this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2024
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Non-twitter is fine in any form. Real progress is gonna be going to Mastodon, although that's hamstrung by user-unfriendliness.
I can't really disagree with this, since I've personally seen folks make a casual attempt and bounce off Mastodon, and it comes up enough online that it feels like it has to be true, but at the same time I've got this reflexive skepticism since I'm an absolute idiot and managed to figure out how to have a good time on Mastodon and really enjoy it. (I signed up in the spring of 2023, though, so can't speak to earlier times.) I think I'm probably closer to the normies than the stereotypical tech-literate Mastodon person. So I really wonder what it is specifically that frustrates folks enough to just give up on Mastodon when I, an amiable doofus of the highest order, love it so much.
I have additional Thoughts on cultural issues that might disappoint people who were expecting Mastodon to replicate whatever specific era of pre-Musk Twitter they yearn for, but it can't *just *be that. There has to be some technical barrier a lot of folks are stumbling over, right?
Just from the fact that you are here, it is statistically likely that you are much closer to the tech literates than the normies. Can you search for a specific email in your email inbox? You're already way ahead of many people. You are severely overestimating the technical literacy of normal people.
Yeah, and it's getting worse not better.
In reality, mastodon doesn't achieve the same dopamine hit by design. This is both a good thing (less addictive, more conversational) and a bad thing (less retention, more opaqueness in statistics) depending on why you want to use or don't want to use social networks.
I never used twitter anyway so idk I never got into Mastodon. Didn't help that the few people I thought to follow basically pulled the "yeah this is cool #fucktwitter buuuuuut everyone is still on Twitter okbaiiiiiii"
I have a potentially really dumb question: how is mastodon different from the assorted lemmys and such? I originally thought mastodon was just another fediverse instance but now that I think about it I don't think I've seen posts and content from others on a mastodon instance, either on .world or where I am now at .ee. is this just due to defederation with mastodon or is mastodon different in some way that I am missing?
Mastodon works more like twitter, several microblog posts that you only see if you search or check:
Meanwhile, lemmy works more like reddit, easier to find "specific content", with posts neatly separated by community/instance and easier to find/search/interact with in the future. It's less about individuals and more about communities
I think mastodon only interacts with lemmy as comments on existing posts, though there's probably a way to post to a community from a mastodon client/site
Mastadon has definitely improved it's user onboarding process. When I first tried, and failed, to use it 3 years ago it was awful. Signing up a year ago was a painless process. It may not be fully ready for the mainstream just yet, but it's definitely getting there.
While I agree with you. I don't think Mastodon is user unfriendly I think of it as a normie blocker. That being said, bluesky is owning class social media, I expect the enshittification to start now that they have a million + users.
"Normie blocker" is just how abnormies rationalize bad design
Except it's not. It's real easy to learn you can choose any instance you're welcome to. Normies are the ones choosing not to learn.
I do feel sorry for them because they're probably going to get pushed to the next billionaires social media in the next decade to be exploited there too.
Unless I'm completely missing something? What's so bad about the design? I'm pretty dumb and uneducated and I dig me some federated social media purely because it's genuine compared to the owning class social media.
Statistically speaking, the mere fact that you are here indicates that you are among the top percentages of tech literal people. This isn't necessarily about intelligence or general education, but about tech literacy.
Brah, I'm not a normie. That's why we're talking on Lemmy. /s
That's... exactly what I'm saying. Did you misunderstand my comment perhaps? Normies are not "choosing" not to learn, they just literally don't have the tech literacy skills to easily participate in the fediverse. The fediverse should improve its UX to allow more people to participate.
Sadly literate and tech literate don't always go hand in hand.
Personally I wish there was a better way to link multiple accounts together to say they're the same person. When I switched to hosting my own instance, I basically just abandoned my old account, but I would have loved to link them to have the history there.
We have the technology, it could be as simple as SSH keys, or like how bitcoin wallets are unique and don't require internet to verify a match.
Edit: I actually just discovered that this is one of the main feature differences between ActivityPub and BlueSky's AT Protocol. BlueSky has "account portability", and now that you can self-host it, I'm seriously considering setting it up. It would be really nice if we get an update that lets the protocols federate with each other. I think that BlueSky has said they intend to support ActivityPub federation in the future.
ActivityPub actually has a similar mechanism of a "Move" activity. There are just very few implementations that support that kind of thing.
The main problem with that seems to be that the original server needs to be active to migrate. If the instance I'm on shuts down or is uncooperative, then my account history is gone. And for Mastodon, that's even worse if you have a bunch of followers. These are all reasons I decided to self-host before I built up too much of a presence.
Right, of course. I don't really see any way any protocol can get around that though. If the original server is suddenly just gone, there is no way to tell it to move your account elsewhere. Hopefully such a situation should happen very rarely though.
Supposedly BlueSky has solved this by separating the data storage servers from the "relays" and "app view" servers, and since your account's posts are cryptographically signed, they can come from any instance as long as the signature matches.
That at least covers migrating followers and new posts, but I'm not really sure what would happen to old posts if a data server just went offline. I've still got more reading to do.
But what if the server that holds the cryptographic keys is suddenly gone? Then what?
Or does Bluesky use client-held keys? I just think client-held private keys is probably too complicated for most people to realistically and safely use.
I assume you hold your own cryptographic keys, but I'm not actually sure how that works. Your client needs access to them to make posts, and it wouldn't make sense for the server to hold your private key, since that would mean the owner of your instance could make posts as you.
I haven't actually signed up to BlueSky to figure this out yet.
Edit: So it looks like users are authenticated using https://github.com/did-method-plc/did-method-plc But the keys are stored on the server, with an option to view your key for backup and migration. That does mean a certain level of trust with your instance, but you can self-host if that's a concern. A malicious host at least can't prevent you from rotating your keys and leaving (unless of course they steal your account entirely by rotating your keys themselves)
I mean, this is quite normal and common for all traditional social media (or any site really) you sign up for. It's what most ActivityPub instances do too, though there's nothing in ActivityPub that requires the server to hold the private key. It could in principle be held by the client but I don't believe there is any implementation that does that currently.
Yeah, this is just me tacking on extra features I'd like. My security-minded programmer brain can't help but think of all the edge-cases. It's something that is suddenly possible with distributed social media that never was before.
Seriously yea. Same reason Linux user experience is generally bad. Unfortunately engineers usually make for poor designers.
Sounds weird from inside the echo chamber though
Gotta disagree with you there when it comes to Threads. We have seen how Meta is also trying to influence global politics. Threads should not be encouraged either. On top of that, their privacy policy is a nightmare.
https://qz.com/threads-meta-delayed-launch-eu-privacy-policy-concerns-1850609340
Purely anecdotally from what I've been reading online, it seems most younger folks hate Threads.
Not necessarily because of privacy issues or social impact, mind you. They also think it just sucks to use, don't like the UI, don't like the content—which turned out to include a lot of people trying to build a personal brand and sell you things. Just like Instagram, where most users came from.
Excluding content details, Mastodon fails similarly. Requires learning, unsatisfactory UI, more difficult to find and engage with content you like.