> A protocol must offer direct benefits to users, so that they keep participating in the network
As someone who tried to give all of the decentralized social networks a shot... something I realised along the way is that they are never going to fly because they are not giving you dopamine kicks like the big tech giants are. I ended up forgetting to visit Lemmy or Pixelfed or <whatever> because I had 2-3 times when I opened up the app and saw the exact same content, giving me a feeling of "nothing is happening here" and thus, I didn't need to check in.
I mean, even Signal has that Instagram story function but I have never seen a contact use it because no one goes to Signal "just to scroll" or whatever. They go there to send or read a message.
Any social media needs content for people to visit. They need to make people feel like they are missing out if they are not visiting. Otherwise, they're just going to end up as an app on the phone which is never opened.
> I ended up forgetting to visit Lemmy or Pixelfed or <whatever> because I had 2-3 times when I opened up the app and saw the exact same content, giving me a feeling of "nothing is happening here" and thus, I didn't need to check in.
I think this is the point the OP is making though, there's little to no actual benefit if the content doesn't change often. You probably never forget to check HN for example.
An RSS reader linked to this via a browser extension might be a more useful interface for feeds that aren't updated as frequently.