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Exploring Mastodon

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Re: Exploring Mastodon

#61

Post by jonnycomputer »

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…

Naively here, I just don't see why it should be hard to follow people on other instances--at least for public posts (which again naively I assume are most).

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#62

Post by zzzeek »

andsoitis wrote: post #14
zzzeek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you should log in and see all the very non-tech people who have joined

I don’t know much about Mastodon, so wondering: can I see chatter without logging in? Where do I go to see it (discovery)?

me neither, only been on for a few days. here's the public stream from the server I'm on server https://fosstodon.org/public

the "main" mastodon.social server is mostly unreachable, that would be at: https://mastodon.social/public

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#63

Post by mroche »

andsoitis wrote: post #14
zzzeek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you should log in and see all the very non-tech people who have joined

I don’t know much about Mastodon, so wondering: can I see chatter without logging in? Where do I go to see it (discovery)?

You can visit any available instance and view their public feeds. For example, I use Fosstodon, so you visit the site[0] and click on "See what's happening" to preview the local feed, or navigate to the /public page.

It's up to the instance to expose the "Explore", "Local", and "Federated" feeds. Fosstodon only exposes the local one to unauthenticated users.

[0] https://fosstodon.org

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#64

Post by jonnycomputer »

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?

Let's be honest. Copy-Paste sucks on most mobile. And mobile is where most people are at, especially on social.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#65

Post by nimbius »

MivLives wrote: post #52
nimbius wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Except even that tool sucks. I can't even use the list to filter for things that are say... less then 1k users, have an uptime of 95% or higher, and have A+ grade HTTPs. Whatever A+ HTTPS that means, it's also not explained on that site. Hell you can't even filter on registrations and actually up at the same time. Sorry for the rant, my previous instance went read only, and I had to go find a new one. I know what i w…

Then lets work to make it better! most of your mastodon stuff is open source. Reach out to the maintainer on Github and let them know :)

https://github.com/TheKinrar/instances

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#66

Post by Barrin92 »

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?

>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 empowers people by definition makes it so they need to make their own choices. If these decentralized systems are to have any purpose it needs to stay that way. If that means you lose 90% of users, fine so be it honestly.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#67

Post by kragen »

OscarCunningham wrote: post #55
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 don’t see this platform being able to benefit from the Twitter exodus. What you might say is 'I don't think Mastodon is going to replace Twitter', but I don't think you can argue that Mastodon won't benefit from the Twitter exodus because it has already gained a million users. Looking at the charts on https://the-federation.info/mastodon you can see that in May there was an influx of about 500 thousand new users…

i fear that Mastodon will suffer enormously from the Twitter exodus because it has already had to accommodate a million new users. a million new customers is great, a million new members of a community is a giant acculturation problem

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#68

Post by wzdd »

culi wrote: post #20
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…

> 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?

"Remote follow" is very unintuitive, particularly for Twitter users.

1. View a user's profile page on another instance.

2. Click "Follow".

3. A "remote follow" window opens with the message "Enter your username@domain you want to act from".

4. ???

How profile pages are displayed changes depending on whether you middle/right click ("open in new tab") or left click on a user's name from your own instance. If you left click, you get the profile page on you own instance. If you get the link by any other means (including e.g. someone sends you a link to their profile), you get the above. It's confused me more than once.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#69

Post by slfnflctd »

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 really thought consumer/worker interfaces would become much more efficient over time. Turns out the market doesn't care much about front line people having to go through way too many steps to perform a task except in very niche cases.

The all text, green screen terminals hooked into an AS-400 were far quicker to use than the mess of mouse driven web GUI stuff (often with slow page loads on top of it), and 'discoverability' has not exactly improved a ton in the mean time. It sucks that repetitive task efficiency isn't valued more in so many situations.

Re: Exploring Mastodon

#70

Post by roywiggins »

ljosifov wrote: post #37
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…

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)

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