Turns out if you get rid of ads and the algorithm, you end up back in the land of sanity.
Algorithms are not inherently bad.
No but the ones employed by corporate social media companies are and that’s what the guy you’re replying to was referring to.
Yes, but some sort of algorithms are going to be inherently needed in a social media platform, where as the advertisement is not necessarily.
Corporate algorithms meant to influence people are bad. Algorithms in general are unavoidable
I think the UI/UX is really good now, and comparable to Twitter, and better then Threads/Bluesky. Unfortunately most don’t get that far, because onboarding on the fedi is still a very big pain point and the very first thing people have to overcome. Also actually using the fedi, people linking other instances and whatnot really breaks the experience when you wonder why you’re suddenly on an identical looking site but are signed out. I think decentralization is simply a requirement for freedom, but also it is a confusing concept for onboarding that we haven’t quite solved yet. I’m optimistic that these things can improve though.
I think I’ve started learning that I’m kind of ok with that barrier to entry… I mean, it’s pretty fucking low. It’s not that difficult to understand if you are willing to take 5 mins to learn how it works.
Don’t want to be gatekeeper-y or anything, but maybe if you can’t pass that simple test, then the overall discourse is better off without you in it.
And it’s hardly five minutes anymore. If using the official app sign up is as fast as Twitter or any other app.
How low the barrier is depends on how good is your prior knowledge. If you are a millennial that remember the internet before Facebook, it’s probably very easy to understand the gist. For older people who never got into how computers work, or younger people that only saw the internet through smartphone apps, that barrier may be higher than we feel.
That high barrier of entry is going to automatically keep out most non-techy people, and they tend to be a big source of entertaining content out there. Generally if you discount any bad UX as “takes only a bit effort to learn” that just means it’s not user friendly and needs a lot of improvement.
They’ve made huge improvements to onboarding over the past few months, it’s as easy as any other app now:
- Download Mastodon app
- Make acccount
It’s literally that easy now. Anything to do with Federation (like following other users) is also hidden to the background unless you go looking for it.
The actual fedi experience for a non techy:
- Search Mastodon app
- Choose a Mastodon app, which one is the official, which one is the best, there’s so many!
- Instances? Why can’t I just sign up with Mastodon, what’s going on?
- Okay, why are these all different rules, what does this mean, and why are they all different?
- What am I actually signing up for? Who owns this instance, which I don’t understand the concept of? Will it randomly shut down?
- Who am I giving this personal data too?
- Okay, how do I find content, why is my feed so boring?
- Okay I clicked somebody’s link and it takes me to a different website, why can’t I like/reply/follow? Where am I?
At each one of these steps, there’s a new learning curve. If it’s not easy enough for your grandma, then it needs improvement.
Right, that used to be how it was done, but it’s not anymore. The very first result in the iPhone app store and Google play store is the official app. The official app has not prompted the user to choose an instance since May of this year.
Many of the other questions (like about data and privacy) are extremely valid but also apply to any app, so by that logic Twitter for example would have considerably more steps than Mastodon simply by virtue of a significantly more complicated TOS.
Normies will not even come to mastadon so no need to dumb down the experience to grandma level. They will use Facebook or X just like they will use windows and edge. They use computers as if they were TVs, never changing any defaults even.
Agree that Mastodon is good but…
Not difficult to sign up for
Yeah…about that… The choose an instance thing is confusing for a lot of people. It actually made me think twice before signing on, which is not a good thing for a platform looking to get more people on.
Not difficult to use
Well if they make it easier to follow people on other instances, sure.
Also, content discovery is not easy on Mastodon. I have to go to directories (yes, remember those?) to find out the interesting accounts on there.
There actually hasn’t been a “choose an instance thing” for a few months now. If using the official app sign up is as straightforward as Twitter or any other app. Similarly, if using the official app following accounts is equally straightforward.
Thats a nice change!
Content discovery is really easy for me on Mastodon, I can search for what I want via hashtag or a post, plus the people I follow and my followers always have nice suggestions. But if your instance has low federation, you might not see much.
It’s federated, not decentralized. Which even Mastodon itself doesn’t seem to realize or care, since they falsely advertise themselves as decentralized.
Decentralized means there is no central authority.
Federation just means there are many centralized authorities, that might or might not communicate with each other.
I really don’t see what Mastodon is supposed to solve in the long run. The server has full control and can do whatever it wants. Just look at what happened Threads.net. Big company joins the Fediverse and instead of celebrating, everybody starts thinking about defederating them. This approach is doomed to fail if it ever gets popular.
Nostr looks like a much more promising approach, with proper cryptographic identities and signatures. Nobody owns you there. Servers are just dumb relays. If one steps out of line, you can just use another one.
look at what happened Threads.net. Big company joins the Fediverse and instead of celebrating, everybody starts thinking about defederating them. This approach is doomed to fail if it ever gets popular.
Let’s not forget threads planned to monetize every interaction it was aware of, regardless of any direct interaction with Facebook/Meta. The public pushback probably went a long way towards setting a precedent against that sort of activity. We’re really breaking new ground here and have a chance to take back what is increasingly an essential function of society from folks who would rather fill every waking moment of your life with ads.
Let’s not forget threads planned to monetize every interaction it was aware of,
So does GMail. Making money running a bit of the network should not be a problem, quite the opposite, that just means the network won’t run out of money. This kind of arbitrary enforcing of political ideology should have no place this low in the network structure.
Let’s not forget we’re really breaking new ground here
We really aren’t. It’s just repeating what EMail and Usenet have done for 40 years.
GMail does not build an ad profile based on your emails. Let alone emails sent between two people outside of gmails network. This is absolutely a false equivalence.
what political ideology
People underestimate the need for something like this. Society is only going to become more and more censored and monitored as technology evolves. It’s not possible to escape that, so using communication where you are private is going to be extreamly important.
Also it needs to be able to resist being banned by governments.
How does a completely decentralized platform handle data that should be removed? If some asshole starts posting CP or other fucked up shit, what exactly happens? With mastodont the server admin has the control to remove whatever he or she wants. Not perfect, but you have plenty of servers to choose from (or you can start your own).
You want something like society, mostly free but still with some ground rules. If it’s completely free there is also lots of scams and shady stuff. In the long run I think a platform like that will be banned by governments.
How does a completely decentralized platform handle data that should be removed?
You make a blacklists of forbidden content and relays can use or ignore it. It’s up to the relay, there is no central authority that can make content go away globally. Nostr is build to be censorship-resistent.
In the long run I think a platform like that
It’s not a platform, it’s just a protocol and apps using that protocol.
Nostr is for memes and bitcoins. Toxic AF.
what wrong with defederating meta
It completely puts the whole system in question. If federation is optional and defederation happens for ideological reasons, what’s even the point of it? It just means that communication can get disrupted at any point at the whim of any random server admin.
Filter by Hot, Active and Top Day are godsends for Lemmy. I understand the lack of blackbox algorithm but zero control over your timeline outside of Chronological and tags kills Mastodon for a lot of people.
I’ve really enjoyed mastodon. The community is pretty great and it seems to have plenty of features.
Mastodon is boring. I left Twitter years ago, and don’t miss it. I joined Mastodon like 2 years ago, I like it, but still find it boring.
Because they’re stupid.
Because Threads is where the mainstream people are going due to ease of use/marketing/popularity and familiarity with other Meta products. Which is why Threads integration with ActivityPub and not defederating with threads.net is so key
