Johannes ErnstCrowdsourcing ... for my talk about UX in the Fediverse and the social web, what do **you** think the biggest challenges are for user experience today?
william.maggosthe lack of default #bluesky bridging and #threads federating.
Maestro Mushi@j12t a way to make federation less complicated for newcomers, a lot of people feel like they have to understand federation to join mastodon and that turns them off the service, so they go to bluesky because it’s “ethical but not complicated”. So fully an experience thing
@Mushi ty, follow-up: why do you think people need to understand federation first?
@j12t it’s not that I feel that way, I agree that they don’t have to, but most of my friends that I’ve tried to bring over after they left swastwitter have chosen bluesky over mastodon because they say mastodon instances are too complicated.
narF 😵✌️
Sandro Santilli 🪛 hacker@j12t @Mushi I know I have to, because I often see conversations out of context, then I realize the *same* conversation looks different depending on the account I'm using or even the client I'm using. I know I'm suffering about this because I didn't fully understand how the federation works (or doesn't work, specifically)
Claudia
ShadSterling@j12t meaning challenges for people who have already joined, not for people considering or trying to join?
Threading has a lot of problems. Some threads have lots of replies to posts I don’t see. Only some of it is due to followers-only posts. The posts I do see in a thread are in a confusing order, something like by depth rather than sequence. (Maybe that’s client-specific?) Posts from I think it’s Lemmy show up with only a link to themselves and not the intended content
@j12t sometimes in a thread with missing posts I can follow the @ in a reply to a missing post to the participants profile and look in their replies and find the thread and be able read it intact there, maybe not with all of the previously missing posts but apparently with all of that users posts
@j12t well, search has improved enough that I can try to find my old threads about what’s missing for choosing an instance and it seems like I might have a chance at finding them… but I didn’t actually find them. Anyway, for new users, I think the lack of an obvious basis for how to choose an instance or even how to decide whether choosing an instance warrants much effort is still a problem. Might be interesting to know often someone abandons an account for instance-specific reasons
Gunnar Aastrand Grimnes1. No starter packs of people to follow
2. Terrible display of threads (in default app ( makes timeline confusing)
3. Bluesky/threads bridge is incredibly confusing, and very few people follow the bridge account
Ed Summers@j12t being able to take your content with you when you move to a new instance...or has that been solved already?
@edsu Partially only.
Aral Balkan@j12t @cheeaun That we still think in the exploitative Big Tech term of “users” when we should be talking about people. And that we still build using Big Tech stacks that are designed to scale vertically, not horizontally, thereby incentivising the centralisation of power and control that leads to the existence of flagship instances.
Braw ☕🏳️🌈@j12t I am still convinced that bsky.app is the best thing Bluesky did, for the same reason phanpy.social is convenient to use. Creating tons of disconnected frontends and not implementing post/user link resolution is a huge mistake, instances shouldn't matter as much as they do right now! Like good luck explaining someone why they need to open the original post in a separate tab to view all the replies (including replies from people they don't want to see!).
@brawaru “post/user link resolution”? Not sure what you are referring to?
@j12t like this: https://j12t.social/@j12t. Unfortunately, this will simply open it in web browser, when it would've been better if the embed resolver figured out it's a fediverse link and provided this information to other instances that could then open the link as a user profile (as if it was a mention). Some fediverse apps do this where they try to resolve the link when you open it and then open it accordingly in the app if possible, but that's an app-specific hack, and kinda annoying UX-wise.
ExEr7um@j12t I think the main issues are with content:
1. A lot of people have migrated to BlueSky, making it very hard to interact with them and read their content. I now need a separate account to use BlueSky because bridging isn’t enabled by default.
2. There is currently no proper way to discover content. When I use Threads or BlueSky, I get content recommendations, allowing me to discover new authors to read, but Mastodon lacks this feature.
@narF I don’t actually think the problem is with the content itself (authors, influencers). I think the issue is with the discoverability of that content. I’ve found some authors I’d like to read, but I discovered all of them purely by luck. Other social networks provide recommendations, but Mastodon does not. The only way to find new content is to check the trending page on my server, which is always filled with politics.
@exer7um You can follow hashtags, to discover people and content. Not perfect, but quite useful!
Cognitive Dissidence@Jonstewartmill that’s why I said (in another reply) it should only be an option and definitely not the default. I use the following feed the most on other social networks, but I’d still like the option to get recommendations to discover new content.
@exer7um
That's fair. I check the "federated" feed from time to time, but it's purely random.
That's fair. I check the "federated" feed from time to time, but it's purely random.
@j12t Glad you're doing this. So, I think there is an illusion of a unified Fediverse that most clients try very hard to maintain, but that illusion is easily broken.
These are screenshots of Mastodon Web to demonstrate what I mean, but I don't think any of the UX hiccups they are patching over are Mastodon-specific problems.
Ⓜ3️⃣3️⃣ 🌌@j12t Choosing the right instance as a very first time beginner is the most important challenge. Many long time fediverse users are wrong when advising to join this or that. Beginners must join the absolute biggest instance at first. Nothing worse than an empty timeline.
Then, in time, relocate. We have tools for relocation now.
Then, in time, relocate. We have tools for relocation now.
Chewie@j12t It's still stupidly hard to change the default max characters from 500.
Lists only populate with new content, rather than everything since you followed someone.
Using the search filters could do with onscreen examples (like @pachli does quite well)
Finding old content can be hard if you can't remember the exact words or hashtags someone used. Bookmarks help, but I'm not sure how to fix this easily!
@j12t More generically, a bit of a turnoff is not seeing everything from everywhere, unlike other social media where you can see everything for an account (in theory).
Eg, missing comments from a thread etc, which can happen on small instances.
At the start it did give me a bit of FOMO, but i've got over it now (mostly!).
I hardly used social media before, so this might be more pronounced for others that are migrating away from traditional social media networks.