In Catholicism a communion wafer is quite literally the body of Christ – not symbolic. And Christ, as part of the holy trinity, is literally God. So Catholics do actually believe they’re chomping down God every Sunday morning.

It doesn’t sound like it would be a great service to pay for given your needs. But keep in mind these are services, saas, there is no expectation that I, as a customer, will take any of it to the grave with me, and I’m not like… unaware of that fact.

What I get in return is a growing library and the ability to listen to just about anything at no additional cost, some nice features like auto playing similar music after an album or playlist ends, and what I consider a perk of not having a physical or digital library to care for to repurpose that time as I see fit.

Sure, it would be a hugely sad day if Spotify fully fucks me, and there’s plenty I don’t like. But that risk is built into my decisioning, and the value is absolutely there.

Another big obstacle is the general UX of these platforms. Major companies have teams of user experience analysis and researchers that, while not always “winning” as compared to product or business driven decisions, absolutely have a (generally positive) impact on the product. Onboarding, retention, etc.

The fediverse has all the standard frictions of most OSS, like talking about itself, it’s technology, etc when the fact is 99% of users dgaf.

I might go so far as to argue the perceived complexity is a bigger barrier than the risk of sabotage from other businesses. I am optimistic the growing list of third party apps will help solve some of these issues, as long as they take things like the sign up process and server selection into their scope.

Why isn’t that a link… Is that a Lemmy thing or an instance thing or an app thing? These tiny UX friction points are important for retention.

Is there collapsible comments yet? There wasn’t when I tried (or I couldn’t find it) and that’s a deal breaker for me.

I think that’s a portion but I know a few people that just take the path of least resistance. Right now, that is absolutely not the fediverse. In a few months with all the apps already in development, it might be a better experience with better content.