Mastodon

In college I had to write a program to send emails. This was around 2012. Basically we had to send the low level commands of an email for it to go through. After doing this I realized something weird. The email gets to say who it is from. There are obviously ways to sign the message and verify it and most email servers block messages that don't have these because of how trivial it is to fake. It's basically like putting a name tag on that says "Joe Biden" and everyone believing you're the president.

I didn't do anything malicious but I did mildly prank my girlfriend. I don't remember what I did but I'm pretty sure I told her before I did it. I really didn't want to end up getting expelled for """hacking""" so I didn't do anything remotely bad. The irony is the assignment wouldn't have worked and been as interesting if my campus had the proper security measures to block the messages.

It could be that the web client for our email mentioned something about the sender being unverified and not to trust it but I don't remember.

Using your email address as username is a common problem for a lot of users.

Some of them are even completely shocked that they can use a different password and don’t understand, that their mail is just their login credentials for this specific site.

The feature “login with Apple/Google/Facebook” exists for a reason.

When it was invented, it was complex and annoying, even by today's standards.

It’s interesting to me how often “math skills” are conflated with “the ability to understand technology.” Like I’m passionate about HCI/social computing research, comfortable navigating the Fediverse, jailbroke my iPod as a teen, modded Civilization (DOS) as a kid — I’m also “just okay” at math lol, didn’t even take Calculus in HS. I wonder how many people (like the journalists you describe) feel discouraged from exploring technologies because of the false “math skill = tech skill” narrative, even if plenty of people who suck at math excel at understanding technologies!

(I also wonder how many people who “suck at math” don’t actually suck at math but weren’t given a good math education during school — but that’s a rant for another thread 😂)

If you can write and have technical know-how, technical writing pays more than journalism.

I suck at math too. But isn't the work of a journalist to at least double check? Calculators exist for a reason.

I'm sure it's not lack of technical skill it's a mental block, I've helped so many people set up software that is literally clicking ok a dozen times then they're like 'oh let me print this, hang on I need to compile a firmware update and flash it using a telegraph key...' big brands have the shittiest software, but people feel they should be able to understand because it's professional but something like an open source federated social network is nerd stuff so they feel the the shouldn't be able to.

Case in point, I installed MPV on a friends laptop because VLC wouldn't play the file without crashing, the install process is super simple but they have green on black hacker terminal output instead of a process bar and you type Y when prompted instead of clicking yes -- it gave her anxiety just watching me do it, said maybe we should try uninstalling VLC and reinstalling instead... Of course mpv played the video flawlessly and used less CPU and ram doing so which warmed her to it. There's no way she couldn't have understood everything and done it herself but the fact it's not as corporate as VLC would have written it off (and wow that's a crazy thing to say, I love that there's so much great open source software that VLC is middle of the road)

Their voices are missing online simply because they are basically tech illiterate. And I think that is a huge problem.

I've seen a number of polls on the age demographics on the fediverse, and they've all been pretty consistent ... the fediverse is basically on average a Xennial place with a surprising amount of Boomer. There are younger folks, of course, more so on lemmy/kbin than mastodon it seems (which is interesting).

But generally, in line with your comment, there's a generational filter here that attracts those who remember the value of and how to use the old internet and old computers.

Which, if you think there's value in what the fediverse is trying to do (free our expression and ownership on the internet), is a problem. Another way of looking at it is that the failure of allowing big-private-monopoly-social platforms to dominate for so long^1^ will have long lasting side effects including the erasure of what the internet can be in many people's understanding of the world.

[1]: I'd estimate 2008-2023 as the era of dominant big social, where the closing year of 2023 may be too early or even open ended. That's 14 years. Which, if we take the web as having started in 1993, and being ~30 years old, is about half the age of the internet. So, it's a decently objective approximation, then, to say that the web is Facebook etc, especially as the relevance of older things fades. Which only amplifies the harm we allowed to transpire.

Also ... check it out ... lemmy can do footnotes!! Click the view source button to see how I did it if you're interested.

Also the first barrier of picking a server (how it works, the rules of every instance, checking who they federate with) and an app (the will to test multiple apps, learning that to login you have to input the server url manually since most aren't listed in the apps), to the people who read all the things it's tedious but doable, for the rest it's "Which one is the RIGHT choice?" and just stay at the door.

Also servers with poorly written rules don't help (example: mstdn.mx says porn and politics are forbidden, but in reality they allow them as long as you tag then properly).

These kind of posts don't help either, because it makes people feel like they are too stupid to join and rather stick to the known services, but omit all the actual process that someone has to go through.

I think the trickiest part is finding people on other instances and needing to copy/paste their links in your home instance's search bar before you can follow or reblog, especially if you're following a link someone's shared elsewhere. It's a small nuisance, but it adds up over time, and it's already more work than most social media consumers want to bother with. For Mastodon to truly take off, that needs to be automated or hidden, because most people are going to give up before they even get an explanation.

@seansand @vis4valentine Yeap first thing they do is say test or hello... And nothing. Then they wonder why there is no one, or why only 1 tab with news especially non English speakers are dumbfounded. I just look at live feed if in mood> see someone asking for help or test> explain # and how important to use them to find people or be found qnd how only # works in search bar. I don't blame them because not every top boosted post has # but a little proding, use # local language and voilà progress

I wouldn't even go that far to be honest.

server

"wtf is this"?

And those who don't, bounce off the fact that it's not intuitive to follow someone from their user page.

Mastodon is not as complicated as it is sometimes made out to be, but it'a disingenuous to pretend that it's simple, either.

I feel like yall are also overestimating the tech comprehension of a lot of the younger generation. Every action has been so simplified some young teenagers are as tech illiterate as some of their grandparents. If its not inmediately obvious or requires a workaround, they just give up.

The fundamental problem there is that. Finding people and following them is one click on twitter, on mastodon it's a whole busy thing. I can't stand it

I know it's hard for tech literate people to understand but choosing a server is daunting. Most people chose their email because it was linked to a service they were already familiar with like Google and Microsoft. There's no familiarity with the Lemmy or mastodon instances and there are so many of them that people who already have trouble learning new technologies get to deal with decision fatigue on top of that. People like what is familiar and having a service that mostly works the same is still very confusing for them.

It doesn't matter what "instance" you sign up for with email, you'll get all mail. But just the email for YOU. If you pick federated on Mastodon you get half a billion messages a minute and none of them are for you.

Mastodon:

Pick a Mastodon instance.

Open it in your web browser, follow the prompts to sign up.

Search for people you want to follow, and add them. Maybe search for subject matter that interests you, and follow people who post about that.

PixelFed:

Pick a PixelFed instance.

Open it in your web browser, follow the prompts to sign up.

Search for people you want to follow, and add them. Maybe search for subject matter that interests you, and follow people who post about that.

Facebook is a fucking nightmare for people used to having control over their browsing.

Social media is not social media any more. It's a one way stream of thinly coated commercials and political propaganda, behind a veil of interaction so that people feel some false sense of agency over the whole thing. In the ideal scenario, everything is perfectly tailored to targeted groups so that the whole experience feels very "engaging".

When people say the fediverse is hard, what I suspect they mean is that they don't manage to make it addictive in the same way.

People leaving Twitter are slaves looking for a new master or junkies looking for a new high. Using Mastodon as a Twitter replacement is hard in the same way it's hard to use commercial-grade glue as a substitute for heroin.