Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Exploring Mastodon

martinfowler.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 248 posts

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#191

Post by zzzeek »

pwinnski wrote: post #188
zzzeek wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a tech website so I'm sure you can appreciate the need for urgent migrations given the sudden changes in userbase

Absolutely. Been there, lived through that myself. I'm sure you can appreciate that every one of these issues impacts the uptake of mastodon, of course.

fosstodon is not the server that non-technical people would be going towards in any case and it also isn't accepting new registrations right now. the main server mastodon.social, that's the big one that's getting killed also.

despite all this, a lot of prominent people have joined (to be clear, left leaning journalists, attorneys and economists, but Paul Krugman did win a nobel prize)

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#192

Post by colin_jack »

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 found this disappointing because it means that for there to be a critical mass of content in a particular community so that it gains in popularity, then that particular community in that particular instance has to become popular on its own, instead of all instances contributing to one big community

Totally agree. The whole server focus is not user friendly or intuitive.

As an example I finally found someone to follow and decided to look at the people rhey were following, but it would only show me people from that server.

The complete lack of discoverability is jarring. Really not sure Mastodon is ready for mass market.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#193

Post by [deleted] »

rakoo wrote: post #184
pwinnski wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon has been around for six years, which is young but not infant-young, and what I'm getting at is pretty central to the entire concept. If it is still this poor of an experience six years in, one might wonder what is going to change in the next six.

No, it's not central. Discoverability of the entire universe is not a goal of any fediverse tool; the goal is to put back communities in the hands of users. Diackverability happens by talking to people, asking your way around, following interesting accounts from afar, being part of the discussion and organically grow your network. If you search for Twitter2, the fediverse is not it.

[deleted]

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#194

Post by [deleted] »

Kye wrote: post #172
roywiggins wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone hands you (outside of Mastodon) a Mastodon handle on a different instance or a link to their profile, it's not obvious how to follow them. (the way to do it is to paste it into the Search box of your mastodon instance)

Why wouldn't you just ask the person who gave it to you how to use it? I've always been there to answer questions when introducing people to new technology. I know I had to walk people through emailing me back in the 90s. It's no different. What kind of Johnny Appleseed jackass is strolling around telling people their handle and skipping out before telling them how to use it?

[deleted]

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#195

Post by ljosifov »

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.

Looks great as an experimental platform. Unlike big social networks, it's a niche where things can still be tried, different choices made, both on the technology and organisation side. Technology - having the server instance moved to the user's side, throws some decisions - for better and or worse - back in the user's court. Interesting consequence - user can move that data and the social graph from one server to another. Like porting a mobile telephone number from one mobile network to the other. Number porting was not possible on the mobile networks to start with - now we all have it, don't think it strange. Fediverse with group(s) of servers decididing whether to federate other server(s) or not - also has interesting consequences Re: organisation of large social network(s). And so on. I find the experience refreshing. One gets to see and interact with the people making decisions - unlike TW or FB, they are not faceless. The root on my instance already mentioned "I'm not comfortable moderating all these new people's social".

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#196

Post by ytpete »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #29
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.

I didn't read that comment as picking on normal people. It's using their experience to pick on Mastodon by illustrating how its UX is more flawed than many "tech users" are able to realize from their own frame of reference.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#197

Post by chris_st »

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.

> 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.

I think you misunderstood what I wrote. The problem is the Mastodon software is incredibly hard to use, and flaky.

This has nothing to do with "understanding federation"!

In fact, a few people have said, "Someone said it was just like email, but wow, it's not at all like email!".

That explanation does not work for non-nerds. At all. It does not help.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#198

Post by ljosifov »

roywiggins wrote: post #70
ljosifov wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm - following someone on another server is incredibly easy for me? I look at the Fediverse feed now, see a message that looks interesting to me, click on the author's username, and then click "Follow". What am I missing?

If someone hands you (outside of Mastodon) a Mastodon handle on a different instance or a link to their profile, it's not obvious how to follow them. (the way to do it is to paste it into the Search box of your mastodon instance)

On the web interface: I paste the handle in the Search box under my Home page, click the search button. The user is found, I click on the hit, user's page appears in the right-most pane, I click on Follow. In the Tusky App: top right corner is Search, tap on it, paste the handle in the search box, tap to the ACCOUNTS tab (have forgotten couple of times to do that! - default tab is POSTS), then press Enter, the user is found, tap on the hit, tap on Follow. Not that different to any other similar social service (TW, FB) tbh. If anything - Twitter search I've found harder to navigate in the past. Fwiw - Twitter and Mastodon are different, there is no one-to-one replacement. I've been using both, there are pros and cons. Twitter has superior SNR for my interests.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#199

Post by chris_st »

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.

The discussion mentioned above was on a Discord server -- and yeah, several people have reported issues with getting started with Discord, but navigate it and do just fine.

Mastodon is just a whole other world of complexity and confusion.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#200

Post by mxuribe »

tootie wrote: post #85
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…

Barrier to entry is just one problem. The main one is reach. 99% of the value of Twitter is its reach. Posting messages is easy. I'm sure a thousand entrepreneurs have figured out how to collect 140-character messages, follow and reply. But they will collect dust unless they get seen by 100M people. That means having that many users on one platform, one platform for content creators to promote, and a single place for…

You might be assuming that people interested in being on the fediverse have the goal of excessive reach. I acknowledge that some coming over from twitter might be interested in such a goal....but those individuals might simply not fully understand the compelling value that the fediverse (and mastodon instances) often represent. Not everyone wants/needs to reach 100M people.

- While, twitter (& other commercial socials) promise excessive/massive reach...The Fediverse might offer less, but richer interactions.

- While, twitter (& other commercial socials) promise users as cattle/"eyeballs" to ad buyers...The Fediverse offers none of that. (Though, individual instancves have every right and possibility if they so choose to create their own ecosystem of ads to pay for their operations, and their people would need to know that of course)

- While, twitter (& other commercial socials) promise a platform for creators to publish their content to a wide audience...The Fediverse offers the same publishing (or better) capabilities and tools, but to a smaller audience...and, at least the existing creators on the Fedi are quite cool with that; most prefer it that way!

To me, living on the Fedi, is like people purposefully, willfully, happily (and not accidentally nor due to duress) moving to the rural country away from the big city...and not caring that others feel like "hey, the big city living is where everything is awesome" ;-)

Post reply on HN