I think the real “problem” the fediverse has isn’t that it’s hard to use, it’s that it doesn’t fit the pattern. It’s like if someone asks “what grocery do you order from?” and you respond “My building’s co-op, I get meals & fresh food delivered from participating farms & cooks— I do solar panel maintenance and run the website in return— plus goodie fees”
“goodie fees? … um … so is that like UberEats then?”
And what’s worse is it sounds more complex because it’s atypical— but really it’s easier
@futurebird I'm not sure I follow. Creating an agreement between several parties to exchange services and food sounds inherently more complicated to me than simply buying something with cash.
Similarly, joining a social network with many different host servers to choose from sounds inherently more complicated to me than joining a network with a single host.
I see the value in both examples, but the complexity seems like a real barrier to entry.
You are skipping over the added complexity of avoiding— or putting up with ads— the lack of responsiveness in moderation— randomly getting your account locked and not knowing why. The creepy feeling of being manipulated to spend more time on the app— crafting your tweets so the algorithm will “bless” them — never know if it worked or not. etc. we can’t just look at complexity through the lens of the sales flyer if that makes sense.
@futurebird I agree all those things are important :)
I guess my unspoken assumption was that the "problem" is lack of adoption, which is why I mentioned the barrier to entry component. But I see your point now about how, if people could take a holistic view and get past that, in the end you could have less complexity.
myrmepropagandist
Billy