If you’re reading this toot there’s a pretty high chance you’ve asked yourself ethical questions about your social media use *and that’s why you’re here*
You’ve likewise probably got concerns about Meta and Threads
But the 90-odd % of your friends you left behind on Facebook, Insta etc. likely don’t have those concerns to the same extent as you
Mastodon has to win on user experience *as well as on ethics*. We can’t just berate the Meta users
@nathan Sorry to hear this. What was the issue with signing up with e.g. a big instance? Was there something specific you were after?
I'm asking because AIUI the default now is "we recommend a random big instance", and your "I had a tough time joining up" is the nearest we hear from a current user as to a first-hand account of what stops people joining.
@sgf
I signed up at the last big exodus, where the 'main' site, when you google to sign up had a notice along the lines of "we've had a huge influx .. struggling to cope .. can't sign up here just yet .. try one of these instead", which IIRC, followed to a list of other mastodon sites with their own sign-up page.
[1/x] 🧵
@sgf
So I did a bit of reading up on "does it matter where you sign up?" and, yeah, there is that possibility that the one you choose may shut down, and you want it to be a 'good' instance run by 'good' people, so that took a bit of time to find one that felt right. I don't think it was a big instance. (One in Germany.) And the confirmation email just wasn't coming through. I was worried it was getting blocked by a spam-filter. Eventually 2 or 3 days later the mail came through. 😄
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@sgf
Then I was going to go for one with a domain that fitted my retrogaming slant .. but when I read up on the admins notes on that instance .. well, they sounded like a bit of a .. person with strong opinions, not all of which I agreed with? So I decided not to go with that.
In the end I decided to go for one based around the people of my country 🇳🇿 ..so more 'normal people' talk in this instance than I'm used to, but it worked out okay. So I've settled here. 👍
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@sgf
Nowadays, when you google for somewhere to sign-up, and go there.. It looks reasonably user-friendly. (Thinking of how the 'average joe' might try this.)
But that would essentially get everyone going for "mastodon.social". Not necessarily a bad thing. But I thought the 'ideal' situation would be for someone to be able to sign-up there, and have a drop-down at the "@mastodon.social" bit where you can choose an instance, and your sign-up is seamlessly handed over to "@whoever"
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@sgf
..then people could still get some of the advantages of federation without much hassle.
But I've been in IT for a long time, with an interest in UI design. So I'm really thinking along the lines of the 'ideal signup path', and voicing my opinion, rather than suggesting "this is the way it *has* to be, or we'll fail." 😄
I actually kinda like it that mastodon hasn't 100% gone mainstream. I keeps away some of the noise that, frankly, I didn't enjoy on the birdsite.
[5/x] 🧵
@sgf
So yeah, back in the last mass-exodus from the birdsite, I eventually had to go for my third choice of instance. It wasn't the one I ideally wanted. But I'm cool with it now. And it looks like things have improved somewhat, so that's nice.
I'm OCD enough that things will still rattle around in my brain as to the 'ideal' sign-up path for the average random potential mastodon user. I don't think we're quite there yet. But maybe it's better that it takes some effort. Keep out the riff-raff 😋
@nathan Thanks, that was really interesting.
(My choice was pretty random and there are more appropriate instances now, but I've had a pretty good time where I started, so I'm happy where I am.)
While I don't agree with growth at all costs, I don't want to make sign-up anything but easy. I'd rather we put some people off by core Fedi being a "woke"-but-not-puritan crowd that doesn't tolerate trolls.
Hard sign-up welcomes techie asses, the other filters better for people we want & don't have.
@sgf
Yeah. There's no perfect way to do this, and federation just makes some stuff different.
Like, as I tried to work out who to follow, that was the other pain-point of mastodon:
Someone follows me, I click on them, and want to assess whether to follow them, but I only have a bio. So I have to go to their instance to see their posts/boosts. But I can't click on the follow button on their instance because I'm not logged-on on their instance. So I have to go back to mine to follow..
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@sgf
..I mean, I know. This is how it is with federation. But I feel there could be some more back-end work done where the server I've just come from vouches for who I am at the server I've just gone to.
Or maybe, when I click on someone who has just followed me, my server will request a pull of the last six months of activity to show it locally.
{shrugs} It just feels like there could be a little more inter-server comms to streamline stuff for the user. 😎
@nathan You're right, and there are a lot of open issues on Mastodon's Github that say plenty of other people agree with you. :) (and it's probably already implemented in a different Fedi server stack :p ).
I wish I were better at Ruby & front-end stuff. As it is, I hope they'll get on it soon...
@sgf
Yeah. I did Computer Science at University, so I have a good broad understanding of the kind of thing that needs to be done.
But that was a long time ago. My web skills were in the early days of style sheets. When Flash was still a thing (and when it was owned by Macromedia.)
I'd love to tinker with the code of the Fediverse, but I'm old, with a job and a family. I don't have time for such things. ..But I'm old enough to moan about how it should (IMHO) be. 😋
@sgf
Oh yeah, and when you attach an image to a Mastodon post, and give it a caption (coz everyone should give it a caption), but forget to set a good focus-point .. when you go back and re-edit the post and set a new focus-point, it doesn't change. *sigh*
Give me ten more minutes.. I'm sure I can think of something else to moan about. 😋
Jon Worth
Nathan
Simon Frankau