Technology

A lot of people did jump to Mastodon, and apparently it had had another large influx of users yesterday after all the Twitter shenanigans. Not everyone stays though, obviously.

I think part of the issue some have with Mastodon is the lack of Twitter's algorithm. It's absolutely true to say it's harder to find people and topics to follow on Mastodon for the simple reason that you're not getting anything shoved in your face, which is a massive plus point for many (myself included) but can also make it appear initially less appealing.

I'm ok with the influencers not bothering with Mastodon, tbh.

I mean, sure they'll take the numbers with them where they go, but from my own perspective, I'm not struggling to find good people to follow so does it matter to me if the usual celebrities don't keep getting boosted into my TL all the time?

Mastodon is working fine. There are plenty of people using it. It doesn't need Twitter's scraps.

Honestly, from what I can tell, and if I think back to when I jumped over in November, I think it mostly comes down to how much quieter the feed is to start with.

If you think, you’re going from a site with an algorithmically generated feed that’s made to feel intentionally noisy, to a chronological feed that’s only as busy as who you follow. That didn’t bother me too much because 95% of my Twitter intake was done via Tweetbot, which didn’t use the algorithm at all, so Mastodon felt much the same.

But to someone who uses the website, it’s a huge change.

Ultimately - and the same is true here - you can jumpstart your experience by following everything and everyone, then filter out the stuff you’re not so much into. But you need to hang around long enough to see someone suggest that. And that’s where the problem lies.

I deleted twitter ages ago but never jumped to Mastadon because the initial descriptions seemed overly technical and confusing. Like people went out of their way to describe how it was different and unique, making it sound difficult. It was only after the Reddit debacle and trying out Lemmy did I realize it was basically the same thing to an average user. I could get my content drip without specialized knowledge. That makes me consider trying out Mastadon.

I think most people don't care how they get their memes, just that they get them. That should be the focus, and learning about federated systems is a byproduct.

Funny enough, I posted this over there yesterday.

Mastodon.social? Yeah, they'll have been getting absolutely hammered yesterday.

It's worth signing up to a smaller server if you can find one. It's really easy to migrate your follows and followers to a different server (though you'll lose your post history).

My girlfriend noped out of lemmy pretty much immediately after I tried to explain how to set it up and use it. Objectively, it's a lot more confusing than signing up for something like reddit. She's also pretty tech savvy, so I can't imagine normies making the transition in mass.

If these federated alternatives are going to become mainstream, someone will have to step up with an implementation that greatly improves usability and accessibility. Meaning that federation will probably have to be masked to a large degree to reduce confusion. Maybe something more like a distributed network instead of a federated one.

As soon as you start talking techbro nonsense like federation and decentralization, people's eyes glaze over. People don't care how things work, they just care that it does what they need it to.

Hate to say it but a lot of us in tech, especially the devs, are really out of touch with end users. They aren't philosophizing about the internet. I understand why people are excited about the idea of decentralization, and why it matters, but it has to be presented in a way that's much simpler for people to understand if we actually went people to get on board.

Same. I probably still have a mastodon account.... Somewhere.