Mastodawn

Waldo Jaquith Mar 4, 2023

To have a viral post on Mastodon is to be confronted with a long series of people asking the exact same question or providing the same “well actually” response, for days, because of the limits of federation. They simply can’t see those other replies. Sometimes they see *no* ofher replies, if they’re on a tiny server.

The experience isn’t great! As with customer service, it can be hard to remember that this isn’t actually the same person over and over again.

@waldoj I’m not 100% behind on blaming this on federation/decentralization. It could be a UX issue because you’re not required to view the thread before writing a reply, and/or because the count of replies isn’t displayed clearly. It could also simply be an innate effect of virality. Do comments on e.g. frontpage Reddit posts contain a lot of repeat sentiments?

Waldo Jaquith Mar 4, 2023

@Gargron I had plenty of viral threads on Twitter and, it’s true, I did see the same sentiment repeatedly, but not with anything close to how often I see that on Mastodon. But, yes, I’m only drawing on my own experience, which is not a replacement for proper UX research!

m̴i̸rth Mar 4, 2023

@waldoj @Gargron I recently started using Ivory and for some reason engagement seems quite a bit clearer there than on the reference client or Metatext. I have no idea what they are doing differently, but this definitely may be a UX thing.

Tim McCormack Mar 4, 2023

@Gargron This is definitely a federation thing, and I've experienced what @waldoj observes myself (although in the role of commenter, not viral author). I see a heavily boosted post with just a few comments, and I know that's not accurate, so I use "open original page" and now I see a long list of heavily repetitive replies, most of whom probably did *not* open the original. I think this happens when commenter A and commenter B are on different instances that don't have any follows between them.

Tim McCormack Mar 4, 2023

@Gargron There are huge horizon effects within Mastodon, and while I think that's OK to some extent (perfect consistency is not required) there's definitely a lot of UX work to be done to overcome some of the negative effects. The obvious but naive solution is to ask the original server for what *it* knows about the list of replies, but I don't know how to make that fit within ActivityPub's model. Probably some clients just take that approach anyway, though. @waldoj

Tim McCormack Mar 4, 2023

@Gargron I wonder, do you have an alt account on a small instance? If not, I strongly recommend it—you're going to miss out on some critical parts of the Mastodon user experience if you only ever use mastodon.social.

Brian Kammer 🇺🇦Mar 4, 2023

@timmc How so?

Tim McCormack Mar 4, 2023

@WarFreeZone Well, like the things I just said about federation issues.

Tim McCormack Mar 4, 2023

@WarFreeZone ...except now I'm wondering if you actually are suffering from exactly the small-instance issues I was talking about, and therefore couldn't see the upthread posts. 😅 Here: https://better.boston/@timmc/109965381868262838

Tim McCormack (@[email protected])

@[email protected] I wonder, do you have an alt account on a small instance? If not, I strongly recommend it—you're going to miss out on some critical parts of the Mastodon user experience if you only ever use mastodon.social.

Better Boston

Brian Kammer 🇺🇦Mar 4, 2023

@timmc Fair enough. I thought there were other kinds of experiences one misses out on without having another profile on another server.

Tim McCormack Mar 4, 2023

@WarFreeZone I suppose I did use the plural, didn't I. :-) That's really the big thing, though. I think the only other thing I can think of is that it's just generally a lot quieter on a small instance, for better or worse.

Eric Ferraiuolo Mar 4, 2023

@timmc @Gargron @waldoj it would be nice to have an option in clients to expand replies to a post based on fetching the same to what you see when you “open original page”. I run my own single-user instance and experience this lack of full context when viewing posts and would love a way to optionally see more/all of the replies.

Thierna Mar 4, 2023

@Gargron @waldoj I have seen more discussions of this.

I now usually click on ... And go to original post to make sure I am not a reply guy that just adds the same comment.

Unfortunately I have no idea how to do this in the app.

Rob Bos Mar 5, 2023

@thierna @Gargron @waldoj Tusky, the app, has this functionality to open a thread in a web browser.

Gareth Kitchen Mar 4, 2023

@Gargron @waldoj I'm using the Pleroma FE and see this 'globe'. If I click it the thread expands and I can reply accordingly. So that's a UX thing. A 'rookie' may just reply to the 'boosted' post without doing this. I think this explains what you are seeing.

Waldo Jaquith Mar 4, 2023

@gruff The thread expands, but you do not see all replies, nor can you know which replies you are not seeing, because not all replying people federate with your server.

Gareth Kitchen Mar 4, 2023

@waldoj I guess I don't know what I'm not seeing. But I see 16 replies to your post and I'm self hosted, so limited 'federation'.

Waldo Jaquith Mar 4, 2023

@gruff I counted 16 replies and had scrolled maybe 15% through the whole list.

Gareth Kitchen Mar 4, 2023

@waldoj Oh. :( I seem to remember an infographic that explained all this which would be helpful to revisit because I've forgotten about the consequences... Lol.

Joshix Mar 4, 2023

@Gargron @waldoj I almost always have to check on the source instance to see if there is a reply similar to what I'm about to write.
On my instance you post has 0 boosts and likes. instead of 2/7

ticho Mar 4, 2023

@Gargron @waldoj Couldn't this be solved by the instance where the original post lives notifying instances of all the people who replied/favorited/boosted the post, about new replies/favorites/boosts? Sort of a "distribution list" for the thread.

No idea if the protocol allows it, and perhaps it has been discussed ad nausea and is not a good idea - but it seems like a good idea on the surface. :)

Dekkia Mar 4, 2023

@Gargron @waldoj

I don't know if this is an issue with federation, but In the browser I get to see a lot more replies than in the app connected to my single-user instance.

(Normally it's even more extreme, where there are none in the app)

fuomag9 Mar 5, 2023

@dekkia @Gargron @waldoj Just this morning I noticed that I saw more replies on the @IceCubesApp than on @elk on a post as well!

Interpipes 💙Mar 5, 2023

@Gargron @waldoj it’s exacerbated by a ux choice in the way the mastodon ui works for sure.

Some clients seem to be doing the legwork in automatically fetching replies from the OPs server, but there are concerns about that behaviour sidestepping blocks.