While I would like to see this as the future of social relations, I doubt it in just about every aspect.
The reason services like twitter and snapchat are so dominate is because they're so easy to use and uniform across everything. It's why everyone now prefers slack/discuss to IRC and other legacy channels (among features aswell). Typical users don't have time to research and setup software, they simply just want to use it.
I understand that there's federated signup and all that, but the second you have to explain what any of that means to a user, you've basically lost them.
On the first listed GNU site:
This is the place for you who are tired of private companies controlling your conversations and contacts and selling them for profit.
While I care deeply about what this statement has to say, I don't think my ideals fall in line with the average twitter user. They simply don't care about who's profiting off of it, as long as they get to announce their next vlog.
of course, this isn't going to happen by itself. foss is famously bad at user acquisition and ui/ux. the interesting thing about federated (or federate-able) social networks is that they aren't designed as silos.
i'm in the very early stages of building a meta-social network[1] thing on top of matrix that gives you bi-directional access to gnu/social, irc, reddit, nntpchan, &c.
while I care deeply about what this statement has to say, I don't think my ideals fall in line with the average twitter user. They simply don't care about who's profiting off of it, as long as they get to announce their next vlog.
put your money where your mouth is and help us[2] fix it.
