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.
Cusick@ethanschoonover This assumes the goal is to retain as many new users as possible, at this time in the #fediverse's maturity.
A major motivation behind the #TwitterMigration is concern about security. People see a plane going down. They didn't want to be on it when it crashed.
If an attractive pilot welcomes passengers onto their new standby flight by saying, "This is a historic aircraft, today we're flying directly into a storm, please expect turbulence," not everyone is going to want to board that plane.
Can Mastodon instances maintain their ethics and moderation policies during periods of explosive growth? Can mods articulate how they protect stadiums full of new users from targeted harassment? That's a more turbulent experience right now than signup confusion.
The speed of the growth itself is what's exposing current weaknesses. Is speeding up adoption as urgent as giving the (largely volunteer) workforce time to catch their breath? Right-sizing each instance's safety and security measures is harder to do when floodgates are overwhelmed than it is during times of stability, or even attrition.
It's also possible to recover from a bad first impression. Time passing before the second impression is part of how.
@cusick These are all great points. I think my concern right now is that we have a window of opportunity to see a federated open system become the standard, dominant social media service. I'd like to optimize for that outcome rather than cede control of the global conversation to another billionaire.
@cusick And I want all these weird instances with weird rules. I just want to see joinmastodon.com onboarding become more intentional about landing new users in neutral, generic instances (and this will mean editorializing the initial user experience, I think, hence the idea behind a wikipedia style governance committee rather than leaving it to one person).
@ethanschoonover Fully agree about redirecting folks away from for-profit social altogether.
So much has already happened "overnight" this month. It sounds like even if neutral, generic instances did absorb all the new participants first, those instances would still need more moderation support to meet the moment.
I have faith that pumping the brakes isn't going to bring the moment to a halt. The window of opportunity for federated systems might not even "close" anymore. For-profit executives broke the window. I think this time is different.
That might be hubris! My optimism might be too idealistic.
Either way, generic servers will need to master Big Instance Moderation — especially if admins are volunteers, or suddenly navigating fundraising for the first time.
If that can't happen fast enough, joinmastodon.com should be broadcasting the benefits of distribution across responsibly-sized, manageable — and yes, generic! — instances. Any server's ability to remain "consistently committed to moderation against racism, sexism, and transphobia" is going to be compromised by unsustainable growth in instances that lack the capacity to manage report volume.
I really appreciate this conversation — especially the idea of what governance changes editorializing the initial user experience would require. I'm grateful you're sharing these higher-level perspectives.