While I'm not interested in "short form" videos I had the same curiosity regarding the userbase and wanted to check myself.

The only way to look at the web view is to sign up, so I did. I completed E-Mail verification, then the account was disabled immediately with a pop up message to contact support. Not worth the effort.

I just tried exactly the same (at https://loops.video ), but I was able to watch without account, and registering afterwards also worked. Guess it's something on your side.

I can too, now. I wonder if any changes were made or if it was just a problem on my side.

Checking loops.video now, these were the first 5 videos I saw, in order:

1. Left-Wing American Politics

2. Promotion of the Fediverse and Loops

3. Left-Wing American Politics

4. A Non-English Play

5. Left-Wing American Politics

6. Stop Motion Flipbook Thing

7. Advocation for Loops Itself and Decentralization

8. Loops Promo

9. Left-Wing American Politics

So out of the first 9 videos, 4 centre around American politics, 1 I couldn't understand, 3 were promotion for the service I was currently using and only one was interesting and understandable.

I don't have a Loops account, but check multiple sites for news and information, landing on the loops homepage several times. I haven't needed a login to see videos appear for some time.

If it's anything like the rest of the Fediverse applications, it's meant to give you a full chronological feed of people you subscribe to. While several of these sites seem to have a simple trending page, one of the themes of the Fediverse seems to be getting away from overly predatory algorithms and leaning into letting people curate their own feeds and interactions again.

It sounds a lot like a "be the change" situation. If you want to see other stuff, follow people you like instead of drinking from the hose. It's still a small site, so if you don't see the content you want, then make it or build the community there.

These sites can also have basic interoperability. I don't know if the Loops UI supports subscribing to people in other Fedi networks yet, but I've seen people say Loops videos have started trickling onto Mastodon.

I have no interest in guns, and only a minor interest in sports and cars; but if you set up an instance devoted to these, and got your friends to use it (just to talk to each other), I reckon it would only be a few months before you'd seeded a community. (There is plenty of comedy on the Fediverse, so I think that's a bad example.)

The design of the Fediverse is receptive to niche communities. If other communities are hostile, you can just pretend they don't exist, and the things they post won't appear on your timelines. "The people on it" is not as much of a thing as you might be used to from social media like Instagram, Reddit, Tumblr, or HN. (As everyone's so very fond or saying, ActivityPub is like email.)

If your niche is a popular niche (which sports most certainly are), then it should get quite big, quite quickly, provided the people who'd participate in it are (or can be) present.

You can still have those instances federated with you. Consider the various language communities on the Fediverse: there's little overlap between them, except where speakers are bilingual, but their instances do federate. You can do the same thing with interests.

There is no advantage to centralised systems in this regard: they have all the same problems.

>You'll never find sports, guns, cars, comedy and a lot of other mainstream content on these platforms even though there is nothing inherently offensive about it.

I'm pretty sure you can find all of those things on TikTok and Youtube Shorts. If you're talking about federated platforms, probably all of it but guns. And if you can't of course no one is stopping you from starting a channel or instance yourself.

You’d get defederated by instances that find that sort of thing objectionable, I guess. But, if you think it is a popular niche, couldn’t a separate community grow? That’s the whole promise of decentralization.

I do think its a popular niche but currently no one on the fediverse enjoys that stuff. But how can it grow when its rejected?

The whole point of federation is that you can build communities that share common values. I'm not sure what more you want. We can't force everyone to like the things you like.

However, it is a little silly to suggest that UFC is not extremely popular. I myself have wasted hours flipping through UFC reels.

This is about the fediverse not about the rest of the internet.

> You'll never find sports, guns, cars, comedy and a lot of other mainstream content on these platforms even though there is nothing inherently offensive about it.

What are you talking about? Sports, cars, and comedy are present everywhere on the internet. Guns are more of a niche and not without controversy, and it's certainly true that the incumbent networks place restrictions on some gun related content.

I know they're everywhere on the internet. I'm specifically talking about loops/mastodon. I want loops/mastodon to be a diverse place that has content from all over the internet.

> I want loops/mastodon to be a diverse place that has content from all over the internet.

I think a lot of Fedi people want that, but the community is still small. It's a bit of a chicken and egg, so I would encourage you to create the content or communities you want to see.

I'm not a Loops user atm though.

> so I would encourage you to create the content or communities you want to see.

There are hidden reasons behind centralized solutions, that make decentralized solutions unpopular. If anyone suggests "just go out and make it better", it's missing the point. That's like saying: "don't participate in society, just start your own". In theory it makes sense, in practice it's just ignorance and lack of awareness on how difficult and complex task it is.

Centralized solutions are often just a business, they're not transparent, they're not cooperative, they're not ethical, they're there to conquer market and there's big money behind them, they're part of surveillance capitalism.

These are just examples, but there's lot more, so in context of social media, it's intertwined with the rest of simulation called "real world", so almost no one is going to know what you're talking about, when mention Loops/Mastodon/Bluesky, people know dominant platforms and stick to them and they may do so as part of social pressure and because they compete for status. In this society, you won't gain status by using Loops. People are buying iPhone for status, even though something like Samsung or Fairphone would be good as well. People are buying luxury frames for glasses, because they want to show brand, they don't care that it's more expensive and quality is basically they same.

I don't know why your dragging centralization/decentralization, business model, Fairphone, etc. into the conversation now. It sort of feels like you're overthinking this.

I often talk to people about Signal irl, most download the app but some folks do. Some people actually want a For You feed and will bounce off Loops, Mastodon, or whatever. That's all fine. These spaces can have content about cars or guns or whatever else without eating the entire world.

You said:

> I want loops/mastodon to be a diverse place that has content from all over the internet.

Again, I think lots of people who are already in the Fediverse want that. But, if everybody who likes cars decides they won't join in until somebody who shares content about cars does, that car community may never show up.

You seem to have interests that you feel are undeserved. Just... regularly share things about what you think is cool. Just do it for funsies.

If you really feel strongly about wanting to make a diverse space, cross promote your stuff in spaces with other people who have the same interests. Share a post, share a video, ask them to follow you. Maybe even start an instance dedicated to the topic if that's your vision.

I'm not overthinking it, if you were right and everything was simple, statistics on popularity of decentralized platforms would look different. That's empirical proof. It's science, you can read what Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Shoshana Zuboff or Tristan Harri wrote about media, you can notice that right now it's all global Skinner box experiment or you may ignore all that and go with "vibes" on why decentralized platforms fail to gain real popularity.

One approach is based on science, other bases on unfounded feelings. Some people will use these decentralized platforms, but that's not the point. My point is that it's not as simple as just telling people around you "just use this". There are systemic reasons why most people don't use them and serious analysis starts once you get it. Without that it's just wishful thinking, so sure, you will get something on these platforms, but it's like one commenter here mentioned, he tried Loops, used it for a while and it's mostly trash for him, while better community will never appear there.

To get real traction and user base on such decentralized platforms, we would need to change the way society functions first. That's why it's impossibly hard challenge. Without foundations, such projects are doomed to fail, they just can't compete with mainstream, centralized platforms.

It doesn't feel like you can stay on topic here. I'm not trying to discuss the general viability of these platforms vs. centralized ones, or other social networks. Your complaint was:

> the people on it are just so far away from what me (and men my age) deem interesting and seem to be hostile to anything that doesnt fit their very restrictive ideals.

Okay. If you don't want to participate, don't. But, if your other comment about wanting to see a more diverse audience join was honest, then do. Either way.

There's traction. There's a user base. There are people enjoying and getting use out of it. There's plenty of communities and relationships that will go on just fine regardless of what you decide.

You seem to be frustrated about something, maybe that the fediverse isn't matching Facebook in size? It won't. It probably can't, since the commercial incentives aren't there. But, at no point does that invalidate what exists.

That's all I'm going to say about it.

This identity politics/virtue signaling seems off topic.

> I havent used Loops

I think the worst repercussion of consuming short form content is that it gives the _consumer_ a false sense of engagement. That their passive consumption endows them with knowledge and credibility, leading to the deluded belief that a display of disintirest such as this one is 1) appropriate and 2) a profound condemnation rather than the petty, irrelevant whine that it is.

Disgusting.