Ethan J. A. Schoonover0
MASTODON’S BREAKFAST CLUB PROBLEM in 10 posts. A Thread.
Here we go:
Mastodon’s UI has issues but it is not the real (or only) risk to adoption right now. It is, instead, what I’m calling the BREAKFAST CLUB problem.
1
Twitter users are look for a lifeboat. They go to sign up with mastodon but the federated model is confusing and the main/original servers are full.
2
Mastodon's onboarding process literally tells users to pick a server "based on their interests". This is like being asked to pick the lunch table you will sit at for the rest of your life.
3
How do you choose a single table to sit at when we’re all the nerd, the jock, the princess, the basket case, and the criminal?
(don't @ me with "you can change servers" I know. The problem is that this is still the first thing you are being asked to do.)
4
Many servers are run by fairly centrist position admins. Some are little hobby farms with high restrictive policies. Both are, in theory, totally fine and compatible with the fediverse.
5
I highly recommend this recent @lawfare podcast where @qjurecic, @arozenshtein, and @klonick dig into the nitty gritty of decentralized social media, mastodon, and how this edge-case server situation could work just fine over time.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/lawfare-podcast-decentralized-social-media-and-great-twitter-exodus
The Lawfare Podcast: Decentralized Social Media and the Great Twitter Exodus
It’s Election Day in the United States—so while you wait for the results to come in, why not listen to a podcast about the other biggest story obsessing the political commentariat right now? We’re talking, of course, about Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and the billionaire’s dramatic and erratic changes to the platform. In response to Musk’s takeover, a great number of Twitter users have made the leap to Mastodon, a decentralized platform that offers a very different vision of what social media could look like. What exactly is decentralized social media, and how does it work?
6
But users don’t know this or understand "federated." They are just being told to pick a server. So someone who does a lot of art is like “fine, I’ll reduce my personality to “artist” and choose… mastodon dot art”. Sounds reasonable, right?
Then they hit the rules…
7
In this case a user got banned for posting… Goya’s La maja desnuda… on an art server.
Now, to be fair, the rules for that server are clear! But the problem is that the reasonble expectation is that posting goya on a server branded as “the mastodon art server” should be ok.
8
So the problem is you have these highly restrictive servers that are little fiefdoms.
Some people will be happy in them!
Many will not be!
(pictured: guy who would be very excited to run a little fiefdom less as a service and more as a power trip)
9
Again, this is all by design in the fediverse and in time this all works out.
The problem is that during this period of onboarding new users this will simply drive people away. It’s very high cognitive load for people looking to migrate from Twitter.
10
The solution?
* Mastodon needs to set up a formal governance model like Wikipedia
* Mastodon needs to change the onboarding process to promote generic instances and not subject specific petty fiefdoms (or at least subject specific servers that are relatively broad in their speech policies)
FIN
This thread was prompted by a post from https://twitter.com/TeanWitch who does the most badass art you will find. You’ve seen her art all over the place including D&D, RPG publications, Magic the Gathering cards, etc. Go show her some support and buy her art. https://linktr.ee/Justinejones
paprikapink@ethanschoonover I'm reading this thread as
- here's a problem important enough that we should fix it
- finding a solution will be challenging
- let's work on this challenge
and a lot of the replies as
- the technology that we have now is the pinnacle of what we can do, no point in exploring this, it's impossible
- [ergo] the problem doesn't exist/is not worth addressing
which reminds me of why I can't roll out a pie crust. when I first attempted it, I struggled, and flailed, and had a temper tantrum, and declared the whole thing an impossible waste of time
Yes.
As someone who ran desktop linux for a decade, i see a lot of the same problems with Mastodon's positioning.
Early adopter users of Mastodon focus on the "it's open source federated and here is why the tech is the right way to do things" instead of "here's the massive social, user, and onboarding experience challenge we face if we want this to be successful".