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Exploring Mastodon

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Re: Exploring Mastodon

#141

Post by skybrian »

simfree wrote: post #122
pwinnski wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn't help at all for following a particular person. (For example, consider finding the account of a band that you already know.)

A Google search is probably the most common discovery mechanism. Once people start putting their Mastodon addresses on their web pages, it will start getting easier.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#142

Post by culi »

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.

How is this any different from typing @gmail.com vs @yahoo.com? People seem competent enough to handle emails...

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#143

Post by timmytokyo »

KerrAvon wrote: post #93
falkd wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nice, but I find myself saying "Don't care" to most of the questions, and I've got a huge list of instances as a result. I still can't really say for sure I'd be picking one I wouldn't regret picking later. I think the biggest questions I'd have are: - How do I know an instance is trustworthy and the mods behave professionally? - How do I know an instance isn't going to go down and lose my account? It seems like…

I really think this a less impactful decision than people seem to think unless your interests are extremely narrow. If you can’t decide, pick mastodon.social for a start. It’s extremely well moderated (from Germany) and has a diverse set of users. And you get to interact with people from other instances anyway.

Except that you can't currently create new accounts on mastodon.social.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#144

Post by jmathai »

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

I think going back to forums is an apt description.

I'm in a different stage of life so I can't comment on if Discord or Reddit solve that use case. I think Discord comes closest.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#145

Post by pwinnski »

toofy wrote: post #105
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.

yeah, the panic people are putting forward about server choice is really strange. my account is on a friends invite server and 99% of the people i follow and interact with are on all kinds of other servers. my timeline is almost entirely people from dozens of other servers. im not at all sure why people are panicked about this.

The key phrase in your statement is "on a friends invite server."

Okay, so if you don't already have a friend on Mastodon, then what? Have you actually looked at the list on https://joinmastodon.org/servers recently?

Half the comments here say it doesn't matter what server you choose, and half are saying to be sure to choose the one that aligns with your interests, which... see the list above for why that's an issue.

Panic? No. It's just an example of mastodon needlessly limiting itself in terms of usability right at the starting gate.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#146

Post by toofy »

bioemerl wrote: post #34
bombcar wrote: post #23

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.

I bricked my Linux system while trying to uninstall python, on one of the most "user friendly" systems, and they had no way to restore like Windows does with system restore. I'm still using it because Windows requires accounts now and screw that, but man, Linux has tried hard to get me to go do something else. I do not understand how these projects are just so consistently bad at UX. It takes effort, but UX should be…

yeah, ive been screaming for a while that our biggest failure in f/oss has been how little weight we give to UX. and particularly how little we court the UX community. the UX folks ive spent some time talking to just haven't seen much in terms of recruiting from us and it really shows.

for better or worse its probably one of the larger reasons our projects are so locked into corporate influence.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#147

Post by culi »

kzrdude wrote: post #131
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?

Right, we need the user to figure out what "just adding @personiwannafollow@otherinstance.com" entails. I think it means going to your home instance, searching for @personiwannafollow@otherinstance.com and clicking the follow button that will show up. But maybe you mean something else? Either way it's not easy to find it.

Oh right I forgot you can just search. In that case you don't even need the "otherinstance.com" part

You can just search for "@personiwannafollow" and they'll show up and you can hit a single button to follow.

It's the big, and only, search bar at the top of the home page...

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#148

Post by jezovuk »

RunSet wrote: post #45
bioemerl wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moment you're manually typing a username it's game over. It should be rare to never that you need a specific user id, let alone a specific server. You should just have to see a user and click follow.

> The moment you're manually typing a username it's game over. Is copy/paste also too much to ask of technology's current generation?

Yes.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#149

Post by pwinnski »

nimbius wrote: post #30
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/

I said I only speak English, and the first page of results includes several servers with names and descriptions not in English. If I spoke German or Japanese, I'd have said so. If a server technically allows English but is mostly for Deutsch or Nihongo speakers, that's not what I expected when I said show me English servers.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#150

Post by pwinnski »

KerrAvon wrote: post #93
falkd wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nice, but I find myself saying "Don't care" to most of the questions, and I've got a huge list of instances as a result. I still can't really say for sure I'd be picking one I wouldn't regret picking later. I think the biggest questions I'd have are: - How do I know an instance is trustworthy and the mods behave professionally? - How do I know an instance isn't going to go down and lose my account? It seems like…

I really think this a less impactful decision than people seem to think unless your interests are extremely narrow. If you can’t decide, pick mastodon.social for a start. It’s extremely well moderated (from Germany) and has a diverse set of users. And you get to interact with people from other instances anyway.

Not allowing new signups.
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