I think it could replace reddit in the long term but the others I'm not so sure about. Twitter and YouTube still mostly function so people won't leave but without 3rd party tools and the lack of trust users have in reddit to develop those tools on their own that leaves them in a very bad position.

For me personally it can. Not sure about everyone else.

I doubt it, not just because current social media sites are insanely popular, but also because there's a learning curve to using the Fediverse, and most people would likely find it complicated.

I don't think so. I think corporations will always want their hand in a pot and will have their things. I think we've seen there's always going to be people who don't want anything to do with that - digg to reddit, twitter to mastedon, reddit to here. And I wouldn't be surprised in a few years if this platform and similar ones face a crisis of identity like that. Small, independent communities are great and can gain value as more people join. But once enough people join other interests can overtake the original goal. What we've learned is that no platform or protocol is forever.

@Bicyclejohn yes

Yes.

The federation aspect of it has to be invisible to the user. The user shouldn't have to pick an instance (unless they want to) and they should see communities from all instances by default. Also we need a discovery algorithm. That's the most needed feature.

Not in its current state. Too much admin/mod control

probably not; Popular Social Media is a massive force

Best we can do is continue trucking along while popular social media goes through the Enshittening Cycle, and swoop in and be like "hey, have you heard of Lemmy?"

like I think the growth will be over a long timespan than exponential, unless Social Media really shits the bed

Absolutely yes, better than the others.