Just reading through the replies on X to @libreoffice 's recent tweet about how they're going to be focussing more on Mastodon in future.

There's a lot of anti-Mastodon sentiment on X. Some downright hatred of the platform on principle.

And some of it is from people who've tried Mastodon and really don't like it, didn't gel with it, can't get to grips with the UI or find the general sentiment of the community distasteful.

Which is all fair enough. But a lot of it stems from a complete lack of understanding of how the platform works. Some people think you have to have an account on every server where you want to follow someone, and you have to swap between those servers all the time in order to interact with them.

Others have never heard of Mastodon before, and after clicking on the link to LibreOffice's profile on Fosstodon and trying to create an account, they see that that instance is currently accepting new members by invitation only, so they give up and ask, "Why do you want us to join a platform that requires invitations."

EVEN THOUGH the message about Fosstodon being invitation-only explicitly tells them they can pick a different server, and they'll still be able to follow anyone on Fosstodon or anywhere else on the network.

Why is this stuff so difficult for people to grasp?! I'm not trying to flex or anything, but I joined this place in November 2022, and the concept of "pick a server and follow anyone on any other server" was a no-brainer for me. It was actually one of the drawcards.

I don't understand why people find it so confusing. Why it's such a mental block to people. I just don't. :(

#Mastodon #SocialMedia

@GrahamDowns Possibly, the reasons of such behaviour are described in this blogpost: https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/the-slow-death-of-the-power-user/

Big tech invested a lot to make people illiterate and unable to ask help from another people. If at 90s someone met a requirement "open the console and run this command to make XYZ", in the README, then (s)he perform this action because (s)he knows how the things work. Or ask some friends — definitely there will be some nerd, sleeping with "K&R C" under the pillow 😃

Then nowadays, possibly the mostly expected scenario — well-learned behaviour — a lot of ramblings in the so-called "social networks" about how programmers "gatekeeping" users from using the programs 🤷‍♂️

#literacy #illiteracy

The Slow Death of the Power User — fireborn