switched from Google to DuckDuckGo, -progressively- from GMail to ProtonMail, GChrome to Firefox, etc. Selfhosting carries it's own share of responsability, but ownCloud is a fantastic open source service in the same vein as GDrive.
Playing the revolutionary game and ditching big soul-sucking capitalist companies is, for now, a lone game. As you mentioned, almost no one uses Mastodon and those who do are likely to be ridiculously foreign for oneself (everytime I visit Mastodon.social it's all asian postings which I understand absolutely none of). Changing one's habits, when these are simply "single-player" tools is not that hard, but asking people to change their virtual social circle is tough.
Of course competition in this field is necessary too. I'll be damned the day I stop kicking people in the shin trying to convince them to switch from WhatsApp to Telegram. But switching from Facebook to Diaspora is all kinds of a different undertaking. The bigger the participants' sphere of influence (?), the tougher to migrate them; and the problem is that, for some, their social network of choice, is their whole sphere.
Precisely. You put it together nicely, Nico.