I’d be a lot happier if Mastodon were seeing 1 million new users a day right now, but I’ll take what I can get. Any dent in Twitter’s user base is good. Here’s hoping that experiencing “the Fediverse with training wheels” over at Bluesky will lead to people moving to Mastodon sooner rather than later.
It will not. You have to teach people what federation is while also having an enticing platform. I haven’t seen anyone do that yet. Like Henry Ford said, the masses will just want a faster horse.
Let’s pretend like the fediverse is a car. We’re asking people who’ve never seen a car, and are used to horses, to select the parts and put it together with no manual. But, unless there’s heavy provocation people will not switch from what they’re familiar with.
This was the Reddit API changes for me and many on here. Yet due to Lemmy’s adolescence at the time many didn’t see a good enough platform to migrate to.
I consider myself quite literate with tech, but when I tried Mastodon years ago I couldn’t even figure out how to sign up. They didn’t explain what a server was, what federation is, or why I was unable to login after making an account. And they still do a terrible job at it. Your average person gets confused and gives up.
If I knew anything about development I’d throw together an app that’d walk you through the sign up process. It’s such an easy thing to fix.
As someone who would have preferred Mastodon become the more popular service, I completely agree.
Look at mastodon.social and bluesky.app without logging in. Which site seems more interesting to the general public?
Now make an account. If you don’t have a bunch of specific people you want to follow, which has the better new user experience for the general public?
Mastodon looks like it was made by nerds, for nerds, and is populated exclusively by nerds. It’s not nearly as welcoming.
I’m going to use your car analogy, but tweak it.
People are looking to sell their car and buy a new one. One car acts like their old car; it has automatic transmission and there is a network of mechanics to take the car to in case something breaks.
The other car has a manual transmission. The car requires regular maintenance to do done by the owner like weekly tuning of the timing belt. There aren’t mechanics, but car clubs where people will give you advice on how to fix your car.
Like Henry Ford said, the masses will just want a faster horse.
The masses are fucking morons and expecting them to eventually do the right thing is a waste of synapse processing time.
I can’t imagine how much you must have suffered choosing an email client. 🙄
It’s been my experience that people who couldn’t figure out how to join Mastodon are the same people that get so used to doing things one way, that when you introduce a different way, they fall apart. Regardless if they’ve done virtually the same thing with different services.
Mastodon isn’t difficult to sign up for and use. FFS there are people of all ages and tech experiences who figured it out easily. I’ve seen grandmas who only ever used Facebook figure out Mastodon and teens who failed english figure it out. It’s not rocket science. It’s just not what you are used to when signing up for similar services.
I didn’t suffer? I got my email in computer lab when I was a kid. I didn’t have to choose the teacher showed us Gmail. You get an android you’re prompted to create a Gmail. You get an iPhone you’re prompted to create an iCloud.
For your second paragraph that was the entire point of my original comment.
Objectively it’s not difficult in the same way starting a video game isn’t difficult. However, just because some people can learn the controls quickly, doesn’t mean everyone can. See: the video game journalist failing the Cuphead tutorial.
I didn’t suffer? I got my email in computer lab when I was a kid. I didn’t have to choose the teacher showed us Gmail.
That’s not the comeback you think it is.
What do you mean “comeback”, this isn’t twitter, we’re having a discussion.
Yes. You were complaining about how absolutely awful it is to have to figure out how to choose which Mastodon server to create an account on, because this “federation” thing is soooooo damn complicated to understand.
Then, it was pointed out to you that choosing an email server is no different. Billions of people around the world have been successfully choosing an email server (and switching to different email servers when appropriate for them, or even having multiple accounts on different email servers).
The email example is often used against the"FeDeRaTiOn Is ToO cOMpLiCaTeD" complaint because, other than the specific protocol servers use to communicate with each other, they’re no different. You have an account on service A, your grandmother has an account on service B, and all you need to communicate with her is her address… EXACTLY like every ActivityPub federated service. It’s not complicated.
The person responding to you quite sarcastically pointed how how awful it must have been for you to choose an email server, since you were complaining that this whole “federation” thing is soooooo complicated. And your response was that, in fact, it was very easy for you. You made their point for them and didn’t even realize it.
Furthermore, you’re having this discussion on Lemmy, a federated service, from your account on one of many federated servers, communicating with people on completely different Lemmy servers all over the world.
So, to beat a dead horse to a pulp…
It must have been awful for you to choose which Lemmy server to sign up for. So much unnecessary complication. Simply participating in this discussion on a federated service must be extremely taxing on your cognition. /s/s/s/s/s
People will be right to block you for talking to others like that.
I mean, it’s just downloading an app and creating a account for me. I feel like you’re overcooking this a bit.
No one using this platform is indicative of the average person.
But mastodon has no good algorithm or search
I’m glad we’re moving on, but the damage is done.
The xitter takeover to me seemed entirely planned to help suppress media for this election and it worked. It helped muddy the waters even more.
in other “too fucking late” news, google searches for “what is fascism” spikes after election
Just like how the amount of searches for “What is the EU and what does it do” rose massively after Brexit by all the morons who voted ‘leave’ before actually knowing what it was.
It’s pretty funny, actually, from an I told you so stance.
At this point Schadenfreude is all I’ve got so I’m going to enjoy the fuck out of it.
Yeah, that’s the word I’m feeling.
if denial in an individual is a hard thing to overcome, denial with mob mentality is nigh impossible. broke uneducated maga sheep will be standing in a breadline and still not admit they’d been completely fucking hoodwinked by a con man
Haha, let’s be real, there won’t be a bread line in this economy after Trump kills all the non-profits.
maybe for a while-- until enough people die and/or they realize that slaves have to eat if you want them to live long enough to work
California is already putting homeless people in camps (with local pushback). Trump is already shopping around for ICE facilities outside major cities.
Once they start rounding up all the immigrants, they will have all the slaves they need. You can die on the street starving or die in a work camp getting fed.
true. and the ones toiling in the fields will consider themselves among the “lucky” ones
I am totally fine with all the normies moving from Twitter to Bluesky.
From the arms of one corporation into the next, at least this one isn’t as evil.
I am very much fine with the Fediverse being a slowly growing, more niche, and thus more selective social media / internet stuff landscape.
If people were actually interested in communicating in a way that is not reliant on or generating profit for a corporation, in a way that is fundamentally more egalitarian…
… They’d either figure it out, or not.
Saves me a whole lot of time when determining who actually cares about such things, vs who doesn’t, but thinks they do.
Fascists need to be held accountable.
There sure is a suspicious push for Bluesky on Lemmy as of late. Interesting.
Why does anyone care what platform others use? They can both burn to the ground for all I care.
I think it’s because X actually does a lot of harm and people want it to fail.
Blue sky definitely seems like the best alternative for an average non technical user.
All social media provides a level of harm. Twitter is not better or worse than Facebook, Instagram, etc.
Twitter is now the most actively harmful with the widest reach, by a large margin
It is categorically worse than the Meta services because they still at least maintain a veneer of moderation.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree they all are bad. But it’s should be the priority of everyone reasonable to end the reach of Twitter ASAP given the damage it’s causing.
Bluesky represents a departure from both X/Twitter and Meta, and should be encouraged. Yes it would be great if everyone was heading to Mastodon, but don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
The goal is to make Twitter irrelevant as quickly as possible
Who’s goal? This is sounding a bit cult-y. I want none of it to exist. Short of that, couldn’t care less.
