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Exploring Mastodon

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Re: Exploring Mastodon

#111

Post by shafyy »

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’m putting my hopes on blue sky/AT which appears to solve the above pain points

How does AT solve this specific pain point?

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#112

Post by pwinnski »

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.

People keep using email as the prime example of federation, but email is pretty terrible!

I can't communicate with anyone whose address I don't already know. There's no real "discoverability." Many people have multiple email addresses, and I don't know whether I'm communicating with the correct one, or even whether more exist that I don't know about. If an email address stops working, it just... stops working. Emails bounce back (if I'm lucky!) with no easy or standard way to say why, or what address to use instead. I could go on.

Email is great for point-to-point communication, modulo some of the issues listed above, but that's a very limited use case, not at all comparable to most social media. It's a poor replacement for Twitter, for example.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#113

Post by input_sh »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #100
MivLives wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it helps mastadon writes it's users as @ @instance.example which looks very similar to email with a twitter handle slapped on front.

Most people choose Gmail as their email provider specifically because understanding federation is too much mental overhead. There is no gmail equivalent in the Mastodon space, instead there’s many small instances that are difficult to compare.

But those that do use Gmail are well aware that they can use their Gmail account to write to @anywhere.com, not just other @gmail.com addresses. They already have that mental image in their head.

This is "just" extending that concept to @username@twitter.com, @username@facebook.com, whatever. This user on this site, same as this email address on this domain.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#114

Post by parasubvert »

notacoward wrote: post #54
shrikant wrote: post #21

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…

I'm a lot less concerned about UX/onboarding issues than about the fact that the simplistic federation model is going to fall apart long before they even reach 1/10 of Twitter's scale. Now, if you're OK with having a lot of smaller communities that only communicate sporadically, forcing people to have ten identities and ten tabs open to participate effectively in each one, that's not a problem. However, if you want t…

The web itself has a proxy/cache layer, what more is needed? I don’t think it’s inherently unavailable as it is, no more than RSS readers were.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#115

Post by earth_walker »

SoftTalker wrote: post #26
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?

I don't find twitter to be seamless nor easy. They have reduced my choices to the point where I can't actually see what I want to see without doing a bunch of research into how to 'game' the system.

Looking at my home page right now, Elon is at the top saying that "Twitter needs to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world. That’s our mission." Followed by an advert from a company I didn't subscribe to, and then a bunch of meaningless personal tweets from people I don't know and I didn't subscribe to. One news item on the whole page.

I get regular email notifications updating me on the latest paranoid rants from various right wing 'rebel' groups (that I definitely didn't subscribe to), and I cannot find any way to stop them because they only show up in my emails, not in my feed. There's no way I can see to block them. That's not seamless nor easy.

The email notifications I do want cut off important headlines half way through the sentence, forcing me to log into the platform just to read what might have happened. No way to configure that either. Certainly not seamless nor easy.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#116

Post by haunter »

jmathai wrote: post #92
radarsat1 wrote: post #56

The thing that surprised me a bit about federation is that it puts instances front and center. You have an account at your "home instance", and that's the first thing you see. When I first read about federation I had thought that the idea was to have one big network of independent but equal instances that just transparently share data under common topics. But instead I discovered that you are identified with your ins…

I think the opportunity is to foster a new kind of social interaction and smaller niche groups seems like a really interesting angle that centralized services gravitate away from. I haven't used Mastadon but I could see this being a positive if you replace "home instance" with "local community" or "interest group foo". The truth is that you only need to find a small group of people with similar interests. You don't n…

How is that new though? Feels like just going back to forums, or heck even Discord or reddit. But personally I always felt that Mastodon is a Discord/Reddit "clone" rather than something to replace Twitter

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#117

Post by toofy »

sp332 wrote: post #94
mxuribe wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that one has to pick from many different places to set up an account is a massive barrier to entry... I wonder if a statement exactly like the above one was said about alternative email providers being coinsidered by many AOL.com account holder so many years ago? > ...I don’t see this platform being able to benefit from the Twitter exodus... I suppoose it depends on how "benefit" is defined. But, also, Mas…

Yeah, and what happened with email is everyone moved to gmail and corporate servers. Having a choice of hosts is not something most people are looking for.

if mastodon continues with the growth and hits some kind of critical mass, im sure eventually most people will end up on a few concentrated servers. that just makes sense for people who aren't interested in minutia and want details abstracted away. tons of people use gmail and an awful lot of people don't, they make their own choices.

the people who do care about otehr things can go to the more specialized servers. everyone wins.

getting back to a norm where people have choice seems ideal from my perspective.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#118

Post by Barrin92 »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #108
Barrin92 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The first step being a decision on where to set up an account is a non-starter for a huge number of people then the should just stay on twitter. The entire differentiator between Mastodon and Twitter is choice. It's akin to complaining about the fact that there's 50 states in the US and you have multiple elections to take part in and decide where you wanna live. It's all very complicated. Any technology that empower…

> then the should just stay on twitter. The entire differentiator between Mastodon and Twitter is choice There's that OSS elitism we all know and love so much.

it's literally the opposite of elitism. Demanding of people that they need to take control of the tools that they use and making tools that empower them recognizes that they are at least in principle able to do just that.What's really elitist is thinking that every piece of software needs to spoon-feed content to its users and eliminate all their choices because they're really too infantile to be bothered to make any decisions at all.

Crazy world we're in where recognizing the potential for, and asking people to take control of their own actions is considered to be a symptom of elitism

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#119

Post by pwinnski »

KerrAvon wrote: post #98
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 who learned how to use Discord can sure as heck deal with Mastodon. They just need a real motivation beyond curiosity.

Okay, I know that to see content about X, I connect to the X discord server, and to see content about Y, I connect to the Y discord server, and so on. But to message someone, I don't need to know or care what server they're on, or where I know them from. I just message username#uid, and that's it.

Discord is different enough from other tools that many people are confused by it.

But even then, Mastodon is different enough from Discord--and other tools--that many people are confused by it.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#120

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

stewbrew wrote: post #106
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the difference? From my limited exposure to Mastodon at the moment I don't actually interact with "my instance", i just follow a bunch of people most of which are not actually on my instance. Not sure what I would be missing out on.

You can use mastodon this way of course and ignore the local feed.

I mean coming from Twitter the entire idea of a "local feed" is already so weird. Why would I want to follow random people?
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