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Exploring Mastodon

martinfowler.com

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Re: Exploring Mastodon

#21

Post by shrikant »

I'm quite a bit unimpressed by (actual and armchair) UX and product experts' commentary jumping on Mastodon's rough edges -- yes, a lot of us know it's a bit clunky and the onboarding hasn't been A/B tested to death, and the UI/UX hasn't been hyper-optimised for LE EPIC ENGAGEMENT and that's perfectly fine!

It's arguably not ready for full mainstream adoption right now, but hopefully that'll continue to change as the tech crowd uptake increases and the contributions to the core/protocol/apps goes up as well.

I like the community feel of the somewhat smaller instance that I moved my presenec over to (from mastodon.technology, which is shutting down), and there's a frisson of the original excitement I felt when exploring early communications services on the interwebs like IRC.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#22

Post by SoftTalker »

cyborgx7 wrote: post #18
chris_st wrote: post #12

I'm on a discord server with a lot of non-nerds, and various ones are interested in Mastodon, due to Twitter issues. It's amazing to see how much trouble they're having... "Do I have to create a log in on every Mastodon?" ("No, and it's pretty much impossible"), "Can I follow someone on another server?" ("Yes, but it's incredibly hard -- try to follow them on whatever server you're on, maybe someone else is following…

People just have lost the ability to comprehend the concept of federation because everything in the current internet is walled gardens. There is nothing Mastodon can do to "fix this" without giving up on federation. But people understand how federation works. They see it happen everyday with e-mail. You just need to tell them it works like that and they'll get it.

For 90% of non-tech folks, email is gmail or whatever their ISP gave them, or came along with their phone, or their employer gave them. It's not something they put any thought into or understand as a "federated" system.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#23

Post by bombcar »

I saw a good quote - something along the lines that Mastodon replacing Twitter has serious "year of linux on the desktop vibes".

I think there's value in Mastodon, but it's not a drop-in twitter replacement. Perhaps a valuable thing would be helping set it up as a POSSE tool: https://indieweb.org/POSSE - post to your Mastodon and it automatically posts to Twitter for you.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#24

Post by nemo44x »

chris_st wrote: post #12

I'm on a discord server with a lot of non-nerds, and various ones are interested in Mastodon, due to Twitter issues. It's amazing to see how much trouble they're having... "Do I have to create a log in on every Mastodon?" ("No, and it's pretty much impossible"), "Can I follow someone on another server?" ("Yes, but it's incredibly hard -- try to follow them on whatever server you're on, maybe someone else is following…

I think they're going to find out that it's nerdy and that they now hang out among the nerds and not the cool people anymore. And then within a week or so pretend that it never happened, they'll buy their blue checkmark so their posts aren't buried with the spam & rabble, and be on their merry ways as if this whole meltdown never happened.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#25

Post by cyborgx7 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #22
cyborgx7 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People just have lost the ability to comprehend the concept of federation because everything in the current internet is walled gardens. There is nothing Mastodon can do to "fix this" without giving up on federation. But people understand how federation works. They see it happen everyday with e-mail. You just need to tell them it works like that and they'll get it.

For 90% of non-tech folks, email is gmail or whatever their ISP gave them, or came along with their phone, or their employer gave them. It's not something they put any thought into or understand as a "federated" system.

They understand you can send e-mails without needing to have an account with the same provider. They may not know it under the name federation, but they do understand the relevant part, for them.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#26

Post by SoftTalker »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #2

> but the protocol they use to communicate (ActivityPub) I stopped reading here. Most people who aren't tech savvy (much less professionally famous engineers) aren't going to want to learn this nonsense, much less see cased words like this that reek of geekdom. Everything about Mastodon (and the Fediverse) seems like it's catered to people who are already are (or who think they are) mentally all in on the concept. I…

I have worked in tech for 30 years. I agree 100%. Any twitter alternative needs to be as easy and seamless as Twitter itself. The first step being a decision on where to set up an account is a non-starter for a huge number of people. Haven't we all learned the UX lesson of reducing choices?

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#27

Post by chipotle_coyote »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #2

> but the protocol they use to communicate (ActivityPub) I stopped reading here. Most people who aren't tech savvy (much less professionally famous engineers) aren't going to want to learn this nonsense, much less see cased words like this that reek of geekdom. Everything about Mastodon (and the Fediverse) seems like it's catered to people who are already are (or who think they are) mentally all in on the concept. I…

Most people who aren’t tech savvy aren’t reading Martin Fowler’s blog. It’s okay for bloggers to write for their expected audience, rather than having to think “how will what I am writing be interpreted by all possible readers, e.g., literally everyone who can access this web site.”

As for Mastodon itself, yeah, it would be nice if it got better about its terminology and “marketing” to people who aren’t nerds, although one can argue this is endemic to open source culture at this point (cue unceasing arguments about Calibre’s wacky UI choices, The Gimp’s arguably offensive name, and so on). Those are trivially solvable problems, though.

If Mastodon is “something that people just post to with very little comments and interaction,” I would suggest that it’s long been a network effect issue; it’s very hard to get any new system that depends on user-constructed social graphs off the ground, until or unless that graph exceeds some hard-to-define node count level for a sufficient number of users. Anecdotally, I have seen a lot more activity on Mastodon over the last week; whether enough will stick to push it over that magic number remains to be seen.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#28

Post by KindAndFriendly »

nr2x wrote: post #10

The fact that one has to pick from many different places to set up an account is a massive barrier to entry. Let alone the complexity of moving an account from one host to another is also woefully complex, so if you choose wrong, you’re in for more pain. I don’t see this platform being able to benefit from the Twitter exodus. I’m putting my hopes on blue sky/AT which appears to solve the above pain points: https://bl…

I politely disagree: you just pick an "entry node", similar to picking an ISP or an email provider. You can interact with everyone in the Fediverse just fine. Having a newsfeed for your chosen "entry node" is an additional nice-to-have imho but not the defining criteria.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#29

Post by JustSomeNobody »

chris_st wrote: post #12

I'm on a discord server with a lot of non-nerds, and various ones are interested in Mastodon, due to Twitter issues. It's amazing to see how much trouble they're having... "Do I have to create a log in on every Mastodon?" ("No, and it's pretty much impossible"), "Can I follow someone on another server?" ("Yes, but it's incredibly hard -- try to follow them on whatever server you're on, maybe someone else is following…

> ... but wow, are normal folks having a hard time.

We should stop picking on normal folks. I write software for a living and, honestly, I'm over dealing with BS software. We've swung WAY too far to the "developer productivity" side of engineering and away from "consumer productivity". It's annoying and, frankly, if I have to jump through hoops, I simply choose not to anymore.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#30

Post by nimbius »

nr2x wrote: post #10

The fact that one has to pick from many different places to set up an account is a massive barrier to entry. Let alone the complexity of moving an account from one host to another is also woefully complex, so if you choose wrong, you’re in for more pain. I don’t see this platform being able to benefit from the Twitter exodus. I’m putting my hopes on blue sky/AT which appears to solve the above pain points: https://bl…

I understand coming from Twitter --where artificial choices are manufactured in order to extract value from things like outrage and fear-- it might be overwhelming to experience real choice for the first time. We made a tool for that, so lets help find you an instance youll enjoy :) dont worry, you can shop around for the right one, your choice isnt set in stone at all.

https://instances.social/

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