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Exploring Mastodon

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Re: Exploring Mastodon

#121

Post by baxtr »

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…

There is really nothing Musk should be worried about.

The funny thing is: If there was a service called dwitter and had exact the same features that twitter had, people might be willing to give it a try.

At this point a twitter alternative doesn't need to be different. It only needs to have a different owner.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#122

Post by simfree »

pwinnski wrote: post #112
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.

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…

Browsing the federated timeline, searching by hashtag and looking at who other people you know are following is the discoveability mechanism.

Unlike Twitter, ActivityPub sites generally don't beat you over the head with follow recommendations. The goal is not to get you mentally addicted to spending hours a day on Social Media.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#123

Post by stormbrew »

jayknight wrote: post #76
happymellon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you not do that?

Imagine I'm on hacker news and there's someone on mastodon I think someone should follow and their mastodon handle is @cooldude@cooldude.example.com (because they are so cool they run their own instance). You definitely can't click that handle and add follow them, I could put https://cooldude.example.com/@cooldude and you could click to their profile on their instance, but there would be no way to follow them directl…

You can just put that full name in the search bar on your own instance and follow them from it. You don't have to go to their instance at all.

I mean, I'm not saying that mastodon is super duper easy to use for everyone but in this particular example you seem to be going out of your way to make it more complicated than it is.

If the thing you found on hn was a link to their profile your flow would make sense, but if you have an id@domain the flow is really simple and basically the same as other similar things (ie. put it in your email client).

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#124

Post by pwinnski »

KindAndFriendly wrote: post #28
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.

People "pick" an ISP based on price. They pick an email provider based on UI, or features, or price, or cachet. How should I pick an entry node?

I go to https://mastodon.social/ because that's where people say things are happening, and I click "Create Account." I'm told I can't sign up here, but I can "Find another server"

You've already lost a huge percentage of potential users, but let's say I press on. I click through to https://joinmastodon.org/servers and see things like glasgow.social and metalhead.club. I'm neither Glaswegian nor a metalhead, so what do I choose? On what basis do I make this choice? It's immediately overwhelming, with a very real fear of picking the "wrong" server and somehow missing out on, well, I don't know, because how would I?

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#125

Post by camjohnson26 »

saurik wrote: post #103
camjohnson26 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People who use Gmail still have to know how to send e-mail to support@apple.com and when asked what their e-mail address is know to tell people someone@gmail.com instead of someone@hotmail.com. You don't get to not understand how e-mail addresses work just because you are using Gmail. There is clearly something else broken about how Mastadon tries to do federation if people are having a hard time with this, but you c…

The addresses aren’t the problem, most people see an email address as just a unique identifier for the other person. The problem is choosing an instance to sign up on.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#126

Post by FeteCommuniste »

baxtr wrote: post #121
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…

There is really nothing Musk should be worried about. The funny thing is: If there was a service called dwitter and had exact the same features that twitter had, people might be willing to give it a try. At this point a twitter alternative doesn't need to be different. It only needs to have a different owner.

"Dwitter" is taken, it's like Twitter but for JS demos: https://www.dwitter.net/

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#127

Post by jzb »

haunter wrote: post #116
jmathai wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Discord, Reddit and Mastodon all feel very different to me.

- Discord's dominant model feels like IRC++ to me. Emphasis largely seems to be on real-time conversations. - Reddit is like a slew of mini-Slashdots, where communities have a discussion prompt like a news story, a question, or something and then commentary. - Mastodon is micro-blogging. You post a status update, commentary or question, and people can react and/or reshare. Y

Discord and Reddit are topic-based. Mastodon is more about following people than topics, though you can organize Mastodon instances by topic / domain / whatever.

Anyway... Mastodon feels more like Twitter, albeit a vision of a better Twitter (for certain values of "better") circa 2017. Longer content, RSS feeds, and federation + the micro blog format.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#128

Post by toofy »

Vaslo wrote: post #48
culi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, but it's incredibly hard -- try to follow them on whatever server you're on Confused about this. In my experience it's always just been a matter of adding @personiwannafollow@otherinstance.com Is this not always so simple?

This is like when computer geeks don’t get why people won’t switch from windows to Linux. If you don’t understand why they don’t want to, or why there will never be a massive shift to Mastodon you’ll never fix the issue. Your suggestion is not “simple”. My non tech wife doesn’t care about instances and this and that. She goes to Twitter, she types in her favorite people, finds and follows. Done.

im still confused about The Terrible Time people are having here...

for example. if i want to search for @johnnydick@head.com... i do that, and click follow.

thats it. i click follow. like, where are you guys having so much trouble with this?

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#129

Post by kzrdude »

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.

Of course it can work on smoothing it out. Most instances do upgrades and use the same software. Short term interface changes and long term they can work on protocol changes.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#130

Post by unequiv88 »

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…

You call out Reddit but has private messages, private subs; essentially boundaries like the domain name system.

The reason being is because individuals have boundaries!

Boundaries are a feature humans demand, not a design flaw.

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