But who, exactly, is supposed to create this “niche content” for them?
I think this is something we underestimate—large swaths of people see themselves as consumers of quality content. It is not for them to bring in comments or interesting finds to the communities. This I think is what makes the internet ripe for centralization. You can’t be a non-paying consumer and choose your menu. You can pay with your behavior datapoints and get fads packaged to you, or you can help create an ecosystem where you don’t have to be spied on every click and tap of the day. Choose your path and make peace with it. The worst would be to help create content for a community and be spied while at it.
One thing I have always found precious for my 10+ yrs on forums like reddit and 3+ yrs on fediverse is how high quality conversations are by people who usually don’t obsess about numbers and publicity in likes and upvotes etc.
Genuine communities here on the fediverse will evolve at their own pace.
Yeah people don’t realize a ton of the niche communities are only a few years old, if that. Even 5 yrs ago Reddit wasn’t used as often for Google searches. Reddits popularity is recent.
That niche content is built up over years of the right person finding the right thing, which all in all is pretty rare, because only a percentage of thoses people will actually post and make their knowledge known. It's institutional knowledge, and institutions arent built in a day.
It will happen. It will be slow. It's how it works everywhere. The community needs to prove itself after all!