After Trump's 2024 victory, millions of users abandoned Musk's X (formerly Twitter), seeking alternatives like Jack Dorsey's Bluesky. The migration highlights growing dissatisfaction with X's platform, driving a surge in Bluesky's popularity.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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