Paris Marxi might have my criticisms of mastodon, but the founder of post is out here pretending “net worth” is a protected category to signal you can’t make fun of billionaires on his a16z-funded twitter alternative
Defiance!@parismarx Well then indeed Post is not for me! Simply knowing Post is funded by Andreessen is enough to ignore it entirely
Dani 🍁@Defiance @parismarx There’s a lot of Post promotion going on at birdsite. There’s also other new social media sites vying for customers. Pick me, pick me….
@DaniEhm I assume they're all walled gardens, no?
Andreas K
Exiled New Yorker- Connie@yacc143
I’ll admit I’m more familiar with different platforms than the average person my age but I simply cannot understand the resistance to the very idea of Mastodon being too complicated.
I think a lot of it is in the language. “Instances” instead of servers, which is the closest approximation in my experience I can relate to.
I also don’t think we can stress too much that there are apps that are less than stellar as far as user friendliness.
That’s all I see, as a totally new user.
Steve In Ashland@Pagan_Activist @yacc143 Mastodon is to Linux as Twitter is to iOS. The fact that people have to look around and figure out what to do for themselves is a big barrier to entry.
There is a need for a service like pre-Musk Twitter but so far Mastodon isn't it. That's fine, and it seems to work for a lot of the people on it, but it's too different from Twitter to make better/worse comparisons.
@steveinashland @Pagan_Activist You'll find it funny, but what you are complaining about is, that “Mastodon is different”.
Some of that because stuff is called/labeled differently. Some is because of different social norms, community standards (which has consequences for features). And naturally the federated aspected (you know how the Internet is supposed to work, “not in centralized silos”). And I doubt that Eugen claimed that Mastodon is supposed to replace #birdsite.
@steveinashland @Pagan_Activist
So yes, any social media site that is not written to be a Twitter replacement, will have a certain level of learning involved.
And your analogy Mastodon = Linux and Twitter = iOS is funny.
As a 30 years Linux user (my last daily driver Windows was Windows 95), okay almost 30 years, a co student installed SLS on my PC back then in the Christmas holidays 1992, so nearly a month is missing, Linux is trivial. I would have to google much for iOS basic usage.
@yacc143 @Pagan_Activist I’m no longer a direct *nix user—it’s largely hidden under layers of UI now—but having used it on and off since ‘81, I can state pretty confidently that if I sat a never-used-a-computer person down at a terminal connected to Linux, and a Mac, they’d be browsing the web or creating a formatted doc faster on the latter. Even Windows would be faster.
That doesn’t make MacOS or Windows better than *nix, just easier to use.
That’s the same argument I am making about Mastodon vs. Twitter—with no other resources or outside help, it’s easier to get started with Twitter (or Instagram) than it is with Mastodon/Fediverse. You can get to the point where you can post and follow people you already know on those platforms because of the centralization.
Again, that doesn’t make one platform better than the other, and the need to learn the local social rules are going to be true no matter which platform you use; see the CW “education” a lot of new users are being told to adopt to fit in.
Ultimately, the Fediverse may be more resilient than the centralized services, if balkanization and mass de-feding don’t take hold. Ways to gloss over the separations without losing individuality would be good.
Building the search functions (for other users) so that finding and following your friends is easier might help. A sign-up process that does a better job of explaining the how and why of instances would help; that’s a common complaint. I didn’t have a problem with it but clearly others are.
It’s not necessary to change Mastodon/Fediverse. At all. But it’s responsible to understand the reasonable observances of others who are trying to use a product and making their own honest assessments.
You can have the “best” product in a space, but if you can’t get them to engage because the barriers to enter are (or are perceived to be) too high, they won’t come in.
@steveinashland
I have no problem with improving Mastodon/ActivityPub.
What I have a problem with new guys storming a 6 years old FOSS project, looking at it for a day or a week, and starting to plan for a new governance structure of that FOSS project.
That's not how it works.
You can fork Mastodon, it's FOSS, and improve YourMastodon, if you think you have such great ideas, you can set up your community standards for your federation, but nobody voted you on the Mastodon board ;)
@yacc143 please. No one is storming anything. Who is demanding a new governance structure?
This started from an OP who commented that people feel Mastodon/Fediverse is harder to use than other platforms. I agree with them. That doesn’t make either objectively bad or good in an absolute sense. It does make them different, and one has to understand what the prospective users want to make rational decisions about what to change or not.
@steveinashland Oops, sorry wrong, thread. Apologies. But the demand for common behaviour rules for all instances is as common as not well-thought-out.
@yacc143 Not asking for that (common behavior rules). But I understand the desire and how it's the source of another "not the same as Twitter" complaint.
@steveinashland Actually it's BS. Twitter's “common rules” were enforced in a non-transparent way by corporate minions, so there was absolutely no guarantee that two tweets by two users saying the same thing would be treated the same.
@yacc143 perception is everything. And this is all about perception.
@steveinashland I'm getting strongly the perception that a small minority but vocal of the twitter intake (not you) is applying way harsher criteria to Mastodon than they did to Twitter, even pre-Musk. Twitter was not (for me) immediately fully understandable, neither from UI, nor the interaction model. But it seems people forget that.
Nor are there “common rules” at Twitter, enforcement is rather random, and VIP accounts are even officially granted more
leeway.
My perception.
@yacc143 it will be interesting to see how the various alternatives grow, or not. As I mentioned to someone else, there seems to be a cadre of Mastodon/Fediverse “nationalists” who will brook no argument that anything about Mastodon is imperfect. These are the ones who are a problem, same as any “nationalists”.