It’s crazy how many people will just click accept on security warning them that an app will access literally everything on their phone.
It’s also crazy how many people don’t even know that Threads is Meta… where the f have these people been for the past 10 years?
No, it’s mastodon but centralized. It takes all the difficulty out of signing up for the fediverse, like finding a server. I said it from day 1 on mastodon. We will never see mass adoption until there’s a simple sign up process. People like centralized because it’s easier.
I’ve been trying to hammer this point home.
I wish devs would wake up and create a default easy mode sign-up for the fediverse with an option to click “advanced sign-up” if you choose to do so.
The easy mode would just automatically assign an instance based upon some algorithm.
How?
Well, like asking users what their preferences are and select the servers based on the criteria users have chosen?
Hmm actually yeah this is a good idea, but the problem is that there’s so many servers that I feel that after choosing criteria there’d still be a bunch of servers in the list and the problem remains, right? Just bouncing ideas. I quite like this idea though.
Then the algo recommends the one with the lowest load and hides the others behind a … icon or something.
Mm this could be a problem because server load is too unpredictable. I would actually say just randomize the list, so that it kinda does its own “load balancing” by incentivizing to pick whatever random top one it selected?
Yeah, whatever metric. Could also use a mix of number of users, some form of reputation measurement, uptime, etc.
I mostly meant that the system should pick a “best server” and recommend that. Smarter people than me can come up with the best metric.
But swamping the user with >100 servers to pick from is counterproductive.
Huh? The default Mastodon app signs you up on mastodon.social by default. Nothing complicated about that:
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/05/a-new-onboarding-experience-on-mastodon/
And the devs faced major opposition for that, because plenty of people accused them of wanting to centralize the decentralized network with that move.
I think it’s a good thing honestly. It brings a better quality of people here in my opinion.
How is it difficult to find a server? Just pick whatever server you come across first and create an account.
You tell the average dude about how servers exist and the first instinct is that it matters, so they stop, fret about the importance, look for a second, then just drop it because they dont give enough hoots yet to invest more effort versus using a centralized service.
Want ppl to join, don’t even tell them about servers. No choice paralysis, no fear of being wrong, nada
It looks like most people don’t have enough braincells to do such a simple task. Isn’t it just nice to live in a world like this?
Most people weren’t ever taught about this shit and had no reason to spend time learning about it on their own. Most of us are either professional or amateur nerds, figuring this out wasn’t really that hard because of our circumstances rather than our ~superior brains~
They have just as many braincells as you, throw that attitude away.
Centralization is the core problem of social media though. It allows a single entity control over the data and as soon as you have that, you have Zuck.
Centralization isn’t the problem, privatization is. If the single entity that controlled the data was democraticly controlled and not run for profitability it’d be the best of all worlds.
In 2023, there is very little democratically controlled anything left that has not been tainted by the ‘capitalist gains mindset’ - most democratic social programs that are far more fundamental than a social network have either been corrupted and impaired by corporate greed or have had enough legislative protections or funding sources cut out that they can no longer operate properly, allowing the argument for ‘privatisation’ - a one way ticket back to corporate greed. They operate at the whims of corporations and no longer serve the people.
While I believe what you say is true, it’s not something we’re capable of in the current state of civilisation.
Everything you said is true, democracy does not exist under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. I’m just saying, centralization isn’t the problem. Furthermore you can’t escape capitalism by decentralizing.
True, but it makes it possible to breakaway from an instance or leaders that are toxic/circumventing your privacy for profit without having to find a new tool or network. You can just hop to another instance.
It’s possible as long as competition exists, but every market trends towards monopolization. EEE is real.
Finding a server could not be any easier: https://joinmastodon.org/servers
If they can’t manage that then maybe they should not be on the internet. If my 60yo dad can do it then so can they. Learned helplessness in anything involving IT is my pet peeve.Tbh, this is not a good solution.
It dumps you in front of a wall of 22 pages of servers on my laptop (equivalent to 4.35 meters).
Most of which have completely nonsensical descriptions.
If I look at e.g. the first page (top 6 servers) I get these:
- mastodon.social: The original server operated by the Mastodon gGmbH non-profit
- mstdn.jp: Mastodon日本鯖です． よろしくお願いいたします。 (Maintained by Sujitech, LLC)
- mstdn.social: A general-purpose Mastodon server with a 500 character limit. All languages are welcome.
- mastodon.world: Generic Mastodon server for anyone to use.
- mas.to: Hello! mas.to is a fast, up-to-date and fun Mastodon server.
- mastodon.online: A newer server operated by the Mastodon gGmbH non-profit
Ok, so of these I can only rule out mstdn.jp, because I don’t speak Japanese.
mastodon.social and mastodon.official are, I guess, the “official” instances, with one of them being newer, for some reason. What does that mean? No idea. Is mastodon.social running out dated software? If not, why fork the instances at all?
mstdn.social and mastodon.world mention that they are general purpose. Without (and even with) Fediverse experience, I would expect any social media platform to be general purpose unless otherwise stated. So they basically have no description.
mas.to mentions only that it’s “fast, up-to-date and fun”. That basically has no meaning, except all other instances are slow, outdated and boring. So now I am worried.
mstdn.social says it has a 500 character limit. Without googleing a new user would have no idea what the regular character limits are. And I have no idea whether that will cause issues when interacting with other instances.
This page is like getting to a used car dealership without a clue about cars and you ask the car dealer to help you choose a car, and the dealer is like “Yeah, so I’m gonna help you. The right car for you is any car on the property of the dealership.”
I’ve said this a bunch of times, but Mastodon’s use of a chronological feed is what kills it. What it really needs is for the default tab to be a “trending” tab, cause that’s what users want to see.
That’s not what I want to see.
The sign up process is just too confusing for most people too. I tried evangelizing it when musk took over and that was everyones response. Need like a temporary instance for new accounts that you can transfer out of once you’ve got your sea legs
Mastodon’s use of a chronological feed is what kills it.
Funny, that’s exactly the reason I like Mastodon’s feed over traditional social media. No bullshit being pushed, just the people I’m following and the posts they make.
But twitter people love bullshit!
No algorithm designed to keep you addicted or run experiments on you.
You’re fired
You can’t fire me I quit
You can’t quit I’m leaving!
You can’t leave you’re a frog!
The focus on chronological feeds is what I like about Mastodon, and Fediverse platforms in general. I don’t want to be slapped in the face with what some algorithm with ulterior motives has decided I should see - I want to see the things I follow in the order they were posted.
I think that’s why the threadiverse clicks for me. Its sorted by zeitgeist. Not influence by halo users, just, “here’s some stuff the community was into recently”
Did you mistake threads for mastodon?
What are you talking about? I didn’t say anything about Threads or Mastodon. I’m talking about Kbin and Lemmy
You can’t just make up your own lingo and expect everyone else to know what you’re talking about.
My mistake. I should have known when you said threadiverse you weren’t talking about threads. How silly of me.
Now excuse me while get a glass of Pepsi. (I’m obviously talking about getting a plate of olives)
There are 1 billion active users on Instagram and those users were invited to Threads using an existing account. Celebrities, businesses, streamers, etc. all popped up on Threads within the first few hours of public release.
I’m a big nerd and just learned about the fediverse within recent months. Everyone else I know who uses Twitter and Threads have no clue what Mastodon is.
Yeah, it’s unfathomable how huge Instagram is. That’s a massive number of people who could be easily informed “hey, wanna try our new product?” As an aside, when I googled it, it said there was 2 billion active Instagram users.
I find it silly when people act skeptical of Threads’ numbers, since Meta only needed a tiny number of their existing user base to try it out.
There was a time - when facebook/ig didn’t exist, the difference was - back then nothing exists, and so the intriguing new thing (that didn’t make money yet), was buggy as hell, and so the spread was FAST.
Thankfully, those big projects, whenever they make a mistake, the fediverse gets a boost.
I’ve been following the fediverse since disapora announced their plans circa 2010. I created an account on one of the instances in 2012 and probably visited it twice since.
It’s one thing to be early adopters when something is completely new compared to something that comes to replace something that everybody is already using.
We’ll get there. With every mistake these big corps will do, we’ll get more and more people in, until THIS will become the ‘cool’ thing around.
Until then, it will be much much better.
My worry is once this becomes the “cool thing”, then the corpos will come in with dollar signs in their eyes. Yes, I think lemmy will be harder to mess with given its nature, but I never count big corps out when there’s money to be made.
Even my tech savvy best friend has no fucking clue
I can barely find anything in Arabic on the fediverse, but on threads I can find all the relevant and local posts I want in Arabic
Can I say that mastodon is a horrible name?
Lemmy isn’t a lot better, tbh.
Also Kbin is a terrible name too. They really don’t understand branding and accessibility in these new “grass-roots” apps.
Is reddit a great name? I don’t think so. How about TikTok? Nah. It’s about the product and its popularity. The name only needs to get you to the product. Past that the name doesn’t matter.
It could be named dgoSh1t.biz and if it attracted the “cool kids”, worked well, and filled a need it would take off.
Devs tend to suck at coming up with names. Microsoft is particularly rubbish at this.
Literally this, or the Web3 BS Bluesky.
Bluesky is at least federated, no?
Using their own new protocol that no one else uses and they probably don’t even implement themselves yet.
What’s wrong with Bluesky? 🤔
Last I heard their invite only platform already had a Nazi problem.
Isn’t that going to be a problem with any type of federated site?
I suppose the onboarding has a lot to do with it. Creating a mastodon-compatible account is a hassle. You have to ke choices. The experience isn’t seamless.
If they want people to use Mastodon, then make it user-friendly and easy for the general public. I downloaded it, tried it, and was lost/confused on the whole server/instance thing and finding communities etc. Whereas Threads is pretty straight forward, it’s just a Twitter clone. User experience is more important than privacy to the general public and developers need to realise you can’t compromise user experience/ease of use/accessibility.
Ribbit
I truly do not get it. I hate everything lizard boy touches :(
I mean it’s not hard to get. A social platform lives or dies by its user base. Threads has a huge user base with big names people care about. You could have a platform that’s 100x better, but if the right people aren’t on it, it will die.
How is twitter still alive? I have been wondering it since 2013 when i stopped using it
Momentum is one hell of pain, Twitter and Facebook are like mile long freight trains that stopped putting power to the wheels. They’ll stop, it’ll just take a long time.
dw it started its decline as soon as you left it… just took a while
It feels like at least 50%-60% of it are bots, same with Reddit.
