this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2026
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I feel like people who are already using an 'alternate' site are more likely to have heard of other ones.
Not likely enough, though.
I've watched Mastodon and its users for years now. From my experience, for more than 50% of all Mastodon users, the Fediverse equals Mastodon. That doesn't mean that they don't count Lemmy as part of the Fediverse. It rather means that they've literally never even heard about Lemmy. They haven't heard of any Fediverse software other than Mastodon.
There are lots of ATmosphere users who haven't even heard of Mastodon, much less the Fediverse.
Another example: I'm an active user of a virtual world system named OpenSimulator. It's extremely similar to Second Life, also because it uses the same viewers. It's free-as-in-license as well as free-as-in-free-beer and free-as-in-most-grids-don't-even-have-in-world-payment. It's open-source. It's decentralised to the point where your avatar can teleport to other grids (= worlds = server instances). And yet, the vast majority of OpenSim users have never heard of Mastodon either, much less the Fediverse.
That's fair. However I was making the comparison with the general population, and yeah, knowing that websites exist outside the big 3/4 ones they use is already a feat for them.
The odds are still very low for a Pillowfort user to know of us, but have to be a huge multiple of the odds for a typical Tumblr user.
By way of example, I made a Pillowfort account myself when the Tumblr porn ban happened. So there's at least one. (Although I didn't stick around there much)
These odds are still extremely slim. Even if there was one Pillowfort user who has heard of Wafrn, that one voice wouldn't be loud enough to reach the whole crowd in time before they all move to something that's nothing like Tumblr or Pillowfort (e.g. Mastodon, Bluesky). And I don't think that there are that many more people on Pillowfort who have heard of Wafrn. Especially considering how few people on Mastodon, much less Lemmy, have heard of it.
Agreed. It's just really hard to get the word out for something like that, and especially when there's a deadline.