I have seen a few posts claiming that talk of mastodon being hard for new users is overblown. They also seem to have a subtext that if someone didn't enjoy their experience of the fediverse, it was their fault. The latter annoys me.

I have also been following Big Tech on Trial's coverage of the ongoing anti-trust case against Meta. This article summarising the FTC's expert witness made me realise something about what is hard about mastodon.
https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/from-roadshow-to-expert-witness-courtroom

What corporate social media does for you is find the connections that you want for you. With Facebook that is friends and family. With twitter that is the content that you want to see. The price you pay is the ad load, the data harvesting and the distortion in the presentation of the connections/content in favour of the company. The FTC's whole case is that Meta can put that 'price' up without losing users.

I love the fediverse because I don't pay that price. Instead though I have to find the content/connections that I want and, even more laborious, curate my feed. That is not easy. The main feed is a firehose of gubbins and porn. If I shift through it, I might find one or two accounts to follow. The server's feed is a bit more my thing, but it is not super brilliant (for me). By now my feed is pretty good, I got there by the simple of algorithm of following widely and pruning lightly. It took me a while to find that 'one simple trick'. I had to learn how to create filters so that I didn't just see the same content over and over (cat pictures, covid isn't over, Elon Musk is a racist. Your mileage will vary).

None of that was technically complicated. It could be learnt. Advice was passed on. In some sense it isn't hard, but it is a 'price'. I am very happy to pay that price. The benefit is enormous. It is radically different from the proposition that traditional social media has been making since the early days of Facebook. The price trad social media is one you pay passively, except the ads, you do have to learn to ignore ads. It makes sense that the fediverse feels hard to new users.

#Mastodon, #Meta, #BigTechOnTrial, #Fediverse