Mastodawn

Stefan Bohacek

@_elena

And I really believe that Bluesky got ahead because it's been essentially a centralized Twitter 2.0, only now slowly starting to open up, and that's already creating UX problems people have been complaining about with Mastodon/fediverse.

Here's a random post: https://witchsky.app/profile/did:plc:rtf3bjc3w2yn4syxtm4r7jt2/post/3mfrp6tovy22g

Try replying from https://bsky.app. The old "put the URL in the search box" trick doesn't work here.

And developers are disagreeing over "log in with Bluesky" vs "with ATProto" vs "Atmosphere", because the first one erases the diversity of the network, while the more accurate labels are "too confusing for normies".

Plus, "pick a PDS and an AppView and an app" sounds a lot more daunting than "pick a server".

@benroyce @mat

Ronen Tamari (@ronentk.me)

Can everyone building on atproto please answer this question? 😇 ↘️ quoting Pedro Vezza (@pedro.vza.net): Why did you decide to bet on atproto over Mastodon or similar?

Witchsky

@stefan @_elena @benroyce @mat

sknob Mar 20

Telling how one of the answers is about being able to monetize on the user end (« Culture problems w/ ActivityPub/Mastodon on a number of levels. Seemed openly hostile to anyone potentially making money, even small biz »). That’s a feature, not a bug as far as I’m concerned :)

@sknob Honestly, being hostile to people who are just trying to make living doesn't feel like a feature.

I make music as a hobby, but if I was trying to promote an album or a show, and got harassed off the fediverse for that, I'd just have to stick with commercial social media, I guess.

@stefan @_elena @benroyce @mat

sknob Mar 20

A lot of people promote their DIY arts and crafts on the fedi, including me, and I think that’s fine. It’s still not a cool place for businesses to aggressively advertise and sell their wares, and I think it’s more than nice to have a place that is essentially free from consumer culture.

@sknob I've seen pretty regular folks being harassed over this, including prominent YouTubers.

Yeah, we don't want ads and sleazy SEO-type guys, that's fine, although, even then, why not just block and move on, rather than harass people?

sknob Mar 20

@stefan sure, but the guy I quoted talked about people being « openly hostile », which I didn’t interpret as harassment necessarily. I mean I would say I am openly hostile if that guy asked me what I thought, but I wouldn’t harass him :)
@_elena @benroyce @mat

@sknob I've seen/read about that sort of behavior on here, so really mainly referring to that.

And there is a lot of gatekeeping, people looking down on those who are not tech savvy enough or intimidated by some of the complexities of how fediverse works.

Really not a fan of that.

(Not saying this applies to you, just a general comment!)

right but all these hostile sorts are just candidates for blocking, or suspending entire servers if it is riddled with this gatekeeping shit

@benroyce Yes, but telling people "just block everyone" gets tiring after a certain point, and we all have a different threshold.

This is why we need to:

a) implement reply controls, and
b) fix the culture here

Honestly, rather than telling people "block the harassers", we need to teach people to block/ignore those they feel like harassing.

See also my semi-serious, only-joking-unless proposal: https://static.stefanbohacek.com/mansplaining/

@sknob @_elena @mat

Replying on social media

How to reply to a stranger online without being a total jerk.

yeah but that's a nonproblem not in the sense that it isn't a problem, but since bluesky has the same problem, or any other social media for that matter, that's just the way it is

there's always going to be trolls, harassment, gatekeepers, etc

but 1,000% agreed on the reply controls

https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/115995510270880689

@benroyce

This focuses on the anti-Black racism, but highly recommend reading, if you haven't already:

But yes, you are right that these issues are not unique to the fediverse. Mekka explains really well why people still prefer being elsewhere.

@sknob @_elena @mat

yeah we had this convo before, and i totally agree with mekka's critique

bigots, always ruining everything

i think the way to handle that is to bake it in to your presence, make it part of your identity that you engaged in commerce

people need to eat

if someone else has no financial worries, good for them, but it's entitled to weaponize that against you

some parts of mastodon will be hostile to you, some won't. so you simply block the hostile parts, and they block you, and everyone carries on

Ben Ramsey Mar 20

@stefan @_elena @benroyce @mat I had thought it was started inside Twitter as a kind of skunkworks project intended to be Twitter 2.0, before Musk’s acquisition. The goal, from what I understood, was to give companies more control.

@ramsey Yes, Bluesky originated at Twitter, was spun out as its own startup, with Dorsey leaving for Nostr.

One big goal they talked about publicly was the so-called "credible exit", as in, you, the user, should be able to take your data and move it elsewhere. I think PDSs handle this pretty well, better than migrating your account on, say, Mastodon, where you retain your followers, but lose your posting history.

The PDS has all your data.

But the downside is that the rest of the ATProto task is harder to host yourself, particularly the AppView.

So it's a trade-off. But once we have https://swicg.github.io/activitypub-data-portability/lola implemented, that won't be a problem!