OK, maybe not a million, but over 100,000 and growing fast. And they are displacing tennis courts, because you can get four pickleball courts where one tennis court existed, and more and more people think that’s a good thing.

Around the world, tennis is in decline. Court usage is down, club memberships are shrinking, and fewer young people are picking up a racket. At the same time, pickleball is on the rise. In parks, leisure centres, and converted gym halls, it’s growing at a pace few expected. It’s a big enough shift that Big Tennis is trying to massage the numbers and remain relevant, claiming participation rates that aren’t really there.

I don’t play either sport, but suddenly I see pickleball signs everywhere. What was once a niche pastime has gone mainstream seemingly overnight. And it makes sense. Pickleball is easier to get into, more fun for casual players, takes up less space, and can be played indoors without needing a full court or expensive gear. It’s inclusive, low-pressure, and social.

There’s a lesson here. The old, customary way of doing things can and does change. You can pour resources into resurfacing old tennis courts, hoping to bring back players who’ve already moved on. Or you can build pickleball courts, simple, accessible spaces that meet the needs of today, not the nostalgia of yesterday.

And this is a little bit how I’ve come to see the fediverse.

For years, much of the energy has focussed on building a better version of something else. A better Twitter, a better Instagram, a better Tumblr. The assumption being that if we replicated what people already knew but made it safer, more ethical, or decentralised, the masses would come.

But they didn’t.

And that’s not a failure, it’s a sign that something way more interesting is going on.

Social Media is Tennis

Social media use is declining overall. That’s not a problem unique to the fediverse, it’s a signal that people are tired of the model entirely. The data backs it up. Engagement is down, trust is eroding, and more people are asking whether these platforms actually serve their needs. Conversely, for the first time, social media has displaced television as the top way Americans get news. Europe’s not far behind.

Most if not all of the large platforms started out as social networking. A way to connect with friends, family, and new communities. But over time, they slide into something else: social media. The focus becomes content, metrics, attention. People become audiences, and the algorithmic feed of addictive slop, propaganda, and ads replaces human conversations.

The world maybe needs both things, social media and social networking. But the two are a wee bit mutually exclusive. At the very least, the motivations for operating these services are very different.

Social Networking is Pickleball

The fediverse doesn’t need to resurface the tired, worn-down tennis courts of the old internet. It needs to create something new. This ecosystem offers an entirely different kind of online experience. It’s smaller, more local, more relational. It’s messy in the best ways. It prioritises conversation over content, sharing over extraction, and community governance over corporate control.

Right now, not everyone wants that, not yet. But as we hear the call for digitally sovereign, locally governed platforms, we’re not just offering an alternative to what’s failing. We’re laying the groundwork for what comes next.

We don’t need to build the perfect tennis court for a game that fewer and fewer people are playing. We need to build a million pickleball courts. Small, accessible, playful spaces that reflect the changing culture of online life. That’s why the fediverse shouldn’t be chasing migrations. We don’t need to become the next Twitter. We need to be the first of something else.

Growth will come, but not by chasing the habits of a declining model. Growth will come when we fully embrace what makes the fediverse distinct.

The fediverse isn’t growing slowly because of a lack of cross-platform migration, it’s because the people who will thrive here aren’t migrating at all, they’re looking for something fundamentally different.

Sure, some will switch from tennis to pickleball, that’s a given. But many more will have never played tennis, or tried it a few times and it wasn’t fun. They will show up on the fediverse at some point.

And when they arrive, we should have the courts ready.

To everyone already building in the fediverse – the admins, the moderators, the developers, the artists, the writers, the everyday users… keep going.

Every time you welcome someone new, every time you resolve a conflict with care, every time you share something thoughtful or beautiful or kind, you’re helping shape a different kind of internet.

You’re not just connecting people, you’re restoring meaning to that connection. You’re helping build spaces that are slower, more intentional, more humane. You’re showing that online communities can be self-governed, safer, and grounded in values, not revenue.

It may not look like growth from the outside. But this is how movements begin, not with numbers, but with purpose. So keep doing the good work. Keep experimenting. Keep protecting each other. Keep making space for joy, for solidarity, and for belonging.

The future of the internet doesn’t arrive all at once, we build it, bit by bit, together.

And we’re already building it.